-
A review of the Vasst GearShift plugin for Vegas
Disclaimer – this is a completely independent review and not any kind of advertisement.
I would like to wholeheartedly recommend the Vasst GearShift plugin for Vegas, having used it for about a week now. I write this because the theme of frustrated users with underpowered systems is common, and this plug-in is a practical answer that can really help a lot of Vegas users.
I’m using it in its most basic way, to utilize proxies for editing Canon 5d2 footage in Vegas Pro 10. I have a fairly robust i7 desktop (2600 Sandy Bridge w/16gb) that can handle the 5d2 clips fine, but there’s still some lack of fluidity when scrubbing and during transitions, and I get a fair number of crashes if I get too far ahead of the software and don’t let one thing finish before I start the next, which I have a tendency of doing. My i5 laptop can barely deal with the 5d2 material and editing is laborious.
Enter GearShift, which is brilliantly simple and extremely effective. Simply have it render out proxies (in Avi format) to the same directories as the source material (automatic), and then you can switch between full-res originals and the proxies at any moment, with one click. It works exactly as you would hope and want it to, and it works flawlessly as far as I can tell. It’s very well designed in the details, like being able to cue a huge number of full-res files for proxy rendering, all from different directories, and then let it run and the output will all go to the right place. Awesome. You can also use it with projects you’ve already started. Just render the proxies and you’re good to go, ready to swap them in and out whenever you want. Frankly it’s genius.
On my laptop the difference was profound. I went from very sketchy playback and scrubbing, and a fair number of crashes, to being able to edit completely in real time (as in no lag or FPS reduction). Stunning difference. Even on the desktop the difference is quite noticeable.
The default format that I use creates 720×480 avi proxies from the 1920×1080 originals, and the file size is about 40% smaller. I chose to just go ahead and create proxies for all HD video on my system, about 2,500 clips, which the i7 did in less than 8 hours while I slept. Disk cost was a bit steep, and after playing around with the ability to render the proxies to user defined render settings (still has to be avi), I chose instead to just use a third party program (the fantastic Movavi converter, blazing fast on quad-core machines) to re-render the proxies all to mpeg2, and then I just changed the suffix to avi with a batch renamer. The resulting files work perfectly in both Vegas and with GearShift, and I realized a 95% reduction in file size over the original avi proxy files, with no real meaningful difference in quality.
Although the notion of rendering proxies and dealing with two sets of files seems like it might be confusing or a burden, it’s not. It’s fast and easy with GearShift and the payoff is huge. For me it has made editing completely real-time and stutter-free on both machines, reduced crashes dramatically (how much is that worth?!), and really allowed me to relax and focus on being creative. It takes the already brilliant UI of Vegas and makes working with your HD material painless. Highly recommended, even for users with fast systems.
-
6 Replies
-
I agree with you completely, I’ve used this for quite a while now and it makes the job a lot easier. Of course you have to render all the files to a smaller size but that seems like a small price to pay for editing without a hitch. John Rofrano is the one to thanks for this and the people at Vasst.
Joe -
[Brett Cole] “The default format that I use creates 720×480 avi proxies from the 1920×1080 originals, and the file size is about 40% smaller. I chose to just go ahead and create proxies for all HD video on my system, about 2,500 clips, which the i7 did in less than 8 hours while I slept. Disk cost was a bit steep, and after playing around with the ability to render the proxies to user defined render settings (still has to be avi), I chose instead to just use a third party program (the fantastic Movavi converter, blazing fast on quad-core machines) to re-render the proxies all to mpeg2, and then I just changed the suffix to avi with a batch renamer. The resulting files work perfectly in both Vegas and with GearShift, and I realized a 95% reduction in file size over the original avi proxy files, with no real meaningful difference in quality.”
So gearshift rendered proxies then new proxies were made from those.Can’t you just create your own proxy template in gearshift and avoid the middle man? Btw, I agree with the awesomeness of gearshift. I’ve been trying it out and I’m very impressed how easy and smooth it runs.
-
I experimented quite a bit and was never able to get the same quality/file size relationship using Vegas as I was doing a secondary conversion with Movavi. I might have been able to eventually, but I already had all the proxies done and sitting there (I just hadn’t expected they would be as large as they were). The second conversion as it were was so easy (one-click and six hours for 2,500 files) and the file size reduction so valuable (95% reduction) that I just went with it. The generational loss is no big deal since they’re proxies, and the time and effort investment was negligible.
-
John, can gearshift be used in combination with vasst ultimate s? As I frequently edit multicam hdv, once enabled, my preview cannot be set higher than preview, even on an i7 970 cpu. Would I have to render out proxies for each track?
-
Does Gearshift work with Vegas Pro 10? It is not listed on the VAAST website, just through version 9. Also, if one uses proxies and then uses a stabilization program such as Mercalli 2 or NewblueFX, will the end result be good when using the original files to render?
Thanks
Scott Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions -
Does Gearshift work with Vegas Pro 10? Yes
Can’t help with the stabilization question
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up