I arrived here specifically because of the [missing] Preview Options (which, by the way, are still listed on this page at NHC Software.
Let me give some context.
I used VideoPad once about 5 years ago, on someone else's computer, and liked it a lot. That was a high-end computer. At home, I still have an older computer (I'm sorry but we really can't afford a new one now). I've edited videos on it for years, mostly using PowerDirector, which is quite good. But the new versions of PowerDirector are just too much for this old computer.
So I remembered about VP, decided to give it a go, and... it performed quite better than PowerDirector. So I went ahead and purchased it.
But surprise: unlike the old version I used years ago, today I found that the Preview Options aren't there. Search NHC Software site, which says they are there (link above). But now I find this topic.
The new methods of caching, the using proxies (which I already did, but didn't know it had a name) are good, but they're not enugh. On my computer the Preview always lags, even with proxies and even waiting to buffer. When I preview, the "buffering..." message pops-up always. I'm not sure if it has to do with the fact that for this specific video, I increased the speed of the clip almost 8x (I tried many ways of increasing the speed or exporting every 8th frame via FFMPEG but it never worked).
So in short, IMHO there should be still be the option to decrease the quality of the preview. Despite the aforementioned improvements, this option, I believe, will help those with older computers like mine.
Thanks