Canopus use hardware acceleration.
If you could dig back through this forum you'd find posts by myself saying what a bad thing hardware acceleration is and some of what I had to say still holds true today. A lot of it doesn't and now that I better understand what editing is about some of my slant on things back then was wrong.

Bob.

Hey Bob,
I hear u re- HW acceleration, however teh latest Edius doesnt require an SP or NX card to get realtime output. In fact you can stream 2 HDV tracks with audio realtime out of a dual core laptop without rendering.

My only gripe with edius is the GUI and workflow. Its boggy and tedius and the time spent working ur way through the interface is pretty much equivalent to Vegas render times.. lol

In the end, they even each other out.

Well.... we'll see what the Vegas 64 is all about... IF it ever comes.

I would hazard to suggest that this is what Sony is trying to strive through the use of 64 bit technology. Vegas is a great program with a workflow that's hard to beat... but it does need a shot in the arm and a bit of a lift with the newer HDV formats. I don't think Sony behind the times in thinking..... just merely in terms of deadlines

I seriously doubt that being 64-bit will have any direct relation to guaranteed playback, but the chance to rewrite other parts of Vegas as they did the 64-bit port might very well deal with this.

Rob Mack

Hardware (GPU) acceleration that Canopus use doesn't explain everything to me. It would, if I saw Vegas playing back a heavily-loaded timeline with the CPU at 100%, but it doesn't even use 30% - so it's more like a lack of optimization to me... Why would Vegas play clips from the Project Media bin, or from Explorer, with so much ease compared to its playback from timeline - even without any filters?

BTW, in the TBYB Edius 4.6 that I'm playing with now, I can see some DirecDraw in the hadrware settings, as well. And I remember my trials of some earlier Edius versions some 2 years ago: it was even lousier at playback than Vegas! The message "HDD is too slow" kept popping-up on the screen constantly - even though my HDDs were fast enough for any other NLE, Vegas included.

Looks like they have done a good job with Edius in the meantime - it really plays back everything you through at it, and real time, too!

"Hardware (GPU) acceleration that Canopus use doesn't explain everything to me."

OK, a couple of things to clarify.. teh Canopus cards, be they Storms, Raptoes, NX or SP systems, are not GPUs per se. Premiere on teh other hand DOES use your GPU for a similar purpose.
They are in fact HW acceleration boards which include onboard hardware encoders and decoders. The streams are fed through this and the HW does all the playback.
In most cases, such as Matrox and Avid, proprietary codecs must be used to get the most out of these kind of devices.
Most can work with DV and HDV on their own, but they dont perform as optimally.
In any case, one other thing canopus have going for them is theyre extremely efficient Codecs. They predominately use YUV over RGB and their management of this colour space allows it to be alot more efficient on the CPU.

In turn, even without any HW assistance, playback is usually smoother and rendering is aot faster.

HW acceleration is a good thing, however bear in mind that its all raltime and not faster. A good quad core can render 2 to 3 times faster than realtime which pukes on any HW acceleration board.
The only downside is obvious lack of perfromance during playback

" It would, if I saw Vegas playing back a heavily-loaded timeline with the CPU at 100%, but it doesn't even use 30% - so it's more like a lack of optimization to me..."

Agreed. But again, i soudl point out that Edius DOESNT need HW (aside from a decent PC) to give you realtime output from the PC

" Why would Vegas play clips from the Project Media bin, or from Explorer, with so much ease compared to its playback from timeline - even without any filters?"
Maybe becuase when its rpeviewing, its running directdaw, while the timeline is showing VFW... The fact taht teh video overlay is ntoi even runnign through the dispaly card (be it MPG accelerated GFX card through to bog stanard VGA adaper) tels me that somethign is not quite right in Hamlet...

"BTW, in the TBYB Edius 4.6 that I'm playing with now, I can see some DirecDraw in the hadrware settings, as well. And I remember my trials of some earlier Edius versions some 2 years ago: it was even lousier at playback than Vegas! The message "HDD is too slow" kept popping-up on the screen constantly - even though my HDDs were fast enough for any other NLE, Vegas included."

This is the bugger level. To optimise this, use Canopus codecs. You shoud be able to run about 10mins on 2gb ram without skipping a beat

"Looks like they have done a good job with Edius in the meantime - it really plays back everything you through at it, and real time, too!"

Yes and this is what ive been saying all along.. Edius has been like this for a very long time though, and to be honest, Im actually stunned and amazed that vegas isnt even up to this level (in regard to codec management)
Becasue this codec management is really what its al about..

Heres a lil bit of useless info/histroy for you..
Did u know that back in the day, if you had a Canopus card (raptor, storm etc), you could instal a pretty nifty capture tool which allowed you to capture and manage 3 streams fo DV onto the 1 ide drive... all without skipping a beat or dropping frames.. al within the one aplication and all through a variety of inputs, be it camera, deck, analogue etc etc
With teh MPG2 daughterboard you coudl even capture straigth to mpg in ths same way..

Persoanlly i like the idea of Vegas not being tied down to hardware, however I do beleive that a HW assisted codec independant breakout box would do wonders for Vegas.

To be honest, i dont see why it cant be done and its nto as though people would be forced into buying it.

I mean if premiere can tap into your GFX card for MPG2 streaming and certain effect work, i dont see why Vegas shouldnt be able to do the same.

"I seriously doubt that being 64-bit will have any direct relation to guaranteed playback, but the chance to rewrite other parts of Vegas as they did the 64-bit port might very well deal with this."

Just exactly what do you think the 64 bit system is all about? At NAB they demonstrated smooth playback with4 HDV clips on the timeline at the same time with effects.

As Bobby Dylon once wrote... "The time they are a changin' " and it's make or break time for these NLE's. Ulead's MSP has packed it in, Avid Liquid has packed it in. In fact there is quite the shake up going on with Avid from one end to the other. The time now is hdv and if you haven't got it on, or at least ready to go, then it's time to go home. Sony shows no signs of wanting to go home.

FCP and Edius have seen drastic improvement with HDV in the recent past. Speed Edit is another upcomer. i think Sony knows EXACTLY what it needs to do.... and is working on it.

But as it stands now as far as I can see.... Sony is already ahead of the game. You can ALREADY play multiple HDV timelines.... it just bogs down a little and needs a pick-me-up.

One could spend a lot of time discussing the math and logic of decoding HDV, blending a couple of tracks and then outputting to the GPU for display. But lets talk about the future possibilities; XPRI had a lot special hardware to make it fast, but today Sony's PS3 core can beat the frontend of the XPRI box in ecoding..etc.. note the PS3 can not digitized analog(A/D). It would be great if the PS3 could be PCIX into the one's computer, only speed issue would be Disk IO for uncompress files, but HDV, or any high compression format would fly. But I doubt if Sony will shake up the small NLE market and is waiting for a third party to design an PCIX interface for a limited market. But this can be done. ;-)

first of all, it's spelled dylan
second of all, real time preview, including transitions...look ma, no hardware accel needed
thirdly, 64 bit brings with it an overhead penalty that zeroes whatever you gain....zero sum gain over 32 bit
fourth...the Edius interface can be configured to work just like vegas, if you know how
fifth..there's no less than 3 FT support people on the Grass Valley forums..unlike some forums we know that I won't mention, here
6...import in native YUV, edit in YUV, export in YUV...no ugly transformations
7-Edius Broadcast imports EX1 native .mov files without using the Sony Clip Browser. Sony can't even get their own software right.

vegas is passe

message to SCS...adapt or fall behind

My old and ancient MY=HD 120 card plays back 40 meg bitrate M2t without a hitch. That's why I wanted Sony to "option" different playback ports to this card via the external monitor. Sony has to look beyond the borders of the "box".
JJK

In the end of all the things that affect the final outcome of whatever it is we're making in this game the NLE is the least relevant. I really don't understand the obsession with it. Optics have more impact and yes, serious people do argue with great fervour over lenses and how they affect the image. NLEs really don't rate a mention, you can still win an Academy award editing with scissors and sticky tape.

Yes, I too think of late Vegas has lost the plot, so what, I'll survive, I'll still buy the next upgrade and I'll still be making good money using it. I hopefully will be doing other things with other NLEs, I might edit in PPro, composite and grade in AE and mix in Vegas. SCS get the same dollars from me, I still get a good return on the dollars I spent, what to really complain about?

Where's the sense in every vendor trying to do the same thing, differentiation in the marketplace is how you stay in business, not head to head competition.

Bob.

Yeah...

Just to clarify in relation to what DJPadre was sayig: I am not comparing Edius with its hardware cards to Vegas - I am running Edius on the very same hardware as I'm using Vegas on.

So even if Edius IS using some HW acceleration, it is just my regular ATI card GPU.

This is why the difference is even more striking!

64-bit is not going to change this, but I keep thinking that if all SCS does is build a 64-bit port of Vegas then they're wasting their development budget.

So here's how I imagine the process went to get the development budget approved. A product manager or engineering team made the case that:

--Vegas needed to move to new technologies in order to stay up to date with microsoft's media initiatives in Vista.
--Vegas was old enough that it deserved some major engineering work
--It was quite obvious that MS was going to get behind 64-bit Vista in a way they hadn't done for XP
--They could make a strong case that Vegas would need to be able to access more memory (meaning they knew there was already a need) and for that it'd need to be 64-bit
--They knew that prosumer level XDCam was coming along and they needed to prepare for it.
--They saw that they might need to be prepared for cameras like RED.

So, in for a penny, in for a pound. They had several programming initiatives in the pipeline and in the budget, and they had a budget to do something fairly ambitious, 64-bit Vegas being just one part of it (a big assumption on my part, based on nothing.

In the course of this, MS starts missing deadlines on Vista, delaying some of their own media foundation efforts, dropping balls, changing goals, etc, etc. BluRay and HDDVD continue to fight it out. SCS is left with projects that just have to be delayed and in the mean time they release Vegas 7 and 8, both of which seemed to me like they were dribbling out just enough features to make them marketable, but no major needed changes.

So, to me, 64-bit Vegas is more of a bellweather than a end in itself. It shows that they have had longer term projects and goals, and a budget to pursue them. I really hope they have something more to show for their efforts than just a 64-bit port because I think they need Vegas 9 to be the platform that carries Vegas for the next 8 or 10 years.

Rob Mack

As an interesting side note, here is more evidence of the Edius code being much better optimized: I've kept quite a big project opened on my machine since the morning hours, while working all day with some other apllications (the boring office stuff:). Now I just clicked the minimized Edius window - and wow! It just oepned instantly; what's more the timeline started playback at full 25fps without any delay!

Try this with Vegas...

There is a preference in Vegas that tells it to close all media files when it loses focus. This is the default and allows you to fiddle with your media in photoshop or sound forge and then go back to Vegas. It's the default behavior.

You can turn this off and then Vegas will keep all of a project's media locked open. This lets Vegas get going a lot faster after you've let it sit in the background for a while.

Rob Mack

"first of all, it's spelled dylan

Well... firstly... it's spelled ZEROS ;)
Secondly... you mind explaining your "thirdly" point (above)? And further explain that if there is no gain over a 32 bit system then why waste time with it????

The point is that there's a little bit more overhead in a 64-bit system, so there's a tradeoff between having more usable RAM and having longer addresses to address the RAM. So generally you lose a little bit in the area of raw performance but gain by having to use the page file less.

Rob

been drinkin' the funny juice again, blink?

"So generally you lose a little bit in the area of raw performance but gain by having to use the page file less.'

Sorry but that makes no sense. I can do that with a 32 bit vegas right now... in fact I am... I'm running Vista 64, 8 gigs ram with NO page file at all. Vegas works quite well.

I understand the address issue... which is not a large one.

A 64 bit system (when compared to a 32) is a lot like a wider river if you will.... allowing more water to flow (more volume). At NAB they demonstrated 4 clips running at the same time with effects and no bogging down. Now.... if this is not the goal of a 64 bit vegas.... then what is??

"been drinkin' the funny juice again, blink?"

Hey.... you're the one that seems so interested in spelling. Maybe check yourself next time before flagging others :)

The goal is more RAM.

I think I read a comment here just within the last few days saying that what they played at NAB had already been run at least once, meaning Vegas had frames cached in RAM.

Rob

I'd kind of like to see an official comment or link on that (sorry... not calling you a liar)... just a lot of talk out of the side of the mouth on this... and nobody really knows for sure..... just a lot of guessing and deduction. The comment you read was probably just that.

OOPS! sorry... have to edit spelling for Bill Ravens.... seems to be an issue with him.