[George Lawrie]

Thanks for the replies,but I found the answer is to make each layer into a “Smart Object” which is only a coupla clicks in photoshop.

I needed to preserve the layers because I’m gradually fading them in to a shot,and I also need to see them together in the same photoshop project.

[George Lawrie]

Dave,thanks for your help.I’ll try loading 32bit Vegas to measure performance.

I went through all the Vegas plug-ins last night,didn’t have time to do it in depth,and it depends on the intensity of the effect I dial in,but I found the heaviest CPU users to be DEFOCUS,MEDIAN,RAYS,and STARBURST.

Starburst caused my system to crash 3times.Still,as a plug-in it’s no big loss.
I’m editing in 8bit.Tried the 32bit and it’s too heavy for my system in Best preview except when I use a plain video track with no effects.

*Also meant to ask,when I read that you should install Quicktime,is that only for opening certain file types? I read there’s a Vegas compatible Quicktime download on the Avid site.

On the music side,the only time I’d need loops would be for maybe building rhythm tracks,but I could do that in Vegas.

I tried Sound Forge,but it doesn’t appeal to me at this stage.I’m concentrating on getting my sounds captured as good as possible at the recording stage,and Vegas has enough depth of tinkering for me,at least for now!

If I get noise on a video’s audio track that cant be re-done,the Noise Reduction plug-in would have been handy,but I was thinking of saving money and trying out Audacity.

Thanks again for your help,it’s appreciated.I’ll go and do some more testing,then build up my energy levels to ask a load more questions on Cow about things that hurt my head,like file compression and using proxy files,and the multitude of settings in Vegas menus!

George.

[George Lawrie]

P.S…… when I say that I can play 3 or 4 video tracks together,I mean without effects,and with opacity set to see all of them.

George.

[George Lawrie]

Thanks to all for the replies.I spose I should have joined this forum a year ago. I’ve done a lot of research,and am only gradually getting to grips with computers.Sometimes specific real world tips are hard to get.
Dave- I’m a musician,so I could do with another few pages of advice too!
Anyway,maybe I should start another thread,but here goes;

I took out my 2 old drives,so I still have Vista 32bit if I have to go back to it.I installed the new drives with windows7 64bit,and Vegas pro 9.0e,and installed new drivers and went from 4GB RAM to 12GB.

Everything seems to work,my RAM is recognised,and my programs open fast,but I’m seeing no improvement in Vegas,and I think playback is actually worse.

I can play back native EX3 1080 files no prob,but as soon as I add an effect the playback resolution goes to Half,and using 2 effects almost brings it to a halt.

Meanwhile,I can play 3 or 4 of these video tracks together and get full framerate at the Half setting.The CPU usage goes up in predictable chunks with each added track,but the effects seem to use much more CPU. I’ve tried different effects,and some are worse than others,but it seems that windows7 64bit with all the extra RAM is worse than Vista!?

I opened Windows Task Manager,and, regardless of effects or number of tracks,the RAM usage is around 2.5GB,with plenty in spare and in cache etc.

As i say,I dont have lots of experience,but is it normal that the effects would eat up so much CPU power,and that Vegas would not take advantage of RAM?

Also,I rendered 3 of these tracks playing at the same time with the opacity set to see all 3,and added track motion to one of them to see what would happen to the CPU and RAM.

The CPU went to 100% on all 4 cores (2.66 GHz Quad core) ,and the RAM usage stayed as usual around 2.5GB.

Any advice on system or settings would be greatly appreciated.

George.