[Heinrich Himmel]

Andy, while the PSU is more than what is required, keep in mind that PSU and case can go into future builds. The rest of the parts cannot. That EVGA is considered Tier III. It is a decent PSU, but may not be the best choice if you stress your PC a lot.

On cases I’ve regretted every Case purchase I’ve made until I bought the corsair 540 air (I’ve always skimped on the case and it is essentially wasted money). Make sure you are happy with the case and that you would not mind using it in every PC you build going forward.

I cannot comment on your laptop based on times. Use something like GPUz to see what the GPU sensors say. On my optimus laptop, it is 0% usage. My i7 (4930K) just rendered a 45 minute movie in 22 minutes. Not many color edits, but lots of cuts and 4 cameras.

I’ve modified your build a little (feel free to use the EVGA PSU to save some money):

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/9N2sjX
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/9N2sjX/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1231 V3 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($248.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: MSI Z87-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($81.97 @ OutletPC)
Memory: Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($68.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive ($91.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB Superclocked ACX 2.0 Video Card ($349.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Core 3000 USB 3.0 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($77.85 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: SeaSonic G 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1046.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-19 04:18 EST-0500

To Scott & John,

I will have to disagree with the two of you. I own both an i7 4930K and FX 8320 and there is no difference in editing HD footage between the two. In renders, the 4930K’s extra threads pull it ahead, but no more than what is expected (just like it would pull equally ahead of a 4790). The two systems are built very similarly. The difference being the AMD has a GTX 580 while the Intel has an AMD R9 280x and the AMD has 16GB of RAM vs 32GB on the Intel. There may have been other differences accounting for the performance differences in your systems. Of course I overclock all of my CPUs. FYI, the 8320, 8350, 8370, 9370 and 9590 are all the same CPU, just different clock speeds. The 8320 is the best deal from AMD.

[Heinrich Himmel]

As John Rofrano says, use the DVD Architect templates. If you want to change anything, change the bitrate settings:

Enable 2 Pass (this doubles encoding time but increases quality)
Minimum bitrate to 2,250,000

If your total length in the disc is less than 76 minutes, use Constant bitrate of 7,550,000. Anything 76 minutes and longer, use 2 pass VBR with the appropriate average bitrate for the length.

[Heinrich Himmel]

The 4690K is about 1.5x to 2x faster than a 3630qm. If your laptop has a good GPU then there will be little if any benefit to a new system. One thing however, if you have an nVidia optimus GPU your laptop will likely not work properly. Optimus cannot be disabled in many laptops and does not work as it should. The GPU will always be disabled in Sony Vegas, so your render times will be horrible and you will not get any timeline acceleration (editing will be sluggish).

For a Vegas + Gaming build at $1000, why not go AMD? The FX 8320 will outperform the 4690 in Vegas and will play all of your games in 1080p High/Ultra (provided you have a good GPU) (you will get more FPS with the 4690k, but it will not make any game playable that is not playable with the AMD).

Also consider an R9 290x. The 4GB Vapor-X version (now sold out) was only $229 last week. This would save approx $100 on GPU alone and perform equally to the GTX 970 in gaming and outperform it by about 2x in Vegas.

I have suggested a system that meets your budget. It will perform about equal to the 4790K in Vegas. In gaming it will not perform as well as the $1300 system you were considering. Reason being the GTX 970 is slightly better than the R9 290 and the i5/i7 have stronger single core performance. In most games, the difference will be negligible however as neither CPU will bottleneck a single GPU in most cases.

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/kvChGX
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/p/kvChGX/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz 8-Core Processor ($124.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($31.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0 ATX AM3+ Motherboard ($118.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($149.00 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 EVO 120GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive ($85.44 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Directron)
Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 4GB WINDFORCE Video Card ($222.00 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design Define R4 (Black Pearl) ATX Mid Tower Case ($111.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($64.99 @ NCIX US)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link TL-WDN4800 802.11a/b/g/n PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($39.04 @ OutletPC)
Total: $1000.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-18 07:52 EST-0500

[Heinrich Himmel]

This should work well: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00HYFIZU6/?tag=pcp05-21

[Heinrich Himmel]

The same thing is happening to me as soon as I upgraded to Premiere Pro CC 2014 8.1. I use DSLM footage at max of 50mbps. Same as you, worked fine in CC, but freezes in CC 2014 8.1. I looked into it a bit and it seems like this has been an issue since 8.1 has been released and is related to Premiere Pro. For now, if you are using Premiere Pro for a lot of your work, roll back to CC. The only difference between 2014 and CC that I can tell is increased performance with AMD GPUs. I personally use Sony Vegas on most projects, so I will just wait out until Adobe sorts things out (although I guess it has already been 4 months without a solution).

On a side note, I will agree with the above posts that QT animations are a bit much for your HDDs. Would something like DNxHD or ProRes work instead?

For storage options, if you really need speed, perhaps an SSD in a USB 3 enclosure. You should get roughly 400MB/s performance out of that and it will be portable. Mushkin makes their SSDs in USA, however I have never tried them. I personally use Samsung Pro SSDs. Note, that I do not do this myself because I need storage over speed, but I’ve read that this can get around 400MB/s read/write. Look for an enclosure with UASP to boost speed.

[Heinrich Himmel]

Vegas is weird like that. Yes, turn it down for rendering. I can’t say it will work, but it has for me.

[Heinrich Himmel]

You can either edit how you like and after you are finished add an output FX of the computer RGB to sRGB or do the opposite… Add an output FX of sRGB to Computer RGB and then delete it before rendering. It will look how you want it in either case until you are ready to render.

After you delete or add the FX, it will look brighter and a little more grey than you like it, but it will render correctly. That’s all the is important.

I believe another solution is to use an external monitor, but I cannot confirm this.

[Heinrich Himmel]

I think there is a bottleneck in the encoder or decoder. If rendering from SSD to SSD doesn’t help, then that is likely the case. In terms of stuttering, that is to be expected when piling on effects. There is a chance the GTX 980 may be the cause of all of your issues because it is a new card. Perhaps new nVidia drivers can fix your issue? Try setting dynamic Ram preview to 0 and see if that helps as well.

[Heinrich Himmel]

Looks like MPC, WMP and YT are clipping shadow detail. I have a hard time with explaining super white and super black, but I think you are editing in Computer RGB space but YT is expecting sRGB? Thus when you upload footage with full 0 – 255 values, it is clipping values 0-15 and 236-255 (super blacks and super whites).

Try using the Computer RGB to sRGB in levels and see if this helps. Render a small clip. It will look more gray in Vegas preview, but should play fine in MPC, WMP and YT. Don’t worry about how media players play your video though. What matters is the format that you are delivering to people or YouTube in your case. If the clip you render looks good on YT, then render the whole video.

Hope this helps!

[Heinrich Himmel]

I suspect your GPU is to blame. 4K from GH4 runs fine in Best Full (no effects) in my system (4930k – 32GB RAM – AMD R9 280x)

GPU utilization is 60% on average on Best Full! On Preview Auto, it is 3%. CPU utilization is around 50%. Vegas is optimized for OpenCL and nVidia is not the best option for that. CUDA will not enhance playback, only renders that use CUDA. Try switching to an AMD card. Both playback and renders will increase. If you like wait until the R9 3xx series comes out in February. At the very least the R9 2xx will drop in price.

FYI, I run my 4K footage from external 5400RPM drives. No issues on playback. GH4 4K is only 100mbps (roughly 12MB/s). HDD can run at approx 100MB/s and SSD at 400MB/s. RAW footage is where you need fast drives.

Best full is not necessary for your cuts. Unless you run an external 4K monitor, you will only be slowing down your workflow and ruining your hearing from your fans spinning up. Best Full is useful after you made your cuts like when you are applying NR or adjusting color. Since you are not going to be scrubbing through your footage, it will not stress your system.