[Dave Haynie]

[Steve Rhoden] “Upgrading to 8gb of ram alone is not gonna cut it.If getting a new system is not an option for now, you are gonna have to settle for those speeds.”

Upgrading to 8GB (GB == GigaBytes, Gb == Gigabits, gb == nothing) might actually help here. There’s an awfully good chance that a system rendering HD resolutions with 2GB RAM is going to be paging — swapping data to and from the HDD. Bad idea where performance is concerned, and in particular, if it’s being done on a laptop with a single HDD, that also puts the swap drive in contention with both video input and video output. And yeah, the ancient laptop make that bad situation even worse. So additional RAM might help.

Another thing that might help: a second drive. Rendering output, even to a USB 2.0 HDD or Flash Drive, will take some load off the internal drive. It’s not that the internal drive is necessarily all that slow (though laptop drives tend to be slower), but hard drives are like Muscle Cars: great in a straight line (eg, streaming a single file), bad when cornering (eg, seeking from file to file).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

The fact that it’s fairly stable, sure, that’s a good one. And if you’re making basic DVDs, DVD Architect is great at almost instantly supporting both DVD and BD-that-look-like-DVDs very nicely.

On the other hand, it doesn’t completely emulate DVD on BD (it has some trouble with some kinds of transparency), and it doesn’t really support any Blu-ray authoring features, and the only audio feature is slightly higher bitrate AC-3 if you want it. Of course, HD video is the first thing you’re looking for, but there’s so much room for improvement you could drive a truck through it.

The other issue I have is that the UI was antiquated when it first came out, but these days, it’s just crazy stupid. Even something as simple as adding a three video sequence without having to anchor those second two on a menu somewhere… this is something I could do easily back in Impression, in the cowboy days of DVD. Or making a button that appears or disappears when you “hover”.

It’s good for cranking out quickies, but a pain in the butt for anything complex, if that complex idea you had was possible at all. And their calling this version 6, what basically amounts to adding support for one more file type (AVC-MVC), suggests my original assertion, that it’s all but abandoned, isn’t far off the mark.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Yup, it’s real, I downloaded it yesterday. Think “DVDA 5.2 with 3D support” and you’re pretty much there. Nothing to see here, folks, move along 🙂

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

One thing to consider… are you editing the same video format in FCP as in Vegas, or did you transcode to ProRes or something for FCP. Curious, since on my daughter’s loaner MacBook last year (slightly higher spec than my laptop), I couldn’t get FCP to work with native full resolution AVC even slightly (this wasn’t FCP-X, but an older version), while it’s always been usable on my laptop (not as smooth as a proper desktop, of course). Obviously, if the CPU is struggling just to decode the video, it’s not going to offer a smooth preview in a normal NLE situation. ProRes, Cineform, DNxHD, these all use dramatically less CPU than an AVC direct from the camcorder.

And yeah, system spec would be very telling. Without GPU acceleration, you may find basic AVC 1080/60i takes the better part of modern CPU core to decode… or two of something a bit more dated. Move to a different format for editing, and the CPU decoding part can quickly vanish into the background.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

I see the mention of it.. not exactly an announcement. Other than “6” replacing “5.2”, it offers no other information. Though it’s good to see they haven’t abandoned it completely — I can’t begin to afford DoStudio, but don’t really want to leave the comfort of Vegas interoperability and general Sony reliability (sure, Sony’s not perfect, but other DVD and Blu-ray tools I’ve used have been a nightmare).

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

I don’t think it’s free… I think it’s one we already paid for. Like when DVD Architect 5 came out, in 2008 or so, in-between versions of Vegas. We go DVDA 4.x bundled with that year’s Vegas, but when version 5 was ready, it just showed up as a normal upgrade.

With that said, I can’t find a single thing on the Internet about DVD Architect 6.0 being announced. Was this at a show or something?

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Where/when did they announce this? Can’t find anything but this topic here. I’m very interested, particularly since they haven’t substantially touched DVDA in years.

And if you all recall, Vegas has previously shipped with an older version of DVDA, then was upgraded to the new version. Sony has not, in the past, sold DVDA stand-alone. So if they actually put out DVDA 6, it’s only logical that “full” Vegas Pro owners get it.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

For those intent on using Windows 8, another option is Classic Shell. This is a free, open source application that restores “a collection of features that were available in older versions of Windows but were later removed”. It works.. in fact, you have more options around Start Menu and some other bits than you do under any single Windows desktop shell (MS’s is, of course, called “Explorer” — but it’s the same thing, a desktop shell): https://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

With that said, there’s no reason I can imagine for a desktop user to upgrade to Windows 8. They make the usual claims about better security, but real security is a user’s practice, not a magic bullet in an OS. It does boot faster — they have a fairly clever hack that could been retrofit into Windows 7 for this, but it’s not such a big deal.

And the rest is RT/Metro, which is Microsoft’s answer to the iPad, basically. It’s a whole new OS running on top of the same NT kernel that Win32/Win64 and POSIX (there’s also a POSIX layer in Windows, essentially yet another OS for administrators and geeks). But make no mistake, it’s a devolution. WinRT/Metro (yeah, you’re not suppose to say “Metro”, but they have yet to replace that name properly) is probably as good for tablets as iOS or Android, other than there not being significant applications. All RT apps are sold only through the Microsoft store, and they don’t use Windows — you’re full screen, or two-by-two (you can two next to each other, basically half screen). That’s it.

And that’s a huge no-go for professional work. There’s sort of this meme around that claims tablets are for content only, not creation. Microsoft, of course, is claiming their tablet is different… without actually giving a single reason why that might be, other than the optional keyboard. Apple and many Android tablets have an option, some, like on my Asus Transformer, work as well or better than Microsoft’s.

But they missing piece here isn’t even screen size/resolution (the Asus has the same 1920×1200 I’m typing on here, albeit on a 10″ screen), but the lost ability to collaborate. Any creative project is a collaboration, even if its just with yourself. You’re talking ideas, assets, etc. and molding them into something new. But that doesn’t happen in a single application. Whether I’m writing a song, designing a circuit, drawing a PCB, a editing a video, writing a program, mixng an audio recording, etc. there are dozens of pieces of information, from dozens of sources, being taken in, molded, etc. to my ultimate goal. That doesn’t happen when you can only have one application in your visual context at a time. And this the HUGE fail in Windows Metro, WinRT, Modern, whatever you want to call it. And sadly, the press is so obsessed with the iPad and the mentality that’s created (which, again, fine for content use), this really hasn’t been brought forth. If this is really Microsoft’s planned future, we’re all going to be sticking with an older version or switching to some other OS in the next decade or so.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Any Windows system can use Skydrive, or any of the dozens of online storage schemes. Here’s the thing… video. That whole 12GB per hour or so thing we all do here.

How fast is your internet connection, really? If you can sustain 25Mb/s or so to Skydrive, you can play back a video in realtime. One video. And that’s not editing, that’s linear. I don’t think, in practice, online storage helps at all for video editing. Not to mention that Skydrive is free for 7GB, paid beyond that — one significant video project is larger.

For the tablet, I suppose an SDXC card may suffice. Surface Pro only supports microSD as a built-in, so that’s 64GB storage. Enough for a short project (not that many minutes, once you add in multiple takes, audio, FX, etc). But given the CPU power, you’re not taking on complex videos, animations, etc. That’s probably the place to look.

The other thing to consider: Windows is still Windows. That 64GB or 128GB is going to have a big chunk eaten up by Windows itself. My desktop PC’s boot drive is 2TB, my laptop’s is 640GB — not a big deal. But Windows 8 is larger than Windows 7 .. there’s this whole secondary WinRT operating system sitting aside normal Windows. 64/128GB seems awfully small, for media work.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

The Surface Pro is based on an Ivy Bridge i5, which is pretty common in $500-$650 laptops today. This is enough to run Vegas just dandy, not ideal for multi-cam AVCHD editing, but it’ll do the job in a pinch. Of course, this is also PC-chipset graphics, so no GPU acceleration.

The Surface Pro actually has a Wacom-like pen interface. I’m not sure just how Wacom-like it is, but a real Wacom digitizer can see your pen over the tablet surface, without making contact, and it can deliver 512-1024 levels of pressure (I use a graphics tablet for PC drawing). If this is even close, you’ll have the full mouse experience with a pen. I’d check on this.

I’m a little skeptical of the Surface Pro. It’s definitely a good enough PC, a mid-range laptop in power, but a bit weak on RAM (I like 8GB for video, 16Gb for photos and everything else I do). But the storage is weak (64GB or 128GB) for media use. And there will be a dozen or more similar Windows tablets. Microsoft is very unknown as a hardware vendor. I’d wait, and check the stats — if you really even need a Windows tablet.

I have a higher-end Android tablet, which is good for viewing media, uploading it, etc. I had enough of an issue dealing with editing on a laptop, just due to performance and tiny (17″, 1680×1050) screens…. not interested in downsizing that just to have it on a tablet.

-Dave