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Vegas 9 headaches
Is Vegas 9 a complete pile of crap or am I doing something wrong?
I make budget music videos and for the last 5 years have been happily using Vegas 6. Ive recently bought a Sony EX3 and Cannon 5D so thought it was time to update my editing system. I had a computer custom built and bought Vegas 9 to put on it – and its pants! Virtually unusable. Music vids involve multi tracking all the various takes, now I realise that when your getting upto 10 -20 tracks running simultaneously its going to make the computer chug and stutter a little especially when you start grading and correcting the tracks. My old Vegas 6 system on an oldie but goodie custom build with a single core processor handles this very amicably.The new computer with Vegas 9 on it doesn’t stand a chance – just 2 lightly graded tracks start it chugging. On the old system Im converting my footage to AVI files to edit where as with the new system Im importing the Ex files straight from the Sony camera and using the 5D footage converted to HDAVI with neoscene. Is it asking to much to actually edit in HD? Ive had the computer and system checked out several times but nothing wrong can be found. The system should well and truly be up to the job- Intel i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80 GHz 8 GB ram Windows 7 64 bit. Ive heard some worrying reports about Vegas 9 – but I really dont want to have to learn another editing software from scratch… Please help!
Dan -
4 Replies
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[Dan Hart] “My old Vegas 6 system on an oldie but goodie custom build with a single core processor handles this very amicably.The new computer with Vegas 9 on it doesn’t stand a chance – just 2 lightly graded tracks start it chugging.”
So you where editing Sony EX3 and Cannon 5D footage in Vegas 6 on and old single core computer and it was smooth? I think not! I assume you were working in SD back then which has 5 times (5x) LESS resolution than HD. That’s a BIG difference. SD also used intraframe codecs while most HD uses interframe codes and that’s a BIG difference. You can’t compare SD to HD. It’s just apples and oranges.
If you are already converting your Cannon 5D footage to Cineform I would also convert the Sony EX3 footage to Cineform. If you plan on running 10 – 20 tracks of HD Cineform is your best choice.
I would also consider getting Vegas Pro 10 which has been even further optimized for HD editing and now uses the Cineform SDK for working with Cineform which will be much faster than the old VFW way of working. If you just built a new computer, you really should be using the newest software versions as well.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Hi,
I did state in my post that I was editing AVI on my old system not EX or 5D files. I bought the system and Vegas 9 back in March and have being editing using my old system ever since – I cant believe Vegas 9 could possibly be so piss poor – as for buying Vegas 10, Im not about to shell out on another Sony software in the vague hope that it works. thanks for the advice about converting the EX files – but am I being naive to expect to be able to edit the output of a Sony camera on Sony software?? -
It’s crap Dan, just got off the phone with Sony Support asking if 10 worked any better. I told them how I have submitted a thousand plus crash reports, spent hours with technical support and have NEVER gotten the program to work for more than a few minutes on 2 DIFFERENT MACHINES. I finally gave up and pulled the trigger to buy Premiere 5 and a Quadro card. I really miss the Sony workflow, but you can only loose so much time to crashes before it gets counterproductive.
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[Dan Hart] ” I bought the system and Vegas 9 back in March and have being editing using my old system ever since – I cant believe Vegas 9 could possibly be so piss poor -“
I’m not having any problems editing HD with Vegas Pro 9.0. I regularly shoot HDV and AVCHD and Vegas edits them both smoothly on my QuadCore with maybe 6 or 8 tracks. AVCHD does bog down from time-to-time but HDV plays smoothly. Once you start color grading, all bets are off which is why that should be one of the last steps in editing. I’m not sure what affect you buying the lesser 800 series i7 vs the 900 series but if you really wanted a powerful machine you should have gone with the 900 series of i7.
I’ve been shooting HD since 2005 on Sony HVR-Z1U I’ve been editing with Vegas Pro 9.0 every day since May 2009 when it was first released and it’s been working great the whole time. Are you using 9.0e? That’s the latest version of 9.
[Dan Hart] “as for buying Vegas 10, Im not about to shell out on another Sony software in the vague hope that it works.”
No one is suggesting that you blindly shell out any money. Download the 30-day trial of Vegas Pro 10 and see for yourself. If it edits smoother then it’s money well spent.
[Dan Hart] ” thanks for the advice about converting the EX files – but am I being naive to expect to be able to edit the output of a Sony camera on Sony software??”
To answer your questions directly… YES it is naive to thing that a good acquisition format for a camera is a good editing format for an NLE. In fact, Avid and FCP won’t even capture the native format from your camera! They transcode it into their own editing formats. Most of the industry works with digital intermediaries and not native footage because the latest wave of HD cameras are using formats with ridiculous amounts of interframe compression that doesn’t edit easily.
It just so happens that Vegas edits the output of the Sony EX3 camera quite easily but when you’re talking about 20 tracks, it is best to use digital intermediaries. This is very common in the industry. Just because you can edit the native format doesn’t mean that you should. Digital intermediaries like Cineform have a lot of advantages. Playback speed is one of them.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com
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