Vegas running on iMac OS X Parallels

Avi wrote on 11/3/2010, 2:34 PM
I love Sony Vegas. I've edited with it since v. 3. However, I've now migrated over to iMac OS X installed with Parallels, where I am running Vegas in Coherence. Actually, I'm also on a learning curve with Final Cut Studio v.7 on the Mac side. I want to edit Vegas for some things and Final Cut for others as both have their unique strengths and weaknesses, leading me to a Q that I hope perhaps someone here in the forum can address. Vegas 9e is working under Windows XP, SP2, x32. A couple of Q's if someone has an answer.

1) The iMac has 8g of Ram for Final Cut. But Vegas is showing that it only has 639mb for Ram as a maximum, and it's supposedly only using 255mb. I've not noticed much in lack of performance, but then again, there appears to have been a little less responsiveness and speed. Any comments on this?

2) Is there anyone that has any recommendations for special settings that I might consider to tweak Vegas 9e ass it is essentially running in a x64 OS but in Parallels (replacing Bootcamp), yet within the framework of Win XP at x32 under SP2.

I hope that I'm making sense here. I want to give Vegas as much of this iMac OS X system as possible while the program is essentially confined to Win XP. Should I upgrade to x64? Is anyone here in the forum running Vegas on an iMac Leopard? Any advice would be welcome news.

Thanks

Comments

mtntvguy wrote on 11/3/2010, 3:24 PM
I recently switched from an iMac to a 17" MacBook Pro. I had Vegas 9.0e 32-bit on the iMac and it ran nicely, as does the 64-bit version on the MacBook Pro. But I run Vegas under Windows 7 Pro now, instead of Windows XP Pro on the iMac (I'm still debating if that was a smart move. I seem to have a lot of Windows 7 issues, whereas XP was rock solid.

But back to your question: I don't use Parallels or VMWare because neither of them supports Firewire, and I still need it sometimes. So I run Windows under BootCamp.

By the way, neither the iMac nor the Macbook Pro under Windows of any variety seem to like FW800, and Apple isn't likely to fix that.
MacVista wrote on 11/4/2010, 1:34 AM
I run Vegas on a Mac but I use Boot camp with Vista 64.(haven't upgraded to Windows 7, if it ain't broke...)
I would not consider running Vegas in Parallels as you are then restricted to what Parallels makes available (like the amount of RAM) You are essentially running Vegas on an underpowered PC.
It takes me about a minute to switch from PC to Mac if I need to.
Hogwild wrote on 11/4/2010, 7:39 AM
"I would not consider running Vegas in Parallels as you are then restricted to what Parallels makes available (like the amount of RAM) You are essentially running Vegas on an underpowered PC."


Is this accurate? I'm asking because I'm currently running on a windows xp pro 32 bit pc, 4GB ram, (see specs in my profile) but I also have an intel based 64bit iMac as a second computer, and thought of running vegas on it with parallels. Will it not be an effective combination?

Anyone else running this setup?

I'm not very technically inclined when it comes to computer specs, trying to feel my way through. Thanks for any help!
LJA wrote on 11/4/2010, 8:10 AM
I run Vegas Pro 9 and 10 under Windows 7 64 bit on an iMac i7 quad core, 8 Gb ram. For the most part it runs well and utilizes the full capability of the i7. I am using Bootcamp exclusively. I was using Parallels 6 for all but long renders and occasional playback performance considerations. But I found Parallels to be seriously unstable, so I have abandoned it. Switching between Snow Leopard and Windows 7 is, as pointed out, quick and offers the full machine, no reduction on available cores or memory.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 11/4/2010, 10:45 AM
> 1) The iMac has 8g of Ram for Final Cut. But Vegas is showing that it only has 639mb for Ram as a maximum, and it's supposedly only using 255mb. I've not noticed much in lack of performance, but then again, there appears to have been a little less responsiveness and speed. Any comments on this

You need to increase the memory allocated to the virtual machine if you are only seeing 639 MB of memory. This is probably done in Parallels before you boot the virtual machine.

> 2) Is there anyone that has any recommendations for special settings that I might consider to tweak Vegas 9e ass it is essentially running in a x64 OS but in Parallels (replacing Bootcamp), yet within the framework of Win XP at x32 under SP2.

Actually, I would recommend trying Vmware Fusion instead of Parallels. Vmware is the industry leader in virtualization. I use vmware every day to run Vegas Pro on Linux and it works fine. Fusion may give you better performance but a virtual environment will never be as good as using Bootcamp.

~jr
Coursedesign wrote on 11/4/2010, 12:54 PM
There is a preference setting for the amount of RAM to allocate to the Windows side, just change it to optimize.

VMware was the champ until Parallels 6 came out recently.

Parallels 6 beats the current version of VMware in performance by a wide margin.

(VMware supports many more OSes, although that is not so useful to most post folks.)