Vegas PRO 9 performance boost

[Steven Quan]

The Nvidia 8400M GS is very slow video card. That might be your bottleneck. Most laptop do not allow upgrade to video card, that’s one of the drawbacks of a laptop.

I couldn’t find your exact card here, but I did find the 8400 G which I’m assuming is similar to the 8400M:

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2521-8.html

[Tom Pippo]

Ok, but are telling me that Vegas PRO uses video hardware accelaration? also can you answer the other questions of the first post?

[John Rofrano]

I’m currently using a laptop with XP SP3 and Core 2 Duo T7250 2Ghz,2GB of RAM, GFX Nvidia 8400M GS with 256MB of RAM

Laptops are not the best platform for video editing unless you have a T9300 series processor. The T7250 is way better than the T4200 series but it’s still middle of the road.

I’m using Vegas PRO 9.0b to edit and render videos, but I don’t if it is my camera videos (H264, 1280×720@30fps) or what… because on the preview window (on external screen or the in same workspace) with no fx I get slow frame video, I have to put in Draft Auto the preview qulity to see it well.

The first thing I would do is update your Vegas Pro to 9.0e. This is the latest and Sony is constantly working on improving AVC/H.264 performance.

My goal is to have the review at leat at normal quality on an external screen and if possible with 2 Fx applied (color correction and stuff like that)

I downloaded your clip to my QuadCore desktop and it plays back smoothly at full frame rates on Best (Full) with Levels, Color Corrector, and Color Curves applied.

I’ve understand (and tell me if I am wrong) that Vegas don’t care about the video card so If I have an NVDIA or an Intel X3100 it’s the same is it true?

That is true. Having said that… Vegas Movie Studio HD 10 uses the GPU for rendering AVCHD but I still don’t think it uses it for playback so event if Vegas Pro added this feature in the next release, I doubt it would affect playback (but this is pure speculation on my part).

Second thing running 32bit or 64bit change a lot the performance?

Not really. 64-bit gives you more addressable memory so if memory is the bottleneck it might help but in general 64-bit isn’t any faster than 32-bit.

In your opinion if I get a quad core intel, with intel motherboard (integrated gfx) I will solve these problems?

Yes, but don’t get integrated graphics. Always get a stand-alone graphics card and get at least an nVidia 9800 series or better.

You can download a small clip of my camera here so maybe you can make a test on your rendering machine to see if the preview work ok with more FX.

As I said, this footage plays back very smoothly on my QuadCore which is a few years old now (ie., not a new Core i7 but the older technology). Here are my PC specs.

~jr

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

[Tom Pippo]

many thanks.

[Tom Pippo]

Thank you! just another question I know it is weird but what do ou think of an apple iMac Core 2 Duo with Bootcamp and Vegas 9?

[John Rofrano]

just another question I know it is weird but what do ou think of an apple iMac Core 2 Duo with Bootcamp and Vegas 9?

Not weird at all. If you need to collaborate with Mac users it’s a good alternative. I’m not sure that a Core 2 Duo will be enough for your needs. I have Kodak Zi8 that shoots 1920×720-30p h.264 files and I can barely edit them on my old AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ PC. They almost playback at full speed but it’s not sustained and then it starts to lag. It makes for a very frustrating editing experience.

Core 2 Duo is really old technology and I would NOT recommend buying one for editing H.264 HD.

~jr

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