8.0c and 8.1 on Vista 64

Tomsde wrote on 4/2/2009, 6:00 PM
I am running 8.0c on Vista 64 and it seems to be working well. I only have 4 gigabytes of memory on the system. Is there any advantage of installing 8.1 as well? Will it improve render times? I want to be able to use Cinescore and other plugins for my projects, so I've not installed 8.1 for that reason. I take it though that I can render 8.0c projects with the afforementioned plugins already in my movie in 8.1. I am understanding it correctly?

Please advise.

Comments

LarsHD wrote on 4/2/2009, 8:49 PM
"I am running 8.0c on Vista 64 and it seems to be working well. "

Lars: Yes, this is also my experience. I find 8.0c works *much* better in Vista 64 than in Windows XP32. Launches faster. Runs smoother. Can handle bigger projects better.


I only have 4 gigabytes of memory on the system. Is there any advantage of installing 8.1 as well?

Lars: I think so. I don't know why though. But I keep getting better frame rates when using 8.1 even when task manages isn't reporting me using more than 3.6GB etc. I guess lots of headroom is good.


Will it improve render times?

Lars: Yes sometimes. And sometimes it will amek then 10 times longer. And sometimes it will crash... 8.1 can also totally fail with render times. Things that 8.0c in Vista 64 does in 1min 16 seconds takes 17 minutes for 8.1 to do. My experience is that if you want to use 8.1, you will need 8.0c now and then. But both in Vista 64.

I want to be able to use Cinescore and other plugins for my projects, so I've not installed 8.1 for that reason.

Lars: When I use Cinescore I use that as standalone. Or from within 8.0c. That plugin doesn't show up in 8.1... :( (why Sony?)

I take it though that I can render 8.0c projects with the afforementioned plugins already in my movie in 8.1. I am understanding it correctly?

Lars: I can work on a project in 8.1. Save that. Open it in 8.0c, the Cinesocre plugin will work. Save the project from 8.0c and open in 8.1 and the resulting audio tracks that Cinescore created will be there ok. Don't be in 8.0c and use Cineform Neo files. Opening 8.1 then will just show empty video files.


With 8.1 it seems you can build up bigger projects. Projects that if I play them in 8.0c in XP 32 bit will sometimes play and sometimes crash. It seems however that Vegas 8.0c in Vista 64 handles this better.

I definitely want 8.1 and use that most of the time. But things appear a little shaky and I actually feel I need both... Had they fixed 8.1 so it could handle Neo plugins and it's own CIneform plugin + not screwed up with rendering sometimes, I would ionly have needed 8.1.

Get 4GB more ram and RAID-0 for streaming, it is well worth it if you're looking for performance and stability.

And 8.1 basically runs better for me. Smoother and more responsive. Higher frame rate. A little....


OK, these were my own experiences with 8.1 / 8.0

Lars
MTuggy wrote on 4/3/2009, 12:00 AM
Here is what I have learned (most of it in the last week-after using both since September). Yes, 8.1 has some rendering bugs in some formats but not all. If you use what works, it may be the working version you want to use to edit, then render in 8.0c if it gives you grief. Plugins are an issue as mentioned in the last post but some do work (New Blue, Spicemaster - get the updated versions that support 8.1)

Creating a two 6 GB page files (one on my C drive, one on my D drive) made render crashes go away (virtual memory settings).

Render times on a short test this evening - reveals how important settings are.
For a 1 min HDV project that was fully "cartoonized" to make it churn a bit had these results when render to the HD 1080i AVI intermediate file:
8.0c = 17:02 (set on 2 rendering threads)
8.0c = 16:04 (on 4 threads).
8.1 = 17:14 (set on 2 rendering threads)
8.1 = 13:33 (on 4 threads).

Just one person's experience but it might be helpful.

Mike

LarsHD wrote on 4/3/2009, 12:12 AM
And then there are scenarios with 8.1 where rendering out to an uncompressed AVI 1920x1080 may take 25-30 minutes and then 8.0c does the same job in 1-2 minutes...

Sometimes 8.1 just loses grip on everything ...



Lars
Tomsde wrote on 4/3/2009, 4:45 AM
I only have a Core 2 Duo on my laptop; so I won't get 4 threads. I did render out a very short HD (AVCHD transcoded to .mt2) clip in 8.0c and it seemed to take forever for only a 2 minute clip. I rendered it to NTSC Widescreen and the render took a while, but didn't crash. My laptop is maxed out at 4 Gigabytes of ram; it's not expandable, so I have to live with that.

Pinnacle Studio 12 seems to handle AVCHD footage better on my laptop--I have to transcode it to get it work well with Vegas Pro. It may be that I will have to use that software for HiDef until another patch or version of Vegas Pro is released. Ironically enough I found that Vegas Movie Studio 8 Pro handled AVCHD better.

I do hope an upgrade or new patch is released soon to address some of these linging issues.