So I've been doing some digging. I went into the "Options" setting of VD and UNchecked the 'Sync to audio' and now I can preview my input/output playback. Does this make sense to anyone else or am I making a mistake turning that off?
I don't seem to be having audio issues and I'm getting zero dropped frames.
If anything I could just not "play" the input/output of my AVI's before rendering, I can just scrub through.
I pulled this from the VD manual:
"The
Sync to audio option also affects preview by changing the way that
VirtualDub synchronizes audio and video playback; it should normally be left on, but if there are problems with audio timing that prevent synchronized playback from occurring, disabling this option may allow preview to proceed. Like the option to drop frames, this option too only pertains to previewing and does not affect renders to disk. "