Suddenly, when I play a project in Vegas 6.0d, the playback stutters. It will pause, then jump ahead several frames. After a few seconds, it moves smoothly again for about 5 -10 seconds. Through all of this, the pointer on the timeline moves smoothly, but the image in the viewing panel does not. It acts as though it is out of memory and pauses while it catches up.

But my system has 2 GB of RAM, two P4 3 GHz processors, and it does this when no other applications are running.

When I render the project, it is fine as a final product. But being sure I have what I want is difficult under these circumstances.

Has anyone else experienced this?

One thing that came to mind is that I am using files recorded with Game Cam 1.4. Because this program drops the frame rate to about 8 FPS, I am using the Ctrl-drag on the clips to speed them up to an acceptable speed (this is from a flight simulator). Could this be the problem? If so, can anything be done about it?

This is a common complaint with Vegas... a quick search of the forum would have brought more than a few threads about it. The most popular solution is to lower the preview pane to draft quality rather than best. As you correctly point out, it doesn't affect the final render at all, it's simply a preview issue, although I agree it can be irritating.

(this subject is number one in the sticky 'Vegas Answers' thread.)

EDIT - The processing required to speed up those clips is probably a contributory factor to your issue.

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Thanks for the fast answer. I have done some more testing and have found that setting the preview pane to Draft, Good, or Best makes no difference. Even more strange is that it also happens before I speed up the clips.

I have made many videos from regular video files from a cam corder and stills and never noticed this problem in them. It's only since I started using the Game Cam files. I have used them as .avi files and also after they were converted to .wmv files. All the samee thingee, as they say. I'll follow your suggestion to do a forum search. It is reassuring to learn I am not the first or only. Thanks!

Odd- sounds like dodgy video to start with. In my expirience some other editors would just crash in this case, vegas is quite good at editing odd / faulty video / codecs.

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I did an experiment that seems to support your thoughts, but I'm not sure. What I did was load the rendered video into Vegas and play it. No stutter or jitter. I suspected that this might be because Vegas likes the .wmv files until I realized I convert all .avi files from the video capture program (Game Cam 1.4) to .wmv with AVS Video Converter before I start editing.

So, I am still mystified. (not an unusual condition)