Basic Question: Real time performance?

kimgr wrote on 4/22/2005, 1:27 AM

While most people on this forum seems concerned with rendering times, I’m more interested in real time preview and overall “responsiveness” of my NLE.
Granted, I’m a little annoyed that my Sonic software renders mpeg 250-300% faster than Vegas/DVD-A, but since I work on 2 computers most of the time, that’s often not too much of a problem…
But when it comes to editing I need real time preview, and Vegas just doesn’t seem to be up to the task?
I’m not asking for a lot, just a couple of DV25 streams with dissolves and fades, and an occasional text overlay…

Do everyone here pre-render all the time?

Because of my background in audio and music I felt that Vegas was the obvious choice when it comes to NLE’s. I was able to start editing within the hour of installing the software, without ever opening the manual, and I feel that everything is “in it’s right place” in Vegas, unlike Premiere, which is what I was using before. (In the good old days of mjpeg :)

Because I feel that Vegas is very sluggish, I started testing other NLE’s: Pinnacle Liquid, Avid Xpress Pro, Canopus Edius and Premiere Pro 1.5, and they all perform better than Vegas on my hardware… Even Pinnacle’s Studio is much better!

But I don’t like editing in any of them, so I thought that I’d try Vegas 6 on a high-end CPU since the advertising says it’s been optimized for dual processors etc.
But guess what: It doesn’t do any good. On a xw8200 with dual 3.4GHz Xeons I get lightning fast renders, but still not the real time preview I want :-(
Why do Vegas only use 50% of available CPU resources when playing back the timeline?

What do I need to be able to preview DV in real time with Vegas?
Since there are no hardware acceleration options for Vegas, and a dual Xeon can’t do it, I don’t see how?
Right now I’m leaning towards Pinnacle Liquid because of its GPU acceleration and low price, but as I said earlier I really prefer the Vegas GUI and feature set, so please tell me I don’t have to jump ship…?

Regards,

Kim G. Rasmussen
Design & Media

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Comments

InterceptPoint wrote on 4/23/2005, 4:44 PM

I talked to one of the Sony Vegas developers at NAB and tried to talk him into the idea of hardware support for Vegas 7. I got nowhere. It is pretty clear that this is not going to happen in the near future if ever. They are counting on AMD and Intel and that's it.

OTOH, implementing GPU support would seem like such a good idea. I don't know how it would work out for Vegas but would think that the software issues would be a lot less tricky than developing for a dedicated hardware support card. Wish I'd have asked him that. Others are doing it. Sony should do it too. We do need better preview than we are getting now.

jlafferty wrote on 4/23/2005, 8:00 PM

It's one thing to keep saying "gee, hardware support would be awfully nice and everyone else is doing it..."

It's another thing to actually do it without, e.g. breaking the app, or diverting too many resources with too little return.

I just don't understand how people can be so blithe and confident that the dev team is just misguided or short tempered or... whatever other than within reason with their decision.

- jim

Stonefield wrote on 4/23/2005, 8:10 PM

You should see the smile on my face as I read this thread. I'm working on a Pentium III 933 512 megs of "old" ram and my editing is quite as smooth as can be expected. Yes, my work also depends heavily on the timing and syncronization of beats to the video. When I need to check that....I just shrink the video preview down to half or third size, check my sync with FX muted. Then when I'm happy I RAM render what I need to see. Works great. And that's all on a really mediocre system.

I'm almost ready for a P4 3.2 CPU and 1 gig of the fast/new ram. Can't wait to see how that affects my already adequate workflow.

But I must say that a Dual Xeon 3.4 system that isn't working up to speed is telling me there must be a setting deep in your project that's throwing that off. By the way, have you TRIED editing in the PREVIEW system ? What about it is not working for you ?

I know some people with killer systems ... and it would drive them up the wall having it and seeing those GOOD and BEST settings and not getting smooth playback on them. But that's an ego thing I think.

Try Preview setting and see if you can work with that. Just try it. If you like it you can always lie and just tell people that you can work on the BEST setting ... it'll be our secret.

Grazie wrote on 4/23/2005, 10:48 PM

Stan, when you do get your P4 3.2 you will be amazed. I sat back and quielty said, "Oh is THAT how Vegas can work. Huh!" . . . AND Preview is what I deal with - it gives me enough scope and "clear-blue" to make those all inmportant edit decisions.

This software Roxs - daily!

Grazie

MH_Stevens wrote on 4/25/2005, 8:51 PM

I edit HDV. With a DV intermeadiary i get 29fps and with native transport streams I get about 8/9fps on a P4, 3.4GH. I find the native at 8/9fps easier to use than the DV intermeadiary because I don't have to render and carry all those big duplicate files. 8/9fps is jumpy but everything appears together in sync in real time for accurate editing and much easier and more correct color corection. I don't think the original poster has a problem.

Mike