One thing that we have seen is that despite an optimally configured Graphics Plugin, users still might have performance problems. One important factor is the size of the project. One can safely assume that working on a fully interlaced HD (1080i) project will use more resources than PAL or NTSC.

When there is a mismatch between video size and the timeline/project settings, the NLE system might need to rescale graphics and video which is a costly process. Rendering on a video that resides on a shared drive on the network will also steal valuable network capacity.

Consider the following case; An interlaced HD project with a well-configured Graphics Plugin has an effect added to a layer above the video, and rendering is started. The following will happen;

1. The NLE system asks for a frame,

2. receives it from the Graphics Plugin,

3. and processes the graphics and possibly caches the data on disk.

These steps will then be repeated for each frame. Steps 1 to 2 might only take 20 milliseconds (ms); however, the time from 2 to 3 can be as much as 600-1000 ms. So ensuring that the video size, format, project, and timeline settings correspond with each other, and that rendering is done locally on a fast disk helps a lot. Although the performance analysis reports all things as good, the system as a whole might be slow due to slow hardware on the NLE system.