[John Rofrano]

OK this gives me a lot of good information.

> No. I am not a videographer. Lol. I’m a highschool senior.

I taught an after school video workshop a few years back. It’s great to see high school students showing an interest in making movies. Good for you!

> I definitely agree with the VAIO LP Series and that it would be good for what I am doing now… However, would it still work properly and perform well once I begin actual course-work in college?

Good point! I would check with your future college and find out what video editing software they use. If they use Apple Final Cut you will need a Mac. Since the Intel based Mac’s can run XP via “bootcamp” an iMac might not be a bad choice. If the college uses Windows software then continue with your PC purchase.

> Will it still perform when I begin using it for my career?

Probably not with only a dual-core. Quad-cores are pretty standard today and in the future having 8 cores will be commonplace. Dual-cores are at the end of their service life and HiDef is making quad-cores a minimum requirement.

> I think it is smartest to get the Quad Core, but I’ve never had an HP computer. Are they reliable?

I recommended HP because they do build very good computers. I was at their booth at the last NAB show and their workstation line has models that are specially built for video editing. Unfortunately, the workstation line is also more expensive which is why I directed you to their home line. If you want to look into an HP workstation the least expensive ones with quad-cores are the HP xw6600 Workstations, and the HP xw8600 Workstations. Those are computers that will last a few years and have room to upgrade hard drives and memory.

Lenovo also builds very solid computers (they bought the business from IBM) I would look at their ThinkStation workstations. There come in quad-core configurations. So do the ThinkCentre M Series. I just bought a little Lenovo S10 NetBook and they are outstanding quality for such a small device. (but not for video editing) Lenovo is know for their quality.

> However, if you believe that the HP would suit all of my possible uses, then I will trust your judgement.

I would look around. It’s an expensive decision. HP is a good starting place but you also might consider buying a good gaming PC because the demands are quite the same (i.e., fast CPU, fast graphics card and hard drives).

> When you say I am paying more money for the convenience, did you mean of the All-In-One? And how exactly is it an all in one? Simply because it has… What?

All-In-One computers are just a display and a keyboard and that’s it! The motherboard, hard drives, DVD drive, etc. are all built into the display section (actually behind the display). This is why laptop parts are often used because there is not a lot of room and no big fans so it’s basically a laptop with a detachable keyboard. I absolutely love the idea as a general purpose PC but they don’t yet come with quad-cores and CPU power is everything when rendering video (4 cores really are twice as fast as 2).

> Do you know if Vaio has a traditional tower/display, because that is the type of computer I used to have? Although, it looks as though they don’t make them anymore.( I could surely look it up.)

Sony doesn’t seem to build towers anymore but the VAIO towers were very good. I would look at the major manufacturers and see what they have to offer. If you are going to keep it for 4 years, your main criteria should be a quad-core processor, 2-4 GB of memory, and at least 2 hard drives, one for applications and one for video files and rendering. If you think you might upgrade in 2 years, the Sony VAIO is fine for now. With 4GB of memory and 1TB of hard disc space it was perfect except for a dual-core instead of a quad-core.

Once again, don’t forget to ask your future college if they use Macs!!!

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

That system has been upgraded several times so it all wasn’t purchased at once (i.e., i didn’t keep track of the overall price) and all of the parts were purchased at newegg.com and all of the parts are way cheaper now than what I paid a year ago. (I paid $1000+ for the Quad-Core proc alone at the time and now they are like $300!) So I would go to newegg and price the parts in today’s market (that’s why the part number are on my site). 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

> I have no idea why the desktop has Centrino/Mobile components or even that they were laptop components, but I guess so…

OK, it all makes sense now that you gave me the link. Those are the All-In-One computers which are meant to compete with the iMac. They call them “desktops” but technically they are just laptops on a stick with a detached keyboard. 😉 Still they are pretty cool machines if that’s what you like but they are not expandable at all. What you buy is what you get.

It is impossible for me to give you advice about what computer you should buy without first understanding how you will use it. I’m guessing that since your source files are WMV that you are not a videographer doing this for a living and need a machine that you can “bet your clients” on. Where did those files come from? Do you own a video camera and that is the source of most of your editing? Do you have or are you planning to work with HD footage and want burn Blu-ray discs? If you want to use the computer for the next four years will you be editing HD 4 years from now? These are all thing you need to consider.

You have to balance your desire for video editing with your need for other things you will use the computer for. If video editing is a hobby and you like the All-In-One design, the Sony VAIO® LT Series PC/TV All-in-One (VGC-LT38E) that you linked to with the 1TB drive looks like it would be a fine computer for your casual video work.

If you want to get a Quad-Core then I would abandon the All-In-One’s and just get a regular tower desktop like this HP Pavilion Elite d5000t ATX series which will render twice as fast because it has a Quad-Core (that’s 4 CPU cores instead of 2 in a Dual-Core)

The Dell links did not work because they were in your shopping cart and I could not access them but is doesn’t matter because personally I could never recommend a Dell in good conscience. (Long story, documented on my web site).

I don’t want to steer you away from the All-In-One’s but understand that you are paying a premium for that convenience and you will pay more money for a less powerful computer than if you buy a traditional tower and a display.

> Also… When you say “source files” did you mean the . zip file? Because after I extracted the media from those… I deleted them. 🙁

When I say source I’m referring to the files that you have placed on the Vegas timeline (i.e., those pesky WMV files that wouldn’t render).

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

That’s not a laptop? Those specs have a Centrino processor and Mobile Intel® PM965 Express Chipset which are laptop components and when I Googled “Sony VAIO® LT Series” all I saw were laptops. I guess they make desktops out of laptop components now.

I prefer a desktop over a laptop because you really need multiple hard drives to do video editing. Your files should not be kept on the C: drive and most laptops only have one drive which makes them a “minimal” platform for editing. If the computer you are looking at has two 500GB drives configure as two drives that would be best. If the two drives and in a RAID making them a single 1TB drive, that would not be as good (although not as bad a single non-RAID drive)

The easiest way to transfer files is to open the windows file explorer for both drives and drag and drop the folder between them. You could Copy and Paste also, it accomplishes the same thing.

As for your firewire drive, just get a firewire card for your laptop. I bought one for mine and it works great. They are only about $25-$49 so it’s not a investment. Firewire is better than USB so that is a preferable way to go, but I couldn’t resist those WD drives, they are just so small and easy to carry around.

As for processing power, I would not buy anything less that a quad-core today. How long do you plan to keep this computer? If you buy a new computer every year that a dual-core may be fine. But if you keep a computer for a few years then you have to think about how that dual-core is going to perform 3-4 years from now. So I would recommend a quad-core to “future-proof” your purchase.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

I don’t know if the board ever made it to market. What they were demoing was a prototype board. You would have to do a search to see if they actually release a product from it. It was only doing SD MPEG2 and it a time with HD building steam, maybe they reconsidered the usefulness. I don’t know.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Unfortunately, no… you cannot transfer a license yourself. What Sony does is keep track of the machine signature and each time they see a “significant” change they update a counter on their end. When you have maxed out your counter the authorization fails and you have to call them on the phone and explain that you are just moving to a new machine and they will reset your counter for you.

I have had this happen when adding memory and a new hard drive to my PC. I re-imaged the hard drive with an exiting backup so nothing changed about the hard drive contents except that it was larger in size but that, along with buying more memory, was enough for one Sony application to increase my counter over the limit. Sometimes this turns out to be a big PITA (since Sony is not open on the weekend when most of my hardware upgrades happen) and I would much rather a scheme that allows customers to move licenses between machines.

If you can’t tell, I am not a big fan of activation and feel that it only punishes paying customers while pirates use their cracked copies unimpeded. But I digress… (I’m beginning to like dongles more and more… just give me my key and stay out of my way)

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

I’m not sure why you are asking this question. An iso file is a disc image and you can’t change the UDF structure on it. When you go into Nero and select Burn Image there are no other options. It just takes the iso image and burns it sector by sector to disc.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Hi Fotis, How’ve you been?

There is no hardware that Vegas will use for preview. When I was at NAB 2008 this year I saw an add-on board demonstrated that would speed up MPEG-2 renders but nothing to speed up preview.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

Yea, it looks like the Sony developers were really listening to their customers this time. It is packed with features we’ve been asking for.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[John Rofrano]

If you read the END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT on the Sony site, in the very first clause it states:

1. GRANT OF LICENSE. Sony hereby grants you a limited, non-exclusive license to use the Software on one (1) computer at a time upon the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement. In the event your Software title is also equipped with a Software application-related network renderer (with which you can render projects on additional computer(s)) (each a “Renderer”), Sony hereby grants you a limited, non-exclusive license to use such Renderer(s) on up to two (2) additional computers at a time, solely in connection with the use of Software on a single computer and subject to the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement. Sony reserves all rights in and to the Software and the Renderer(s) not otherwise granted in this Agreement.

So the answer to your question is that you can have 2 render node licenses for each Vegas Pro licenses. That means to use render nodes on 4 machines you would need 2 licenses.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com