Despite an optimally configured Graphics Plugin, users may still experience performance issues. One important factor is the size of the project. 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 re-scale graphics and video, which is a costly process. Rendering on a video that resides on a shared drive on the network will also utilize valuable network capacity.

For example, 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 requests a frame,

2. receives it from the Graphics Plugin,

3. 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. Ensuring that the video size, format, project, and timeline settings correspond with each other, and that rendering is done locally on a fast disk is therefore very beneficial. Although the performance analysis reports that everything is fine, the system as a whole might be slow due to slow hardware on the NLE system.