Dual processors and audio editing question

musman wrote on 10/31/2004, 7:02 PM

If I understand things correctly about dual processor systems, Vegas uses 1 processor to render video and the other to render audio. Does this work the same with selectively prerendering? If so, this would seem to be a boon for extensive audio mixing.
The reason I ask is b/c the way I edit is often to add a new audio track for each speaker, sound effect, ambient audio for the scene, etc. Easier to find stuff that way and add track fx if needed. But the extra tracks seem to be a lot for the processor to keep up with. Last short film would play the audio back okay if the video tracks were turned off, but only a few seconds of preview if there is video. Did post about that before "What is killing my real time performance". Think the problem there was I had a lot of fx (compressors, volume envelopes, etc) and 46 audio tracks, so the processor can only keep up for a few seconds.
Back to the question: does Vegas use both processors (1 for audio and the other for video) for selectively prerendering and does anyone else find this a good reson for a dual processor system? Thanks for any thoughts!

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/31/2004, 7:52 PM

Using lots of audio is one of the best reasons for a duallie system. Having a duallie for a few tracks of audio and lots of video is silly, unless you plan on doing rendering in the background while you have several iterations of Vegas open.

musman wrote on 10/31/2004, 9:27 PM

Thanks, Spot. Been reading your book on the audio section and it is very helpful. Thank you. Can't wait for the Now Hear This dvd.
The way I like to set up my mixes seems to be very processor intensive. I like to have the whole thing there, unrendered, so I can make changes in subsequent mixes quickly and not to have to go looking for dfifferent Veg files or rendered SF files all over the place. Don't think my p4 2.4 is up to that.
One thing that I think would be very helpful is to have complete veg files with the audio mixing all there to see. Perhaps the DVD has that on it, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I always learn best by examples like that. Don't suppose there are other sources for this sort of thing, are there?
Thanks again!

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/1/2004, 9:36 AM

You may already know this, but one thing I suggest to a lot of people is that rather than inserting a comp to all audio tracks, set up a bus and send groups to that bus. Insert the comp on the BUS, saving tremendous amounts of CPU overhead/cycles.
There is a multi-track mix complete with media on the DVD, yes.

musman wrote on 11/2/2004, 3:43 PM

Thanks again for the help. Just wondering, you mean it would save processor power if I sent multiple tracks to the same bus and applied compression there rather than applying compression to each track, right? That would make sense, but not how I have it set up right now. Got compression on each track, and a lot of it is different kinds of compression, but I really am new to it so I'm probably don't know what I'm doing.