Sony Vegas on a Mac

[John Frey]

The prices for high-end components for a state-of-the-art PC are very reasonable right now. You can build or have built an iCore processed powerhouse for much less than a Mac. The key for smooth HD production is the addition of a Raid formatted media drive. Adding an internal raid in Vista 64 or the upcoming Windows 7 is cheap and simple. I just added a 2 Terrabyte raid to two of my workstations over the weekend for $185.00 each. With the imminent release of Vegas Pro 9a update, efficient HD production in the Sony Suite is a no-brainer!

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

[Mary Waitrovich]

I’ve been using Vegas 9 and DVDA 5 on a new mac pro via boot camp for over 6 months now, and it does work, but it’s been one headache after another and I wouldn’t do it again if I had the choice. Also, I am not working with blu-ray. There are driver issues and I’ve had terrible hard drive issues. I’m now planning to do basically what John suggests above sometime in the fall when Windows 7 is released.

Mary Waitrovich
UW-Madison

[Sam Rosenthal]

We have similar thoughts. I got Vegas 9.0, then realized my PC isn’t up to snuff on processor speed. Rather than buying a new PC, I have been thinking of buying a new Mac and running Vegas via Bootcamp. I would love to hear a response from anyone running Vegas on a Mac. Does it work well? Problems? Advice. Thanks! Sam

[Sam Rosenthal]

Just to follow-up on this. I got the new top-end iMac, installed Boot Camp and Windows and Vegas 9.0, and it is all working. I am having some rendering issues (aren’t we all) that I don’t think are related to it being on a Mac, but related to me still learning what format to render to. Really just wanted to report that Vegas in Boot Camp on the Mac was much LESS of a nitemare than I imagined it would be.

Sam

[Andy Moody]

Sam,

Glad your experience has been good. Would you mind telling me what version of Windows you installed? I’m looking at the same thing and would rather follow your lead if it’s working ok.

Thanks!

[Sam Rosenthal]

Hi Andy — sure, here’s the info. I got Windows XP Home edition.
The Mac is a 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB memory. Running OS 10.5.8.

I resolved the rendering problems.

You see, I was shooting in Normal Def, but I planned to bump it up to “widescreen” to look High Def on Youtube (IE: I shot in 640×480, but wanted to upload as 1280×720). When shooting, I taped off the monitor covering the top and bottom of the frame, and concentrated on a Wide-screen aspect-ratioed band in the middle….

1) I set up the session to match my camera format (Canon 5d Mark 2)
Template Custom (640×480, 29.970 fps)
Width: 640 Field Order: None (Progressive Scan)
Height: 480 Pixel Aspect: 1.000000 (Square)
Frame Rate: 30.00000
Pixel Format: 8-bit
Composite
Full-res quality: good
Motion blur: Gausian
Deinterlace: None

2) I outputted the session above in normal aspect ratio. Then I brought that rendered file back into Vegas . . . created a session at 1280×720 . . . and zoomed in so the part I had taped off previously was out of the frame.

I rendered it a second time as a 1280×720 .wmv file. I found that using the 4.8 Mbps HD format worked fine. If you lose lower Mbps formats, it kicks it down to 640×480 (for some reason)……

The resulting file looks REALLY good, you cannot tell I zoomed in.
You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ijM94H340
(though not necessarily totally “work safe.”)
: )

S

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[Cathal Hegarty]

Hi Sam,

have you tested Vegas fully on the Mac? is there anything I should be aware of..? I need to know as i’m about to decide now on a PC or Mac based system.

Thanks

[Sam Rosenthal]

Cathal — No. I cannot say that I “tested it fully.” I created my video, and used the bits of Vegas I need to make the video (see link above).

I would suspect that using Vegas on a PC (vs. a MAC) means less possibilities for difficulties getting it set up and running. However, I would add that I had no problems getting it to run on my Mac. It was all quite easy.

I use Vegas for Audio on a PC and Vegas for Video on a Mac.
They both work. All my best,

Sam