The Ultimate Vegas Editing machine

[Angelo Mike]

That’s a lot of videos.

Just a few guidelines-
Get DDR3 RAM, a motherboard with USB 3.0 ports, at least a quad core CPU (get one as fast as you can afford, because that really affects editing and rendering speed the most), a fast nvidia graphics card, and at least 2 GB of RAM for every core of your CPU. So if you have a quad core CPU, then at least 8 GB of RAM. Make sure the case and motherboard have multiple USB 3.0 slots.

Also, get a PC case and motherboard with an external eSata port. Then you can buy an external enclosure for a hard drive to edit on that’s much faster than USB, though you can get an external enclosure with USB 3.0 as well (I use an external drive on an eSata port and USB 3.0, one to store my files and projects, and one to back them all up. BACK EVERYTHING UP. And do not turn off the external enclosure with the eSata cable, EVER, while the computer is on. I ended up having two hard drives crashing needlessly this way.)

http://www.scenethroughglass.com

[Nigel O’neill]

And do not turn off the external enclosure with the eSata cable, EVER, while the computer is on. I ended up having two hard drives crashing needlessly this way.

I have been using eSATA with SATA drives and powering off and on whilst the computer is on for several years now without incident. If you use a separate SATA controller such as a Promise controller in your system (other than the one on the motherboard), most of the time Windows lets you ‘Safely remove hardware and eject media’ just like a USB drive.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Dave Lozinski]

In addition to ANgelo’s response:

1) Get an SSD for the OS and programs
2) get 1 hard drive dedicated to reading the source video files
3) get 2 hard drives in a RAID 0 configuration for rendering the videos to.

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https://www.davelozinski.com
https://www.davelozinski.com/DemoReel/
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[Nigel O’neill]

And in response to David’s response, if you are paranoid (like me), get two (2) drive for your source files (which includes your project files) and mirror them (RAID 1)

RAID 0 for your output is fine because you can always recreate from source. Note: RAID 0 is also known as striping, in which a single volume of data spans two physical drives, therefore 2 500GB drives striped give you 1TB of capacity. However, lose 1 drive, and you lose everything.

RAID 1 (mirroring) maintains a copy, so therefore 2 500GB drives give you only 500GB of capacity. Lose 1 and you still have a copy.

Alternatively you could RAID 5 and use 3 drives + 1 hot spare, but you effectively have the capacity of 2 drives as 1/3 is lost to maintaining parity.

And if you really want to do your head in, and are super concerned about maintaining uptime, you can implement RAID 10 which is a.k.a a ‘stripe of mirrors’, using 4 drives + 1 hot spare.

Whatever you end up doing, you will need a motherboard that supports your multiple drive connectors, has enough power headers and has a power supply capable of supporting your system.

If you plan on getting a u-beaut video card, I would budget for at least 750W or even consider 850W. Make sure you choose a quality brand from Antec or Thermaltake

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[Chris Pope]

Thanks for all the advice everyone!
Does anyone have any ideas about setting up a render farm over a network with Vegas Pro 10? Is it possible? Is it necessary?

Will the external RAID drives (SATA or otherwise) help speed up my render time at all? Keep in mind I’ll probably be dropping clips for my next video onto the timeline as my last project is still rendering…

cheers!

https://www.triaxproductions.com

[David Shirey]

This may not be conventional but here’s what I might consider if you’re working on multiple projects simultaneously. Just have a bunch of different internal drives. Have the SSD for the OS and programs, then since these are all 7 minute projects and you’re not going to keep raw footage around (although do you backup the 720p final renders in case clients lose their copies in the future? Use external for that,) just get a couple more SSD’s. SSD’s are getting cheaper by the month so if you don’t need large ones you can spend the money on the really fast ones. You could have 4 total, one for the OS, one for project 1, project 2, then one for a project to render to while you load/work on the other. Maybe I’m just SSD-happy but if you have such a specific workflow and never have to worry about getting bogged down in 3 hour projects, I’d make a really purpose-built machine. And if there are 4 editors crammed in close proximity you might appreciate not having all the heat that 20-some traditional hard drives raided together would generate.

Most motherboards today should have USB 3.0 ports but I wouldn’t worry about it much. You don’t want to be editing off that anyway and if you’re giving the mp4’s to clients on flash drives they won’t be usb 3.0 so that won’t help with the transfer time. If they’re give-away flash drives you’re probably not blowing cash getting usb drives with the fastest usb 2.0 transfer rates anyway, right?

One thing that you probably already know but is worth mentioning, is if you’re looking to increase render time and your output is 720p, make sure you’re shooting in 720p. I don’t know if you’re using GoPro’s or whatever and you’re probably shooting at 60p so that you can have great slow motion, but there’s really no benefit to shoot at 1080p if everything will be 720p when it’s delivered.

Skydive videos sure are fun to capture and watch, but it’s a shame you’ve got to crank so many out so quickly, kind of sucks the fun out of editing. Do they make you use Lenny Kravitz’ Fly Away on every video? 😛

[David Shirey]

As a quick follow-up, traditional hard drive prices are still pretty jacked up right now because of all the flooding in Thailand last year which really hurt production, so definitely investigate the cost of traditional hard drives vs. ssd. You can even RAID SSD’s together if you want some serious speed, but at that point your bottleneck may still be the processor rendering, not your read/write speeds. Another thing worth noting is that Vegas is going to use EITHER your CPU or GPU to render those videos, so there probably isn’t much advantage in buying really fast ones of each. You’d have to check some benchmarks but if I was you, I’d go a little cheaper on the CPU, and buy more expensive GPU’s. That way in a few years it’ll be super easy to just buy 4 new video cards since you probably won’t need whole new pc’s if you’re still using the same recording equipment and editing software.

Also your original post said Vegas Pro 10. Consider 11, that way it can utilize the fast GPU for the preview window. Overall I’d say figure out what you want then buy/build one of them. If it works and you don’t have any major issues, get 3 more.

[Chris Pope]

Thanks for your response David;
Yes it is a shame about there being so many videos to edit, but that’s why I need better machines, to give the editors more time to have fun with them!
And FYI, The Lenny Kravitz song is not allowed in my edit room, nor is Tom Petty’s “freefallin'” or anything from “Top Gun,” Or Van Halen’s “jump” or that “Live like you were dying” country song…too painful to hear for a 9000th time! 😉

https://www.triaxproductions.com

[Nigel O’neill]

Vegas 9 used to support network rendering, but that disappeared in V10. So, since Vegas 8, we have lost native Cineform support (version 9) and network rendering (version 10). Usually products are meant to get more feature rich, not lose them :-). In Version 11 we got GPU rendering but are constantly advised to disable it to get a speedy render. What the?

I disagree with spending more dosh on a GPU as it tends to have limited benefit as code has to specifically address it. Games are a prime example, and Vegas 11 specifically benefits if you edit in AVCHD only. For example, I have a high-end Nvidia GPU and a high-end i7 CPU, but as I edit in in HDV, MXF and AVCHD mixed on the timeline for multicam shoots, I get zero benefit from Vegas’ GPU acceleration during previews or rendering.

Possibly because I also use Vasst Ultimate S (for my multi-cam work) which is not optimised for GPU’s, I do not get reap the benefit of the GPU accelerated code.

I went from an i7 920 to an i7 970 CPU and I am now able to edit (most of the time) in ‘preview’ where previously I was stuck in ‘draft’. The i7 970 is no slouch in the performance stakes, but it does struggle.

To achieve nirvana I think I have to use Gearshift when ingesting my media or edit everything in AVCHD, which means completely refreshing all my camera gear. Not a cheap or practical proposition.

One thing I did have in an older system was Western Digital Caviar drives that spun at 10,000 RPM in a RAID 1 and RAID 0 configuration. That did seem to have a positive impact on render times.

My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6

[David Shirey]

The things Nigel posted are all true, but that’s why I was asking about GoPro’s, since I assumed you’d be dealing with 100% h264 footage and rendering out to h264 720p mp4’s, the GPU acceleration would actually be a great boon to you. Of course if you guys are jumping out of planes with shoulder-mounted XDCAM cameras then… well good luck 😉

Networked rendering was a nice feature that I never used once but it’s a shame they got rid of. However if there are 4 editors working simultaneously I don’t imagine the other 3 would appreciate you stealing their CPU power.