New PC for HD editing in Vegas

[John Rofrano]

> What is the most affordable PC configuration that will allow me to have real-time quality previews while editing in Vegas pro 8.0c?
> Or do I have to bite the bullet and spend a fortune on a Mac and FCP

Sorry, I don’t follow your logic. Are you saying that if an inexpensive PC can’t edit HD then you need a powerful Mac? Why not a powerful PC?

Chances are that a Mac with FCP is not going to edit the h.264 .mp4’s from your camera because FCP is extremely finicky about what formats it will ingest and it sounds like you have a camera that shoots a non-standard format.

My advice is to get a modern QuadCore PC and Vegas Pro 9.0.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Scott Anderson]

That is the direction in which I am leaning. A friend of mine has built numerous video editing PC’s and he says he can cobble together a PC using the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 3.0GHz LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Processor, 8 gb of ram and a smoking 512mb video card for just over $500 including a 1TB storage hard drive in addition to a 300gb I have.

Do you have a favorite configuration you are happy with, and would you go with a dedicated video card like a Matrox?

The only reason I would consider a Mac is I have worked with the new Imacs and FCP, and while I much prefer Vegas to FCP, their Motion program is a killer app…much more elegant and easier to use than After Effects. Having said that, I’d rather save a couple grand by going PC.

[John Rofrano]

If you have a friend that will build you that QuadCore, it should be all you need to edit AVCHD with Vegas Pro. Vegas does not take advantage of a graphics card although After Effects and other applications will so having a great graphics card is not as important for Vegas. Any fairly new nVidia GeForce card should be fine. My configuration is listed on the PC Equipment page of my web site.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ian Macleod]

Hello John

Fascinated by your input and have followed up on equipment etc at your web site.

Figures for rendering are impressive but, like Scott, I’m struggling with the preview of AVCHD while editing with Sony Vegas (Platinum 9).

I’ve tried my Vegas and m2ts files on a pal’s high-spec quadcore system and still have the same stutters and slow catch-ups in preview mode.

Can you confirm that there’s no such problem previewing on your beautiful system and, if so, suggest whether my problem might be with my version of Vegas, my operation of it or some subtle shortcomings in my pal’s super-cruncher.

TIA

[Scott Anderson]

John….that is great advice and the equipment list is invaluable. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Many thanks!

[John Frey]

You may want to add an internal raid when building up a PC for AVCHD or other MP4 based streams in Vegas. I just finished building my 4th PC workstation using Vegas 8.0c and 8.1 64bit as the primary NLE. You will experience a smoother workflow if you use the raid as a media drive. With Vista 64bit (Windows 7 is just around the corner), and the right components, AVCHD works pretty good. The Vegas Pro 9 release is also only days away, and I believe Sony claims enhanced performance when dealing with AVCHD and other MP4 based streams. The right motherboard will give you built-in hardware raid control over your raid system. My raid systems consist of (2)internal Sata 750 GB drives with 32 MB cache striped (configured) as raid 0. I back up everything to a separate storage drive through a network. Raid 0 is fast but it’s weakness is that if one of the two drives goes bad, you lose all of the data. For more money there are other raid configurations to consider. You can also speed up your system by using the Western Digital VelociRaptor 10,000 rpm drives in the raid as well as your system drive. Also, one of the new SSD (solid State Disks) used as a system drive deliver very quick seek times. Make sure that the specs on your motherboard allow for at least 16GB of fast, dual channel ram – ram is incredibly cheap now. System tests show quite a performance difference when using a true 64 bit system with a minimum of 8 GB of ram using 64bit capable software. All of these things add up to a susbstantial boost in performance. And, you do not need a Mac to gain this level of performance!

John D. Frey
25 Year owner/operator of two California-based production studios.

Digital West Video Productions of San Luis Obispo and Inland Images of Lake Elsinore

[Erik Davis]

John,

You provide your system specs which is a huge help for a lot of people including myself. I haven’t found yet where Sony gives any recommendations the perfect “box” so it is hard to know what to build beyond the “minimum requirements”.

My question for you though is do you plan on building a new box for Vegas9 or will the specs you list on your web page continue to work just fine for you?

Erik

[Carl Battreall]

I just built a new PC for Vegas editing
I7 8 core with ASUS PT6 deluxe motherboard
12 Corsair GB ram
2TB (three different hard drives)
Nvidia GeForce 280 1GB video card
Vista 64bit

Cost me $1,900 to build.

Runs Vegas great, however, some issue still remain when editing AVCHD files, its not the machine, its Vegas. Vegas 9 will have full support of AVCHD files and hopefully the remaining issues will be resolved.

So if you are editing AVCHD files directly, wait and see how 9 performs, you may not need a new computer.

[John Rofrano]

> My question for you though is do you plan on building a new box for Vegas9 or will the specs you list on your web page continue to work just fine for you?

I don’t plan on building a new PC for Vegas Pro 9 and will probably use the configuration I have for quite a while. The problem is that processor speeds have hit a brick wall. The QuadCore I built two years ago is almost as powerful as any QuadCore you can build today. I say “almost” because I’ve read really good things about the i7 CPU’s being quite a bit faster for rendering.

The question you should ask is if I were to build this box today would I use the same parts and the answer would be NO. If I were to build a new QuadCore today I would build an i7 box probably using the i7 920 processor. I just don’t know if moving to one now would give me any significant boost to justify the cost over what I have.

My next build with probably be a dual CPU 8 core PC. I’m just waiting for prices to come down.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ian Macleod]

While taking a little time to think about the various hardware options listed above I’ve invested in a copy of AVCHD Upshift https://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/newblue-and-vasst-improve-avchd-performance-with-avchd-upshift-54780.php and can now happily edit 1920x1080i AVCHD with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 9.0b on a pretty low-spec PC (XP Home, 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, 2GB memory). Rendering times are of course unchanged (so I leave these running overnight) but the main thing is I now have a smooth preview window while editing.