blender 2.5 VSE speed

[garbager]

hi people,

Currently working on a HD feature film, I was really glad to work with Blender VSE, and want to stick with it, cause I'm convinced it's exactly what I need for my project. But as I was trying the new alpha1 yesterday, I discovered that editting was way slower than it was on blender 2.49 and blenderAVC. Does anyone know if it's because VSE it's still wip in alpha1, which would make sense. But if it's the case, does the spped of vse manipulation will change to ar least come back to previous speed if not faster.

thanks in advance to anyone who can answer me.

[aermartin]

The VSE is in heavy development, it's been dead for a while in the early 2.5 builds, now it's taking up speed. I bet you'll see improvements.

Btw, the one that added (strip & preview) needs a hug! awesome.

and @garbager you can do a workaround, render a low-res version of your hires HD footage. to a new folder called proxy. make it 1/4 of full HD or something similar.

and then load your full HD in VSE, and press N to get the toolbar. there's a option there to replace the HD footage with a proxy.

then you can use the lowres proxy for working copy and the GUI should be more responsive and less CPU heavy.

[yellow]

I find 2.5 VSE slower to respond than 2.49b and it's a bit of a minefield currently which is expected. Using 2.49b for anything other than testing.

[harkyman]

I haven't done anything but the very basics in 2.5 VSE yet, but I do know that frame pre-grab for VSE is set to 0 as default. Change that an maybe response gets better.

[blendercomp]

I have been using 2.5 a lot lately (using footage from my wedding for which I have to make a video -yeah don't know what I was thinking). 2.5a0 was a bit difficult to work with but I'm using the latest builds without problems. The footage is shot at 720p and I don't even have to use proxies. The only major issue compared to 2.49x is that realitime playback consumes almost as much cpu power as rendering: one of the cores is constantly at 100% (Core2Duo CPU T6400 @ 2.00GHz, 4 GB ram, Kubuntu with ext4). Working with 2.5 is so smooth compared to 2.49x that I don't consider the possiblility of going back.

@Harkyman: if I set the frame pre-grab to any value higher than 0 then there is no image preview whatsoever (the sound can be heard though). I don't know if this is a feature or a bug but this is my experience with most recent builds.

[harkyman]

Sounds like a bug to me.

[blendercomp]

shall I report a bug?

[vea]

you must report the bug

[harkyman]

It is wise to report the bug.

[3pointEdit]

What is pre-grab? How should it work?

[blendercomp]

Ok, bug reported.

@ 3pointEdit: I'm not aware of any documentation but I assume that it's a buffer that facilitates realitime playback

[yellow]

@blendercomp, I think you've added you bug to the 2.4 tracker, there are 2.5 bugs reported there but the majority are here:

https://projects.blender.org/tracker..._id=9&atid=498

Although the two trackers share one numbering system. :-)

btw the slow responsiveness I'd mentioned earlier was with things like colour adjustment etc rather than playback.

Good to know it's going smooth for you. :-)

[blendercomp]

@yellow: to be honest I couldn't find the 2.5a0 or a1 so I chose latest svn build or something -don't remember exactly. If the bug is reported to the wrong place please on what to do (e.g. report it again or will that upset the devs?)
As for video editing, my experiences withVSE have been so smooth lately that coupled with the gui is utterly seductive! :-)
Some functionality is missing but I guess you cannot have it all.