hardware for vegas

[Gary Kleiner]

DeckLink is supported by Vegas for I/O, but this does not serve as hardware acceleration.

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[Joao Carlos schwalbach]

Dear Garry, thanks.

what hardware is available for hardware acceleration for vegas?

or it is just a matter of getting a ultra fast pc with tons of ram?

I am shopping at the moment and need to know what is available.

thanks again

joni

[Gary Kleiner]

Fast PC, yes, but tons of RAM won’t make much difference. A Gig or two will serve.

Gary Kleiner

Learn Vegas and DVD Architect

http://www.VegasTrainingAndTools.com

[Joao Carlos schwalbach]

Dear Garry, thanks for your reply.

I still have a few questions:

1- Is it possible to view the video preview window or external monitor in good or best resolution (with an acceptable
frame rate)both in SD and HD?

2- From what I understand from the posts here is that Vegas does not support any hardware acceleration cards. Is this true?

Many thanks

joni

[Richard Bartlett]

“Realtime capable” and “realtime all of the time” – are attributes of an NLE that are also worth appreciating to a fair depth before you make your choices.

My experience of Vegas with DV and HD is that it can be smooth, it is generally serving for my type of adjustments. However the moment I start chaining FX, resizing and scaling, unless it is DV (so if it is uncompressed D1 4:2:2 AVI, RGB uncompressed AVI, or MJPEG/JPEG2000/wavelet HD) – then at good/best you’ve had it. Frame rates suffer, RAM prerendering starts to enter your workflow. Frankly, I’m impatient and where I’m made to be patient I can find myself making the odd short cut or being lazy. So I adapt my creative ideas around the tools that I can afford. I set my expectations lower than the marketing spiel of the vendor.

Thanks to faster memory and better CPU designs – the bleeding edge of computing makes all of the above more tolerable. However, when comparing editor to editor, do consider that even where there is CPU-offload (GPU, dedicated cards etc) – you almost never see realtime all of the time. (good/best downscaled – fullscale – whatever). Where a system is “always realtime” you have some creative constraints made upon you by that technology. E.g. “just one transitional effect active at one time” , “effect or overlay, not both”, “6 DV tracks or 4 uncompressed tracks on the very latest computers only”, “scaling is coarse and not supersampled”. So you choose what you need.

Vegas scales with a new computer. We may soon see if it also scales with the upgrade to Vista. Only time, or a beta would tell ;). Graphics cards and CPUs do improve at different rates. So I’m actually not that worried if Vegas7 is CPU dependent still. I would hope that it is more efficient, again – time will tell.

Sorry, this is rather a politician’s reply. Hardware for Vegas (such as Decklink) is really about interfacing/enhancement rather than speed. These cards and their Sony/BD drivers are ~unlikely~ to free up the software any more than using VGAoutput on a secondary monitor (or the further compression step to send a render or bitcopy out to DV). YMMV

These days, compared to a lot of the other overheads in running a video centric business – the choice of NLE is far easier to correct than a lot of the other expenditures. Despite that, you can buy Vegas – use or sell it on, or try another. Buy a Mac, try FCP or bootcamp it to run XP and go back to Vegas. The world is your oyster. Do remember about the downsides in the quest to achieve realtime scrub/playback all of the time at max resolution/quality in preview. Vegas used to be one of the best at this on the x86 PC. Perhaps with Vegas7 it will be ahead of all the rest again. Not that I think it is a slouch for the primary/popular prosumer formats….

[Joao Carlos schwalbach]

Dear Richard,

Thank you very much for your reply.
You answered my questions.

Can