Best Computer for Sony Vegas 11

[Mark Barton]

I built a system based on a lot of recommendations from the Video Guys. I spent twice your budget a year ago and am happy with the results, but I could have spent much more getting better drives and another monitor. Anyway, check out what they have to say to see what type of hardware you need to meet the type of editing needs you desire. bootcamp means you are running Windows on actual hardware as opposed to a virtual machine, so unless you are getting better hardware than your current Mac, I would not expect the crashes to go away.

https://www.videoguys.com/Guide/C/DIY+Systems/Videoguys+DIY8+Hex+Core/0x094b1737e0a06c495e5178a167fbdbd7.aspx

[Matt Whittemore]

” bootcamp means you are running Windows on actual hardware as opposed to a virtual machine, so unless you are getting better hardware than your current Mac, I would not expect the crashes to go away.”

I was afraid you’d say that. It seemed like a gamble to spend money then find out its not because of bootcamp.

[Mark Barton]

Maybe you could post the specs of the system and what you are trying to do with SVP 11 when the crashes occur. What build of SVP 11 are you running 594 (32bit) or 595 (64bit). I found a lot of my crashes went away with each new build of the NVidia drivers I install.

[Matt Whittemore]

It’s a 2010 iMac:

Processor Name: Intel Core i3
Processor Speed: 3.06 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Chipset Model: ATI Radeon HD 4670
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB

I’m running Windows 7 (64bit) and Vegas 11 (64bit). I also have a Mac formatted Raid that I use on Windows using MacDrive. I don’t think it’s Vegas specifically that crashes it. I seem to remember it crashing while Vegas was unopened. There doesn’t seem to be any one action that crashes it. Basically it makes a horrible noise then I get a black screen with a blue square that has info in it, but doesn’t stay up long enough to see what it says.

[Mark Barton]

[Matt Whittemore] ” I also have a Mac formatted Raid that I use on Windows using MacDrive”

Is this for data only or for the OS system drive? I don’t have a Mac to test with, but you might want to try a fresh Windows 7 install on an NTFS volume and use the raid for data only (maybe drive D). What type for Video editing are you doing? Trying to do AVCHD on a dual core processor is not going to work well if you are editing those file natively. How does it work with less compressed SD types of video?

Mark

[Matt Whittemore]

It’s just for data (.m2ts and .m2t files). The bootcamp partition is formatted NTFS on the internal drive.

[Mark Barton]

I did a quick search for the “black screen and a blue square” and came across this: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie8-windows_other/my-computor-has-been-shutting-dwn-unexspectedly/a7b5adbc-949a-4289-9de4-b8f5fc427c6e

These types of errors are usually with the hardware RAM or disk to cause the OS kernel to crash. Most of the crashes I had experienced with the older NVidia drivers and older SVP 11 builds were only impacting SVP. Meaning I could relaunch SVP 11 and get back to work again. So I guess you were on the right track with looking at replacing the hardware. If you are going to be editing m2ts files, you may want to upgrade the processor to at least a core i5 or i7 if budget allows. Have you had any crashes while running Mac OS? Have you tried rendering with the Mac OS to stress the components or run a memory test? If it runs fine with the Mac OS, it might be related to the firmware of the adapters and the Windows drivers. I had a dual boot system with Linux and Windows and the Cisco wireless card firmware would update under Windows to the point that the Linux drivers would no longer recognize the card. If that is the case, then dual booting will not work for you and a second PC will work better, especially if you network them to share files and then could use the best apps from each system.

Good luck,

Mark

[Matt Whittemore]

Thanks for the link, I’ll give it a read tonight. I’ve run memory tests in OSX and it comes out fine. OSX has never crashed and works flawlessly except when running FCPX. I don’t know if thats just because FCPX was buggy until 10.0.3. In fact now that I think about it FCPX started to run better when 10.0.3 came out, then again started to run poorly (freezing, not responding) around the time I installed Bootcamp/Windows, but never crashed the OS. Vegas runs ok but the OS crashes all the time. I guess dual booting isn’t in the cards right now.

Thanks for your help Mark. Other than an i7 core, any other advice on a Vegas setup for $1200?

[Mark Barton]

Here is an i7 for $1049 @ Newegg, so the i7 is within your budget.

Acer Predator AG3610-UR10P (PT.SHBP2.002) Desktop PC Intel Core i7 2600(3.40GHz) 8GB DDR3 2TB HDD Capacity NVIDIA GeForce GT 530 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883103417

I spent a few days on their site picking the components for my system based on the Video Guys DIY recommendations of what works. The i7 in this system is a quad core with hyperthreading, so it will look like 8 CPUs, four times what you have today.

[Dave Haynie]

[Matt Whittemore] “I’ve run memory tests in OSX and it comes out fine.”

Most memory tests are not written well enough to isolate anything but a gross failure in a memory device. I was designing memory systems for the better part of 11 years at Commodore, and the memory test we put together in the lab (unfortunately lost) did things I’ve not seen in other tests. Like emulating the behavior of code, for example.

[Matt Whittemore] “OSX has never crashed and works flawlessly except when running FCPX”

If you’re stressing the system under OSX in other ways (eg, not just with FCPX), that’s the best sign that it’s not your hardware. FCPX is new enough to certainly be suspect.

The primary software issue that’ll see a modern OS crashing regular are bad drivers. You definitely want to ensure you have the latest… and don’t count on Windows Update to find them. It’s certainly going to update the Microsoft written components, but Microsoft’s policies and history has pretty much worked against their being supplied with recent drivers. Now, of course, if you have Mac-exclusive hardware of any kind, you may be SOL trying to find recent drivers. Particularly if it’s up to Apple to provide them for Windows; in the Windows ecosystem, system OEMs like Apple are usually responsible for providing the drivers, and it wouldn’t exactly be against Apple’s interest to keep alive the meme that Windows is crashy (it has been at various times, but Windows 7 is quite stable these days… the PC I’m typing this on, my main machine, seems to have been up for 18 days, 6 hours, 13 minutes, and 54 seconds as I write this). Not to suggest a conspiracy or anything.

But I would expect most Macs to be pretty bog standard Intel-based PCs these days. Intel’s actually been pretty good about driver updates, and you can go to Intel.com and get a scanning program that’ll find the drivers they recommend as updates. Graphics drivers are often buggy in weird ways; I’m running recent ATi drivers myself, and the system is quite stable.

If you do get a BSOD, try to write down some of the on-screen info, then do a search on it — you may be seeing a well-known error.

-Dave