[Dave Haynie]

Here’s the thing… your computer specs do matter. Any time there’s a question of rendering times, it’s good to know what you’re using to render. I’ve used Vegas since version 1 (eg, before video was supported), on many different PCs. I’ve been making HD videos for about eight years, and Blu-Ray disc for 2.5 years. If I know your hardware, I’ll know immediately if you’re experiencing “expected behavior” or “weird-ass mystery”.

We normally don’t think of decoding time as relevant, but it sure sounds like decoding time is an issue here, unless you have your .m2ts files on some very slow media (eg, not copied to your SATA or perhaps PATA hard disc drive).

You think of video running in realtime or better. If I can play a video from the camcorder at full 1080/60i (or whatever) and use 8% of my CPU, it standard to reason that I could play it 10x faster, and still have 20% of CPU time left over for other fun.

But AVC in HD is a pretty mean CODEC. Depending on the decoder, I have seen multithreaded software decoders take up to 50% of the CPU on my desktop: an Intel Core 2 Quad at 2.83GHz… that’s 50% of all four cores. It’s dramatically faster on playback using GPU-accelerated playback… down to under 8% CPU.

So I don’t really know how efficient Vegas is as decode, but it’s not using GPU acceleration. If you guesstimate it’s taking 50% CPU decode, that means you can’t possible encode a 1/2 hour video in less than 15 minutes — you’d need that time for decode, plus the encoder time. Now, again, using that number, if Vegas isn’t pipelining the decode across all four CPUs, it would actually take a whole hour of decode time for that 1/2 hour video on just one CPU. IF that’s the case (not saying it is), you might also starve the other cores, even when rendering to a parallelized CODEC like MPEG-2 or AVC.

Now imagine going to a single core older machine… you might well spend hours at the decode and encode. Naturally, any CPU time spent on decode-of-input video is time not spent on encode-to-output video. MPEG-2 is a much simpler CODEC .. standard-def MPEG-2 decoded just dandy on even 150-200MHz machines. HDV would take about 4x longer, but it’s pretty clear that decode time of HDV is not so significant to rendering time. And of course, any standard-def stuff you’re rendering is very easy to decode, particularly DV.

Another thing is the WMV rendering… everyone uses Microsoft’s built-in WMV pipeline, which I suspect is not as easily managed as built-in CODECs like AVC. I wonder, for example, if there’s any multithreaded rendering going on there. If you have an SMP machine, it’s easy to tell: just fire up the system monitor and look at your CPU use. An efficient render will have all N cores lit up at 100%. If you see any less, there’s something wrong with your setup: single threaded rendering, HDD thrashing, low memory, etc.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Sure… that’s the big win with DVD-A. They have basically built a Blu-Ray authoring model that’s very DVD-like, so you can move from BD to DVD, or DVD to BD, without much trouble.

Obviously, you may need to upgrade assets, and possibly adjust menu elements, depending on how the layout is done.

Basically, you load up your DVD project, call up the File/Properties dialog, and change “Disc Format” from DVD to Blu-Ray disc. You can set other project defaults here at the same time.

If you have DVD-A rendering your MPEG-2 for DVD from HD sources, you may be all set. Usually, though, you’re using more tightly designed DVD-class MPEG-2 files rendering in Vegas. If that’s the case, you can let DVD-A render for you, or add in your Vegas-rendered assets.

I *NEVER* used DVD-A for rendering MPEG-2 for DVDs. But DVD-A does seem to understand 720/60p a bit better than Vegas by default. I don’t know.. I’ve been shooting 720/60p for sports lately, rather than 1080/60i. Could just be a Sony prejudice on built-in formats… they don’t seem to bother with formats other than 1080/60i in most of their cameras either.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

I don’t have any fundamental problem with stereoscopic support (aka “3D”). But really, compared to edit-time GPU acceleration, this is a relatively obscure thing right now.

And yet, this seems to be a big thing at Sony… they seem to be looking at 3D as the thing that drives another big round of hardware upgrades, just as HDTV (and even to an extent, HDTV without HDMI/HDCP, then with) has done — they’ve replaced TVs, Blu-Ray players, etc. They’re pushing into 3D gaming on the PS3, even that [finally] strains the hardware a bit, etc.

This is maybe the first time I think we’ve seen “Sony Media Software” move in a direction that’s more Sony Marketing Agenda, less “What Users Need”. Not that they have to be exclusive things, but if the GPU acceleration is missing, seems to me that’s one obvious place the resources went.

That doesn’t mean this can’t be good in the long run for Sony and Vegas… it could drive some new sales for people who might never have looked at Vegas. The question, though, is how many it’ll drive away.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

While I agree it’s possible to edit on a laptop (and have done so), it’s certainly not the ideal platform. Sure, you can get a 1920×1080 screen on some of the better laptops (or even a 1920×1200, for the right price), but at what, 17″ or so. I’m pretty sold on my dual 24″ monitors for video or CAD work.

As for SSDs.. yeah, transportable, small, fast, and low power. But I think you’re either mortgaging your house, or using one drive per Cineform file 🙂 Real HDs are also portable, but you need a separate supply for anything of decent size, and that’s a complication. For a single project, though, a dual-drive laptop probably has enough internal storage, particularly with upgrades (my four-year-old Core2 laptop has 640GBx2 drives and the maximum 4GB DRAM with 64-bit Windows 7… it’s usable, just way less PC for way more money than my desktop).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Yup. They work fine. Not all that fast, as you might expect, but they work. And you can, of course, transcode to something else.

Now, there’s some question about “what do I do with it” once you’re done, and that’s legit. Blu-Ray doesn’t support 1080/60p, though shooing in 1080/60p, you can decide after editing if you’d prefer 1080/60i or 720/60p for your Blu-Ray release.

Another option — you can use the same assets for both Blu-Ray, DVD, and online, without making compromises (like de-interlacing your 1080/60i for use online). While you may technically be able to upload 1080/60p for online use, bandwidth available doesn’t make this a wise choice.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

A laptop isn’t the best platform for video editing, no matter what you get in it. You’re ultimately paying more for less, for the transportability. Of course, if that’s what you need, it’s what you need… I couldn’t give up the dual 1920×1200 monitors for editing.

But yeah, if you’re going to a laptop, get an i7 model. Quad Core is pretty much a given for decent rendering speeds these days… you’d have to benchmark Vegas to see if the hyperthreading helps or hurts your performance — it pretty much does one of those, application dependent.

I bought my son an i7-720M laptop from Lenovo last Spring, for about $750… pretty reasonable. That included a fairly decent nVidia GPU with its own RAM… you will be able to use this for video soon; Vegas 10 will do CUDA-based rendering, at the least (which means you need nVidia, not ATi… ATi’s native support is via Streams, and the generic GPU computing standard is OpenCL or MS’s DirectCompute).

The i7, at least in mobile configuration, is kind of a spec-hack when it comes to CPU speed/power consumption. All modern x86 chips scale the clock based on actual use. Most of them simply drop the clock down from their peak speed, but when they spec out power/heat numbers, it’s still based on the “normal” clock. i7’s spec their normal clock as one of the slower modes, and then they “overclock” when CPU demand increases. So the i7-720M can spec a 1.6GHz clock, rather than the 2.7GHz or so it’ll jump to as needed.

Anyway, this laptop would be unacceptable (IMHO) for video work for at least two reasons. Number one is the lack of a higher resolution screen… I’d pretty much want 1920×1080, maybe 1680×1050 would suffice. And either an IPS or MVA screen, fairly unusual on a laptop.

Second one is HDD… there’s only one. For serious rendering jobs, you’re going to get hard drive bound, not CPU bound, with a single drive… much less the likelihood that your laptop HDD is slower than the desktop alternative. Sure, you can add external drives, but you’re giving up portability.

I guess the real question is, just how much portability do you need. Is it critical for video editing to be able to move around, or are you specing out a multi-purpose machine? After all, a higher-spec desktop and a netbook-style laptop together would run less than a high-spec laptop, if the mobility isn’t driven by video work.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

There’s lots of stuff for specific uses… I’ve never needed CC, but I can appreciate the advantages of having this directly in Vegas, rather than some kind of add-on.

I’m also a little more excited about the stabilizer, after reading that it’s from ProDAD, and also does rolling shutter correction… I have multiple HD cameras, all CMOS, and I’m considering adding video DSLR at some point. When these things crop up, it would be nice to have an optional band-aid to apply. Between OIS, tripods, and Glidecam, I haven’t had much call for “stabilization in post”. Still nice to know, if I do need it, there it is.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Some companies give you a month or so grace period. But Vegas 10 was pretty much a no-brainer soon… if anything, it’s overdue. There’s been a release just about every year. And at least some GPU acceleration is a must-have for a 2010 release. Though I think they may already be behind — seems the main goal of most NLEs is to accelerate editing first… that’s the most critical thing that’s too slow today.

Adobe also seems to have realized that accelerated rendering (AVC or anything else) is only so useful if you’re spending too much time in plug-ins… so they’ve got plug-ins accelerated, too. Hopefully this is possible for Vegas, even if it not just implemented.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Well, you need more than a few hours for excitement — just when did Sony post this? CS5 is actually shipping, isn’t it?

And yet, well, yeah, it’s kind of a mixed bag.

GPU acceleration is a key technology for 2010. Thing is, it’s not just for rendering, but for visualization and plug-ins. Rendering — great, I want faster rendering, and I’ve been waiting for a GPU upgrade based on where Sony’s going with this.

But honestly, I can dedicate a PC or two to overnight rendering on a long Blu-Ray project. What I need more than anything is accelerated editing. That’s the big deal for new NLEs this year… Grass Valley did it back in January, and Adobe with Premiere CS5 back around the NAB show. This ought to be priority #1.

Sony themselves are obsessed with stereoscopic technology. Lots of the CE companies are. So it’s no shock they’re building support into Vegas and DVDA to support this. And that’s just dandy, but not something most users are going to need. EVERYONE needs faster editing, and even Sony’s jumped on the AVCHD bandwagon for both consumer and pro cameras. This needs to be faster.

I’m glad to see some of the little things fixed. Audio plug-ins at the event level… hey, great — why we never had that before, while we had video event level plug-ins, I never understood. Track grouping… great — something I asked for in Acid five or more years ago. Nice to see it here.

And yeah, enhanced plug-in architecture. This has been holding Vegas back, versus some of the other NLEs. The problem was simple: they let Microsoft design their plug-in API. You can’t expect non-video-NLE people to get this right. They had a similar problem in audio before finally caving in and supporting VST plug-ins. The Open Effects Association (https://www.openeffects.org/) looks real, but it’s also new.

Image stabilization… isn’t that just a plug-in? One that’s already available here and there? Not a problem, but “new plug-in” isn’t the big news I want see in a new release. Sony should concentrate on features that only Sony can add to Vegas.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

It’s a matter of CODECs, for sure.

.MP4 needs a CODEC, or DirectShow filter in Windows-speak. These come in 32-bit and 64-bit flavor, too. So it’s quite possible to see .MP4 in a 32-bit version of Vegas, but not in a 64-bit version. And all bets are off if you move to a different PC.

With the proper system support, Vegas handles MP4 files just dandy. I have edited them many times.

-Dave