Dave Haynie
Forum Replies Created
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[Nigel O'Neill] “Personally, I am holding off going to Windows 8 for at least 1 year.”
That’s fundamentally a good idea for any serious use of a PC. Early releases have often had stability problems. There are rarely applications that require the new OS right away… and in this case, developers are more likely to be pushing into WinRT applications, which aren’t for serious desktop use anyway.
My general rule for upgrades is that the OS needs to be stable, and it needs to offer ME some good reason to update. There’s no fundamental need to update your existing computer with a new version of Windows. The OS isn’t even really a tool, it’s more like a toolbox. You only need to update the toolbox when the tools no longer fit, or when someone come out with a new toolbox that makes your life much easier. Windows 8 right now looks like a toolbox that’s kind of a weird shape compared to my Windows 7 toolbox, and it has this whole extra section for cooking equipment, which I don’t need. At least not in my workshop (eg, desktop PC).
-Dave
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Ha! Yeah, they put one of those stores in at the Christiana Mall in Delaware. There was a crowd there on opening day.. mostly because they shipped in the band “Weezer” to play. And yeah, a total clone of the Apple store, or as much as they can get away with.
I’m not going to say that Microsoft’s been all that innovative, ever… they did have a habit of ripping off (or, if you’re a Microsoft fan, you could say “popularizing”) other folks good ideas. MS-DOS was a CP/M-like OS, Windows was trying to deliver the Mac experience to the PC. But it’s all evolution… CP/M was trying to give a taste of a minicomputer OS to micros. Everyone was doing GUI back in the early to mid 80s, Apple just got there first, at least on a big scale, but plenty of workstations came first. Every touch interface, even Microsoft’s original Surface tabletop UI (which was pretty innovative, unlike anything else real) came out five years after “Minority Report” showed of that really cool hand-gesture UI.
But Microsoft goes the extra mile, with their “all-in” approach. That’s a sign that they’re only thinking in terms of responding to changes without really understanding them so well. Which kind of follows the stories you hear out of Microsoft, of the many layers of management, one group basically getting to call the shots for everything they ever touch, stack ranking pitting people and groups against each other, etc. They have much of the big company disease that, ages ago, let a much more athletic Microsoft take over mainstream computing. But it’s been a long time since they did something important, well designed, and original.
-Dave
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[John Rofrano] “Now you know why Adobe lists the specific cards that work. CUDA compatibility doesn’t seem to be that great.”
Yup… CUDA and OpenCL are abstractions. Programs like Vegas write to those abstractions, not to any specific hardware. Adobe started out CUDA-only (they’re doing OpenCL now), tested on a very specific set of cards, perhaps even working around bugs related to their performance, and recommend Premiere just for those few cards. Even that’s dangerous, since a change in the CUDA driver could break that compatibility, if nVidia got sloppy.
Sony’s done testing on some cards, and they recommend the series of GPUs supported primarily based on the features they’re using in OpenCL. And they specifically call out some cards that are tested. But a very large part of the puzzle is in the hands of the drivers.
All OpenCL code is basically written in a high-level language. When you want to use it, that code is compiled quickly for that specific GPU — nothing Vegas or Premiere or anyone else has any idea about, prior to that compile being called for. Then the driver serves to manage data being sent to and results back from the card… which of course is running asynchronously to the main CPU. Problems in the compiler, problems with the efficiency of CPU to GPU communications, etc. that’s all on the driver’s side the problem.
It’s technically possible that Vegas would use some operations that just don’t map well to the Kepler, but I’d be extremely surprised, given how the GPUs are all actually evolving toward GPGPU use… new chips rarely deprecate old features, they add new capabilities. Far more likely that the driver you’re using has big problems.
-Dave
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You can edit on either an i7 or an i5, dedicated or separate RAM graphics… it’s all a matter of performance. On a single screen edit at lower than 1080p resolution, you’re not going to worry about much beyond quarter screen preview.
I’d prioritize. Go with at least 8GB RAM. I’ve done editing on my old laptop, which is a Core 2 Duo at 2.4GHz with 4GB RAM, but it’s far from ideal… I’d definitely go higher spec today, which is completely possible. So I’d have some kind of quad core processor. The difference between i5 and i7 is less on a laptop than on a desktop anyway, because laptop i7s only have two-lane memory, same as the i5. They do support hyperthreading, but that’s not going to be much of an issue for editing (and it’s even questionable for rendering). Some higher end i5s have outperformed lower end i7s on laptops, depending on the specific job.
As for graphics, most nVidia or AMD GPUs can support OpenCL, which can accelerate graphics under Vegas 11 or 12. But the sort you’re usually going to get on a laptop, particularly an affordable laptop, it’s likely to have enough cores to make much of a difference, so I wouldn’t give too much concern for that, unless you can find a good deal on a GPU with enough cores to actually help, looking for 300+ cores on a nVidia, 500+ on an AMD, and of course, separate RAM. The separate RAM makes the system a bit faster, but you’re not really going to be stressing the graphics subsystem with editing, particularly with your video scaled down in a window. A larger GPU will also eat battery much faster, and generate more heat, also a consideration for mobile editing.
SSD is nice for speed and battery life, but I’ve had plenty of projects that alone wouldn’t fit on an SSD. My big HP laptop has dual drives… currently a total of 1.2TB, but if I used it more, I might swap out one for an SSD. But I wouldn’t use it for video alone with just a single SSD of the size that’s going to be affordable. For the laptop I bought my daughter last summer (for college, with lots of video editing in her future), the difference between the 750GB HDD and a 750GB SDD was about $1000 (she got the HDD).
When shopping, pay close attention to the battery life claims, and figure you may wind up closer to the lower end of that if you do lost of previewing in your editing. Make sure you get a system that’s going to comfortably last your commute… and factor in the reality that, in a year, that battery will probably only be at 90% of the original total charge capacity.
-Dave
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[John Rofrano] ” I’m not sure what Microsoft was thinking or if anyone was even thinking at all. lol.”
It’s kind of the typical Microsoft thing. When they see someone else being successful at something in computing, they tend to over-react. So Nintendo and Sony were getting computers into the livingroom, Microsoft had to do the X-Box, and lose billions a year for about ten years, to get to their quasi-profitable current state. They didn’t think about the web, but once they did, the whole desktop had to also be made to look like web pages.
So now, it’s mobile… Apple and Google have been very successful in the new generation of smartphones and tablets. So Microsoft had to jump on the bandwagon. But in their usual overreation, they were all in. So now you’re getting a tablet UI, with touch and without windowing, bolted on to the existing, fairly well tuned desktop environment. They don’t mix well.
And touch is a horrible idea on a desktop monitor, too. Touch wants to be on horizontal surfaces, not vertical surfaces. Just try holding your arm out at your screen for a few minutes. This was actually studied at various times, Google “Gorilla Arm”. Early 80s CAD systems often had some kind of screen input, either a touch screen or a light pen. It created too much stress… they pretty much all went to horizontal devices — graphics tablets or mice. Years later, post-iPhone, Apple did a big study on adding touch to desktops, and came up with the same result: on-screen touch is just wrong for desktops.
Not to mention that you really don’t want to smear greasy fingers all over a screen if you can help it. On portable device, it’s the compromise you make for portability. It’s never neeeded on a desktop. and mouse, pad, or graphics tablet is needed anyway — fingers just aren’t accurate enough.
-Dave
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Make sure you have the latest graphics drivers. nVidia has lagged a bit in OpenCL support, primarily because they were concentrating on their proprietary CUDA system instead. At least in Vegas 11, I tested a GTX570 card under CUDA, and it worked fine in Vegas (actually failed on a few OpenCL benchmarks). But Vegas 11 didn’t have a global CUDA option (eg, Preferences/Video/GPU acceleration of video processing) — didn’t realize Vegas 12 did (I have an AMD card in my system).
-Dave
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I suspect DVDA doesn’t know about erasing the BD-RE. Every kind of optical disc starts out entirely in one state, and the laser burns select sections, to either make them more or less reflective, depending on the type of media.
As for speed, I think the fastest BD-RE is 2x, until you get to the BDXL format, which has 4x options. But a plain old BDXL-100 costs about $60, so these aren’t really viable (never even priced a BD-RE XL… there we go, $120 each on Amazon, 100GB, 2x).
-Dave
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[Jay Allen] “Does Vegas pro 12 support 2 cpu’s
Sure… Vegas supports as many cores as you can give it. It doesn’t really care if they’re in the same CPU or two different packages — that’s Windows’ job to worry about.
[Jay Allen] Would i be better off with quadro k5000 or two quadro 4000’s
A Quadro is pretty much overkill for anything video. The main point of the professional series is higher quality rendering for things like mechanical CAD. You can get the same or better performance on OpenCL/CUDA, I think, with an much lower cost GeForce card.However, if you’re set on a Quadro, keep in mind that Vegas, at least currently, can only use one OpenCL device at a time. So in a dual card setup, only one will be making Vegas go faster, at least via OpenCL… maybe a dual card would make OpenGL stuff render faster. OpenGL is used in some plugins, but it’s rarely a bottleneck.
[Jay Allen] Any caveats to know about SSD’s… using for boot and scratch drive
They’re too small. They’re dandy as a boot drive, if you don’t have much software to install. They’d make a fine scratch drive, too, other than the fact they’re too small. Of course, you’re talking to a guy with a 2TB boot drive, a 3TB data drive, another 2TB drive currently in the SATA slot (lets you use a SATA drive like a cartridge), and a 12TB Drobo.[Jay Allen] Has anyone used 4tb drives in raid
Sure someone has, but not me. I’d double-check that the RAID you’re interested in supports 4TB drives. My Drobo has 3TB drives in it. Never a problem.[Jay Allen] Has anyone used drobo with thunderbolt”
Again, not I. I have an older one, which supports USB 2.0 and Firewire 800… thus, all the internal SATA drives. This is a reliable drive for storing all my past projects, but it’s not what you’d call overly fast. I’d check out benchmarks on the newer Drobos… they have upgraded the CPUs, but they may still not be terribly fast. The new models support either Thunderbolt and USB3.0 or GigE…. I’d really have to think that one through. Or get really rich and buy one of each, as an upgrade. I suppose you have to decide if you’re thinking “NAS” or just a PC-add-on. The TB/USB drive will certainly be faster, at least if the CPU can keep up. And now these are all five slot drives I think, versus my four slot drive.
Another thing… if you’re buying drives separately from the Drobo, order them from different retailers. Usually, RAID systems want perfectly matched drives, but Drobos don’t care. That eliminates one of the big problems with RAID: perfectly matched drives from the same lot can also have perfectly matched failures. When a drive fails in the Drobo (or you swap out an smaller one to expand), it takes some time to reform the RAID… a couple of days, these days. So that’s a window in which a second drive failure would be a really bad thing (well, ok, some of the newer units allow for two drives to fail, but you’re losing all that much more storage for that additional redundancy).
And of course, RAID != Archive. You still need to make backups… my favorite media these days are HDDs and HTL Blu-ray discs. Maybe I’d use some online service if I had real broadband (on satellite) and wasn’t talking about many TB of back needed.
-Dave
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[Kashif Malik] “‘ve used the codec with Vegas Pro 10. However, I just tried it with Vegas Pro 12 and it seems you are right.”
I’m actually not surprised.
I used Cineform for years without problems, basically since it first came bundled with Vegas, in the days when maybe editing HDV was too CPU intensive for many PCs.
But when Vegas 11 came out, Sony and the Cineform people (I think a bit before GoPro bought Cineform) had put some kind of custom interface between Vegas and the Cineform CODEC. Not just the usual VfW API which, far as I know, I had always been happy with.
That was the beginning of the end. The older version of Cineform I had, which still worked just dandy with Vegas 10, crashed like crazy on Vegas 11… clearly, they expected this new API to be there, but never bothered checking. Or something like that. It was an instant crash on render, not random, not even a warning saying “please upgrade Cineform”.
So I did upgrade Cineform. And at that point, I could read all my Cineform files. Still crashed like crazy on write. On the final release of Vegas 11 or therabouts, it didn’t crash on write anymore. But it had gone all wonky, anyway… sometimes the video would render or read all screwed up, etc.
And then there was the licensing. They totally boggered my licence… apparently, assigning the same license code to multiple users. And once discovered, they didn’t really issue me a new code or anything responsible, they just remoted into my PC and got it installed, using a tech support code or some-such. It eventually decided it was no longer registered, and so I’ve been Cineform free for awhile… though I had pretty much stopped using it anyway, just given how broken it was in Vegas 11.
Not necessarily all Cineform’s fault, either… Sony should have put in a simple option, like “Use VfW for Cineform” or one of the usual things you put in, just in case your new optional feature causes someone problems. Thing is, given the choice of DNxHD or Sony MXF/MPEG-2, there’s not a huge need for Cineform anyway, these days.
-Dave
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Just one other datapoint… awhile back, I was working on a fairly complex animation for work. I had recently upgraded to Vegas 11 — not the ideal thing to do with you’re in a rush situation. I ran into exactly the same kind of problem described here: my video would render to a point, then crash… didn’t actually matter which CODEC I was writing to.
That’s actually important… if you’re crashing writing to AVC, for example, but can render to something else, that’s an easy workaround: just render to something else, then render that to AVC if you need AVC. But that didn’t work for me.
So here’s how I at least found the problem (which only helps if there’s a problem you can actually find). I rendered to MPEG-2 TS (HDV or an MPEG-2 Blu-ray format, doesn’t matter all that much). You want that because a TS file doesn’t have to be closed like some other video types. So after Vegas crashes, you have evidence of exactly where it crashed. So I loaded up the HDV output, tracked down the failure point. Turns out I was using some new plug-in there for an effect. Took that out, and the whole timeline rendered.
Of course, it could have been something else. But here’s the thing… if the problem wasn’t obvious, try that render again, only with the TS file overlaying the part already rendered. That should smartrender, go fast, and well… sometimes it still crashes. Sometimes it doesn’t… you can have bugs that just gang up on each other and cause a crash for no externally observable reason. Annoying, sure, but when you have a deadline, a work-around is way better than failing, or even staying up all night porting the whole video to an older version of Vegas.
-Dave