Poor man’s hd video card – Canon footage?

[John Rofrano]

[Thoreau Bakker] “I’ve heard something about hardware acceleration, then I’ve read Vegas doesn’t support it?”

That’s correct. Don’t waste your money on a video card. Vegas won’t use it. The one you have is fine for Vegas editing.

You didn’t say what version of Vegas you are using. Vegas Pro 10 has added better support for Canon files. If you are not using VP10 you should download the trial and see if it solves your problem.

If you are using VP10, then what you want to do is buy CineForm NeoScene ($99 USD) and convert your Canon footage to the CineForm codec. This will edit smoothly in Vegas.

~jr

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

[Thoreau Bakker]

hey John,

thanks for reply. I see you all over the board, and I can’t tell you how great it is to get rapid (ie. less then 24 / 48 hour) feedback. I’m very greatful!

I’m still confused, and here’s why.

– I’ve read that vegas does support some kind of acceleration for Invidia cards only? (Cuda?)

– I am running Vegas Pro 10, and when I open even a small clip (10 seconds), and press play, there is a good 10 second pause before the video starts playing back. When it plays back, it does so smoothly, but any stop / start creates the same pause

– if my system specs are ok, and then video card has no effect on the playback, then how come some people are able to get decent .mov .264 performance with Vegas 10?

– are you sure my video card is not a problem? (acceleration etc etc etc)

I will buy NeoScene if that’s the only option, but if I could up my video card or tweak something else and get these files to play ball with drag and drop, I’d be really really excited.

– Thoreau

p.s. my file properties are set sub HD.. if I set my project properties at HD 1920 x 1080 / 23.976 frames, the video won’t even play, regardless of the delay

[John Rofrano]

[Thoreau Bakker] “- I’ve read that vegas does support some kind of acceleration for Invidia cards only? (Cuda?)”

Yes, it supports acceleration for rendering only and only in the Sony AVC format (nothing else) and most tests have showed that it is actually slower than a modern CPU. So unless you have a very old CPU, the GPU will not be faster.

[Thoreau Bakker] “- I am running Vegas Pro 10, and when I open even a small clip (10 seconds), and press play, there is a good 10 second pause before the video starts playing back. When it plays back, it does so smoothly, but any stop / start creates the same pause”

Yup. You won’t see this pause if you use CineForm.

[Thoreau Bakker] “- if my system specs are ok, and then video card has no effect on the playback, then how come some people are able to get decent .mov .264 performance with Vegas 10?”

All h.264 MOV files are not created equal. I get very smooth playback from my little Kodak Zi8 files. Some Canon files and other files… not so much.

[Thoreau Bakker] “- are you sure my video card is not a problem? (acceleration etc etc etc)”

Well, it doesn’t have a lot of CUDA cores if that’s what you’re asking. If you were to buy a plug-in like Boris Continuum Complete (BCC7) for Vegas Pro 10, then I’d say get a better graphics card. Minimum would be a GeForce 9800GT or equivalent. But for just Vegas Pro alone, don’t waste your money.

[Thoreau Bakker] “I will buy NeoScene if that’s the only option, but if I could up my video card or tweak something else and get these files to play ball with drag and drop, I’d be really really excited.”

I would be excited too… I just dropped $800 on an NVDIA Quadro 4000, and I get about the same performance as my old $99 GeForce 9800GT! I’m thinking of sending the Quadro back and getting a GTX460 instead. Like I said, I would not go spending a lot of money on a graphics card for Vegas. It would be better spend on a faster CPU with more cores.

~jr

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

[Thoreau Bakker]

Again,

Another quick and thorough response!

I see you are in a similar (although much bigger) boat : )

Thanks for the advice and feedback. It’s very helpfull!

– t

[John Rofrano]

[Thoreau Bakker] “I see you are in a similar (although much bigger) boat : )”

Yea, I haven’t decided if I bought the “Queen Mary” or the “Titanic!” lol…

~jr

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