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Optimizing PC for Vegas 8 Pro
We’ve just recently started using Vegas 8 Pro on an HP xw6200 quad-core computer with 4GB RAM, huge SATA system drive using shared video storage on an Apace vStor via gigabit ethernet. The computer has a Blackmagic Decklink HD extreme card which gives us excellent preview to an NTSC monitor, and even plays back uncompressed blackmagic codec based .avi files pretty well in real-time.
Vegas is WAAAY better than Premiere CS3 in all of our editors opinions. We also have 3 VelocityQ editing suites that we do the bulk of our work in since 90% of projects are standard def and VelocityQ flies with that.
What we’re looking to do is optimize the HP computer to get the best peformance and unlike Premiere I’m finding sparse info about optimizing your PC to get the best playback/quality performance. I found this very good site from an extremely knowledgeable editor:
https://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2008/12/19/sony-vegas-hints-and-tips/
But I’ve found no others. The thing that confuses all our editors is the display drop down box with it’s 4 separate choices for playback. The manual does a crappy job of explaining what each does (and why there are 4 choices). Can anyone else shed some light on the optimum settings for this to get the best trade-off between playback speed and quality out of the Decklink card to our monitor?
Most stuff we edit on Vegas is SD as well, but we occasionally do some HD stuff. I know working in intermediate codecs helps in HD, but we get pauses and stutters doing simple transitions working in SD, even when using relatively small .avi files (DV, DVCPro50, MainConcept, Blackmagic MJPG and other codecs).
Thanks in advance.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
3 Replies
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they are varying levels of preview, if you are having a hard time with stutters, drop the level down and see if it helps, but be warned, it will show at a degraded quality, so what you see is what you get does not apply. be sure to make sure that the program affinity for vegas is set to utilize all cores available, that will help in rendering times.
John Gordon
johngordon@cox.net -
Yes..we realize all that…my question was, why the 4 different options on the preview dropdown? It’s very confusing and the manual doesn’t clearly explain them or explain what the optimal settings should be.
We get real-time playback using the “good” setting with multiple channels of SD video (DVCPro50 equivalent resolution) sent out to an NTSC monitor using the Blackmagic Decklink, so quality isn’t a huge issue. In fact, it looks fabulous when played back that way without any rendering, RAM preview or pre-rendering.
It just seems that the computer we’re using should be able to do simple 10-15 frame dissolves between video considering it can handle layering 2 and sometimes 3 channels of video with transparency and pan/crop events on them. I just don’t understand why a simple dissolve seems to tax playback and stacking two clips with transparency and pan/crop doesn’t. It’s not a huge issue and it doesn’t slow us down that much, just an annoying one that really doesn’t make technical sense.
We’ve checked all the typical things like affinity and tweaks per the link I put on the original post, and it only slightly helped.
I just figured there’d be someone using a similar system that perhaps has some insight on the magic settings for the preview and it’s 4 confusing options, along with some PC tweaks.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Preview is rendered quality. The more filters you use, the more pc power will you need.
You may allowe for more RAM to be used for preview.
You do have several options, chose the one your system can operate smooth.
Project property “Match input” will speed up preview, but may give black bars.
Chance to “match output” before rendering.odd magne nilsen
newbie
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