A perfect Vegas system

GlennChan wrote on 11/14/2008, 12:11 AM

I think you have to look at your budget and what your needs are.
1- If you had loads of money, you might consider a big iron system instead. For certain applications, there are six figure systems which have their place in the broadcast landscape.
2- You might need to be more specific as to what your needs are... what formats you need to work with, monitoring, etc.
Or some people might prefer a laptop, while for other people the ""perfect"" system is a powerful desktop.

Some stuff to think about. IMO, trying to get the "perfect" system is not looking at the problem the wrong way / may not solve your needs.

Patryk Rebisz wrote on 11/14/2008, 12:57 AM

is anyone actually getting full frame rate from HD? If so what system are you on?

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 11/14/2008, 2:20 AM

Hey Patryk,

I get full frame rate playback on my laptop and my desktop of HD MPEG2 Files before I put FX to them.

Laptop = Core 2 duo 1.83 ghz, 2GB Ram, with dual 100GB 7200 RPM drives not in a raid

Desktop = Core 2 Quad 2.4 ghz (OC'd sometimes to 2.8), 6GB Ram, Raptor 10K OS Drive and SATA 500GB media drive, and then a plethora of USB drives to jump back and forth between laptop and desktop as needed.

Dave

xstr8guy@sbcglobal.net wrote on 11/14/2008, 6:05 AM

I have a custom workstation from Polywell that is complete overkill...

- VIsta 64bit
- 8 cores of 3.0ghz Xeon (2-4 core processors)
- 16gigs of RAM
- 6 SAS 15,000 RPM drives (3 RAID stripes, one stripe for OS and Vegas 8.1, one strip for captured video, and one stripe for rendering)
- 2 SATA drives (RAID Stripe for storage)
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 1700

And I still can't get get full framerates when I preview HD in full resolution. I preview my projects with setting at "Preview(Half)" to get the best framerate. And if my system can't do it, it's not possible. Although framerates are much better with Vegas 8.1. I just wish it wasn't so buggy and the 32bit plugins were compatible.

tcbetka wrote on 11/14/2008, 6:06 AM

I am getting full framerate playback with HDV from my FX1, in both version 8c in XP (with 3.25GB RAM), and on Vista 64 with versions 8c and 8.1 both. I have 8GB RAM on the 64-bit side.

My system specs:

Intel Q9450 quad core, 2.66GHz overclocked to 3.2GHz
Abit IP35 Pro XE motherboard
8 GB DDR2 800MHz RAM

I cannot get full framerate with AVCHD files on the XP side, nor can I get it with version 8c in Vista 64. However I nearly do in version 8.1 on Vista 64; my frame rates stay about 28fps about 99% of the time. Once I saw the rate down to 27 frames per second for a split-second, but the majority of the time it stays on 29.97 and just flickers between 28.xx and 29+fps. You can't really even see any change in the video preview window. Of course if I use UpShift to convert my AVCHD files to HDV, I get full frame rate in version 8c.

So if you want to play both HDV and AVCHD you can either use a 64-bit OS, or use UpShift with version 8c. But I would go with an Intel Q9650 or similar, or the AMD equivalent, and at least 4GB of RAM. You won't get to use anywhere near that in a 32-bit OS, but you will if you go with a 64-bit OS.

TB

xstr8guy@sbcglobal.net wrote on 11/14/2008, 6:53 AM

You're getting full framerate on Best (Full) with 4 cores? I get like 6fps with 8 core and 16 gigs. I have to go to Perview(Half) to get 25fps PAL. Even with Preview(Full) I only get around 12fps.

Btw, I'm editing HDV 50i PAL.

musicvid10 wrote on 11/14/2008, 7:59 AM

xstr8guy,
You might try playing back HD from a non-RAID drive on your system.
No experience here with all that high-powered stuff you have, but there is plenty of anecdotal suggestion on the forums that playback (and NLE in general) is better without RAID.

johnmeyer wrote on 11/14/2008, 8:47 AM

I get full HDV frame rate on a computer that just turned six years old. Of course that is using Preview quality and is without any fX. But I can get a full 29.97 fps on a singl-core, single thread (yes, I don't even have a multi-threaded system) system.

The key is to eliminate all those useless background utilities, and also to make sure your disk drives are set up correctly. Those are the two killers. Get rid of your anti-virus software. Turn off indexing. Eliminate ALL background processes, like the stupid automatic updates. DON'T update your computer unless it has a problem (I haven't updated this computer since 2003).

These computers are mind-numbingly fast, but then the stupid software vendors take it all away by doing useless and pointless things behind your back.

As for the perfect system, get as many processors and cores as you can. Do a dual boot, with XP64 or (heaven help me) Vista as a backup boot, with Win XP Pro as the main boot. Put 8.1 and 8.0d on each of these partitions. Partition each boot drive with just enough space to hold just the O/S and the apps. Partition the rest to another drive letter. Use standard, off-the-shelf drives, with nothing fancy (no RAID and no exotic, high price drives). Try to get a graphic card that has a GPU supported by most apps. Vegas doesn't use it, but many other video apps do. Go over to the Adobe and Avid sites and see what they use, and then take that as your guide.

Build the computer yourself, or if that isn't something you want to do, then buy it from a slightly off-brand company, like Polywell (my favorite) or Boxx, who can build the system with components which work together, but then won't throw 1,000 useless software programs on the hard drive the way Dell and HP do.

GlennChan wrote on 11/14/2008, 9:28 AM

Partition each boot drive with just enough space to hold just the O/S and the apps.
Unfortunately some software vendors don't care about bloat (or intentionally bloat their software to reduce piracy??), it may take 20-30GB to hold all your apps.
Adobe's stuff for example can take up several GB of space.

Windows will also use up a bunch of space for installers, system restore, windows updates, etc. etc. All this stuff grows and grows.

tcbetka wrote on 11/14/2008, 10:03 AM

Do everything John Meyer says...I can't say it any better than he just did.

(JM for President!)

EDIT: Sheesh, I got all excited after reading John's post and forgot to comment on what Glenn said! His suggestions are very good as well. I use a different disk for each OS though--but I like the partition idea.

Make sure that you change the default locations for the Vegas Pre-renders and Temporary Files; and also DVD Architect's default locations. These apps will default these folders to the same drive that the application is installed on, which will create problems for you...especially if you don't defragment your disks regularly.

TB

Coursedesign wrote on 11/14/2008, 10:14 AM

You might try playing back HD from a non-RAID drive on your system. [...] ...there is plenty of anecdotal suggestion on the forums that playback (and NLE in general) is better without RAID.

That would be "better without software RAID," which uses the main CPU to do its heavy shuffling, leaving less power for the NLE.

Hardware RAID cards have their own CPU, so they don't have this problem.

johnmeyer wrote on 11/14/2008, 10:16 AM

JM for President!Thank you very much! You really made my day. Around here, I couldn't even get nominated for dog catcher, much less win.

msrpro2 wrote on 11/14/2008, 10:18 AM

Check this out.

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644577897

Coursedesign wrote on 11/14/2008, 11:31 AM

A real beauty for only four grand...

xstr8guy@sbcglobal.net wrote on 11/14/2008, 12:02 PM

Well, I don't have any non-RAID drives on this system. As I mentioned above, I have 6 SAS (15,000RPM) drives in 3 RAID 0 Arrays plus 2 RAID 0 SATA drives. SAS drives require a hardware controller card... so no software RAID for those drives.

I have disabled indexing and have no unnecessary apps installed on my workstation. I do use it for image and html editing but that's about it. I do have antivirus software installed because I need to check my work online and read great forums like this one. ;)

I'm just amazed that I don't get better preview framerates than 6 year old single core computers. Rendering is crazy-fast though.

tcbetka wrote on 11/14/2008, 12:28 PM

Well, if you set your preview window to Preview (Auto) and let Vegas choose your view size, you'll get the best frame rate possible. I don't see any reason not to use it--I can't see much of a difference in preview detail when I select Best > Full, but my frame rates go down to 14-15fps in version 8c on XP Pro 32-bit. But if I leave it set to Best > Auto, I get 29.97fps...although the rate flickers and I can see it decrease to around 29.6fps at times. There's no discernible effect on the actual quality of the playback view though.

I can try version 8.1 later tonight--I'll have some time to reboot into Vista 64-bit and give it a try. But I suspect things will be better in version 8.1, given the extra RAM available in the 64-bit OS.

TB

johnmeyer wrote on 11/14/2008, 12:55 PM

Another thing: what are you using to capture your HDV? While in theory, capturing is just copying the bits from the tape, that actually isn't exactly what happens. If you use HDV Split to capture, Vegas will often use the MUCH slower MainConcept codec instead of its own codec when decoding for playback on the timeline. The difference in performance is HUGE.

Read my old post:

HDV playback speed

I think V8 is supposed to handle HDV captured with other applications, but it may still revert to this older codec. This is a VERY important thing to check.

xstr8guy@sbcglobal.net wrote on 11/14/2008, 2:28 PM

I'm reading your old post now. The Plugin Format is "Sony M2TS"

I'm not actually capturing the video myself. My business partner in the UK captures it from his Sony HVR-Z1's and sends M2T files to me in the US on portable hard drives. I believe he is capturing the video with Vegas... not sure which version.

xstr8guy@sbcglobal.net wrote on 11/14/2008, 2:32 PM

I preview on a second monitor so I can't set Preview (Auto) as the Preview sizes itself to the preview window on the primary monitor... which I usually have minimized so I can view more of my timeline on the primary monitor.

Why doesn't this forum have a "quote" system? I'm replying to specific comments but the forum gives no hint of that. :(

Jonathan Neal wrote on 11/14/2008, 3:03 PM

xstr8guy wrote:
"Why doesn't this forum have a "quote" system? I'm replying to specific comments but the forum gives no hint of that. :("
Oh, but there will be, soon.

xstr8guy@sbcglobal.net wrote on 11/14/2008, 3:33 PM

Now how did you do that? Lol

Coursedesign wrote on 11/14/2008, 5:23 PM

Now how did you do that?

I just italicize the text I copy for a quote: an "i" within "[" and "]" square brackets before the text, and "/i" within square brackets after.