4 core vs. 8 core processing

JazerSprat wrote on 12/6/2007, 10:06 AM

All,

Has anyone here attempted to run Vegas on an 8 core (Dual Quad Core Intel Xeon Processors) to do audio translations?

I'd be interested to hear if anyone things that Vegas cannot handle it. Becuase my preliminary tests have shown that Vegas throws Fatal Exceptions on the 8-core when the load gets to high.

Just so you know what I am doing, on a box that has 2 Dual Core (4-core) Processors, I can fire up 34 separate instances of Vegas running simultaneously and transform 34 Audio files from WAV to MP3 in a little less than 2 minutes.

However, the same test run on an 8 core box, I can barely get 22 separate instances running without some of them throwing up Fatal Exceptions. ANd just getting those 22 transformations done, takes 2 minutes 16 seconds.

Thoughts would be appreciated.

Kashif

Comments

pmooney wrote on 12/6/2007, 10:36 AM

I have Dual Xeon Processors (2.66ghz) on a Precision 690 computer in my home studio. I've not had a problem with any renders so far, and the renders are fast.

It never occured to me to run a test like you are doing. I think your curiosity would be better served if you ran tests that more likely reflect "real world" use of the application.

I have no desire to repeat your experiment to verify your findings, as the normal procedure when rendering is to minimize use of the computer.

Kennymusicman wrote on 12/6/2007, 2:36 PM

Is this set-up method just for testing? Or are you looking for an easy way to convert many tracks from one format to another?

JazerSprat wrote on 12/7/2007, 7:16 AM

JazerSprat wrote on 12/7/2007, 7:21 AM

Kennymusicman, yes we are looking to convert about 2400 tracks of 3-4 minutes each from WAV to MP3 mostly. I work for a major book publisher, and we are using Vegas to transform Audio books

bgc wrote on 12/7/2007, 9:51 AM

Wouldn't Sound Forge and its Batch File capabilities be a better fit to convert all those Wav files to MP3? That's what I would use.
Load them all up, hit run and come back in a few days.

Former user wrote on 12/7/2007, 10:43 AM

Thanks, but my test is an actual reflection of a real world problem we are looking to solve with Vegas. I work for a major book publisher, and we are planning to use Vegas to transform audio books from WAV to which ever format our clients require. Its mostly a batch conversion job but we're looking at about 2400 tracks of 3-4 minutes each in each batch.

This sounds like a job for something like Wavelab/Forge - not Vegas. For my VO work - I routinely batch convert hundreds of wav files to various formats. Someone here mentioned Forge - but I still don't think it's batch processor is not ready for prime time.

I have done sessions with WL converting hundreds of wavs (for narrative/multimedia training) - and I could blow thru several hundred 2-3 minute clips in an hour or less - and it certainly didn't require an 8 core machine.

Cheers!

VP

Lavoll wrote on 12/13/2007, 9:15 AM

same as above, but with adobe audition. real simple to set up to do massive batch sessions :)

Kennymusicman wrote on 12/13/2007, 9:58 AM

Forges' batch converter works fine for what I do.,

Chienworks wrote on 12/13/2007, 11:26 AM

The other issue i see with using Vegas to try to process that many that fast is the workflow. 34 renders (yes, you are doing renders when converting from one format to another) in 2 minutes means that you are essentially starting a new job every 3.5 seconds or so. That's finding and opening a file, putting it on the timeline, going to file / render as and saving to a new file every 3.5 seconds. That simply is not a sustainable workflow. I'd be amazed if your users could keep up even 1/5 that speed for more than a few minutes without going nuts or making mistakes or pummelling the PC with a sledge hammer ... or even be able to keep up that speed at all.

Definitely look at a program that does batch processing, like Sound Forge.

farss wrote on 12/14/2007, 12:56 AM

I've done pretty much this with Vegas and the Multirenderer plugin from Peachrock, you just tell it to render all the files in one folder to another folder using a preset that you've previously created and let it run. It creates a temporary Vegas project and runs it. I've certainly never been able to run at 3.5 seconds per conversion but as others have pointed out the disk i/o would become the limiting factor. Still you'd do all the conversions overnight and I cannot see why you'd need it any faster than that.

But there's a bigger issue at hand, editing all the ID3 tags, that's what slowed me down converting talking books and I couldn't find anyway to automate that although someone could cut some code to do it from a database / spreadheet.

Bob.