Kenny, do you mean the standard HDV 1080-50i template or do you actually mean 25i?

To remove element of source footage being a problem, I used the render test veg with media duplicated repeatedly.
therefore settings are:
Template HDV 1080-60i (1440x1080, 29.97 fps) instead of my original post. My submitted ram tests were based on the render test and therefore a suitable control to measure against.

[edit: Nick - corrected 25i typo in first post - ta]

I can now get 3712MB available for RAM preview under 64bit OS, and 3198MB available under 32bit OS

Kenny - how are you getting past the 1024MB limit in the RAM preview setup? I am running XP64 and that is the maximum amount of RAM I can set.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt | ImmersiveVJ.com

If you got to the internals, you can increase the settings
(hold shift when entering options menu).
look in internals for "ram p" and it's the only value on screen. You can adjust to what you like - but this is where my experimenting is coming in, and I'm wondering what people are able to get as a value and thus selectable time...

Note, if you, for example set 2048 in the menu, and vegas could only see 2048, then it would show a max value of about 1664 or similar vaulue, as Vegas 8 wants to keep about 384MB for itself, regardless of ram preview settings, and Vegas 7 wants about 192MB. These values you cannot alter, so don't be suprised when you specifiy 4096MB and you can't get that value.

Doing a slightly different test on straight NTSC DV.

500 MB allocated for rerender

No FX, Just NTSC DV25: 12.10
Extreme Gausian Blur Preset: 5.19

Same amount of RAM but more can be prerendered if the CPU doesn't have to work very hard. As I understand it this is because Vegas doesn't have to render every single frame because the goal is just to get full framerate playback. So different computers may get more or less rerender time based on CPU speed.

But it's interesting to know you can set the max prerender RAM in the internal prefs. How does it affect the size of your page file when you max the setting out? It used to be that Windows would start paging once Vegas had grabbed enough RAM.

Rob

Oh, and if I set my preview quality to Draft/Full I can get 50.08 prerender (no FX)

I kind of wonder why Vegas would bother, at that quality and just DV footage.

Rob Mack

XP x64 here with 4Gb RAM.

Set dynamic RAM preview max to 4096MB in the internal preferences.

It then displayed 3583MB on the video preferences tab.

Opened rendertest-hdv.veg and copied the media on all those tracks to make a 2 minute project.

Did a dynamic RAM preview test and it stopped at 1:58.15 but had progressively slowed down almost to a halt during the render (presumably as the amount of available RAM got used up?).

I notice you can also change the 384MB Vegas reserves for itself in the internals, but I didn't try it.

Erm... what does all this prove or otherwise?

Thanks Nick - you've answered it. I've been playing with the larage address aware flag, and seeing what results I get. It certainly altered the ability with regards to dynamic ram in 32bit OS, but wasn't sure if it was making any difference in the 64os world - and with your last post, obviously not.

Therefore it's easily possible to allow vegas to use more ram in a 32bit is wanted, which can help accellerate workflow (possibly) if a user has enough ram - within the confines of the 4gb total amount available of course. In 64bit, evidently nothing extra being gained - but I needed someone else just to check. (ie, if it was seeing up to 4gb without any changes).

So thanks for the responses - at least I know it's been worth it on 32bit OS.

[edit: Thanks Rob too!! As for page file - in 64bit, it's not a problem for me...In 32bit, I settle for about 2GB ram preview, and Vista sorts itself out to make any necessary room if needed, without paging - so within a sensible amount, I have no paging issues at all]

When you say "Large Address Aware Flag" you mean you're hacking the Vegas executable ala MS Flight Sim?

In my Vegas (no modifications except for the internal RAM P setting set to 4096) I'm given a max RAM preview of 1664 MB.

If I load a new project my system's page file drops to 1.17. (I have a bunch of other piggy programs running) After doing a RAM Preview my page file grows to 2.76. It seems to me that even parts of Vegas have been swapped since Task manager says it's using just 30 megs with a 300+ MB VM size.

I'm on XP, btw.

Anyway, making more RAM available to Vegas would help if it's actually available, even if it's just caching frames as you work. So, you're right. Sensible limits.

Rob

yes - I'm just activating the flag on the executable.

There is defintely some paging on 32bit OS, and not on my 64bit OS. I've got to play more with 32bit world to see if there any real world benefits, or if it's just a set of numbers showing a higher available amount with no genuine net gain.

Will have a play after tonight.

Well, under the 32-bit OS you've still got a practical cieling around 3.2 GB for the entire system, so Vegas gets a little more memory but not a lot, certainly not as much as it should have available under a 64-bit OS.

How's the stability of Vegas with the flag set?

Rob

No difference in stability. I wrote about my findings in the other recent thread about ram preview and render times. There's clearly still some opportunity for improvement with my research, but that'll have to wait until later tomorrow. However, if nothing else, it's justified to me, an instant advantage of 64bit host over 32, and I've quantified my systsem performance much more (to myself...)
IT's all very interesting :)

Good work. Since the forum search function is still a bit limp, maybe it would be good to summarize some things from other threads:

1) Change the Internal Vegas Settings - Hold the Shift key down, while selecting Preferences. You will see an additional tab labeled "Internal". The maximum amount of Preview RAM and Vegas' RAM usage are two variables that can be increased.

2) Phil Taylor's Flight Simulator Blog on how to set the large address aware flag for 32 bit programs like Vegas. This will supposedly allow Vegas to use more than a total of 2GB, if you're running 64 bit Windows. Taylor also explains that you can even allocate some additional RAM under 32 bit Windows, but obtaining the gain is a bit more involved:

http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/ptaylor/archive/2007/06/15/fsx-and-win32-process-address-space.aspx

3) The description of the utility Alacrity PC which will allow you to temporarily stop unneeded programs and Windows services while running Vegas. This will eke out a bit more RAM:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=581808&Replies=4

All this makes sense if you are running 64 bit Windows and have 4 or more GB of RAM installed. The main advantage that Kennymusician has pointed out is that you can increase the amount of preview RAM above the Vegas default 1 GB limit.

I'm really confused now. I'm on XP x64 with 4GB RAM.

Should I be setting something in my boot.ini file?

Should I be hacking my Vegas executable? If so how?

If you want to change te LAA flag in any executable - there is a hard way (visual studio, certain command s and so forth), or there is an easy way. Google "laatido" - it's dead easy to use, so needs no explanation.

With a 64bit OS - no configuration change is needed (boot in XP, BCD in Vista).

In 32bit OS, XP will probably want the infamous "3gb switch", whereas Vista either doesn't, or may want tweaking via BCDedit.

Has it now been proved that setting the LAA flag can help Vegas on a 64-bit OS?

Apologies for ongoing stupidity.

Not quite - the findings show that the 64bit OS is handling Vegas as though it was/is LAA regardless of the tweak - so the gain in 64bit is there already, without any work required by anyone.

Hmm. Trying to decide what really happens here. I've ised LAATIDO to set the LAA flag on a copy of the Vegas executable. Very easy.

I'm running 32-bit XP, SP2

I can set the internal RAM P setting above the actual memory I have installed, so I set it at 3072 MB. I have about 2.5 GB installed. Vegas now offers a max of 2175 for RAM preview under the Video tab.

We're talking about virtual space here. Obviously Vegas isn't going to get to use 3.0 GB of RAM because I don't have it. Since I haven't set the /3GB switch in Boot INI yet, I assume it still won't really be able to use more than 2GB.

Regardless, I open a project and do a ram preview on it. I get 54.21 seconds and my page file grows to about 2.85 GB. The page file is much higher than it was yesterday when Vegas wasn't Large Address Aware, so I assume Vegas is actually using more memory for ram preview. But here's the other thing...Vegas is acting like it's reading some of that ram previewed region from disk, which suggests to me that it actually had to page the ram preview to disk.

No big deal, trying to run Vegas this way on win32 is unreasonable.

I think if you are actually running a 64-bit version of Windows and have at least 4GB of actual memory available (as opposed to installed. Not always the same thing) then making Vegas Large Address Aware might be useful. I don't think I'd even bother on Win32.

Lots of caveats here. If you have crashes then you really need to go back to the unhacked version of Vegas and see if the crashes persist. You can't expect support from SCS on a modified version of Vegas, nor should they even support Vegas on Win64. You're out of specification in both cases so if you have troubles there's no one to cry to but yourself.

And then you're still left with other questions. 32-bit applications that are Large Address Aware are only supposed to be able to use 3GB, afaik. so you get an extra 1 GB to play with. The big question is, does a large RAM preview actually help a render. I think I'd try to do tests on projects that are some multiple of whatever you can do a RAM preview of. Maybe if you can Ram Preview a minute of program then you'd want to test on 10 or even 20 minutes of program. Better yet, close and restart Vegas before a test to make sure that nothing is cached to RAM. I think one user here reported that his RAM preview size made no difference if he did his render tests right after a fresh start.

It might actually be that in some cases Vegas could use more RAM and that this has nothing to do with how much is given over to RAM Previews.

It might also be that the time spent fussing with this stuff might be better spent doing chores while Vegas renders.

Rob

We're heading towards same conclusions more or less. IN 64bit, no need to play with anything, it's already catered for by the OS. You do get a benefit of extra memory (assuming you have more ram, than say 4gb). In 32bit, unless you're nifty with paging locations on HDD and have enough HDD to read, page and write, then it's not worth the effort for little/any gain. But nonetheless, the experimentation has been worthwhile. As for whether or not it's useful - it can certainly be - as a ram preview can be built very fast relative to other means, and great for checking something before a render - especially on short projects.

I had fun, anyway...

@rmack350,

LOL, good points. Setting the LAA flag in x64 with >=4GB RAM does matter and I agree that all that happens if you don't set it, is that your OS paging file is used. That sorta defeats the whole purpose. And for systems with less RAM or any 32 bit OS, none of this is of any help.

Your last sentence is key, however and I raised it in the Vegas 64 bit thread. Having more RAM accessible in Vegas does help a bit, but the main problem with all NLEs is the snail-like rendering/encoding speed and that can only be "solved" by having more and faster CPUs. Within a year, fast 8 core PCs will be within reach at a reasonable price, so we may look back at this HDV slow-encoding period as prehistoric. Remember how long it USED to take to burn a DVD?

Oh yes. Definitely worth looking at and it might breathe a little more life into things if you really needed more memory. And RAM previews probably go very fast on a quad. On this machine at work, a large RAM preview still would have me waiting.

Here at work we're using PPro with Axio hardware and between the two they definitely need a lot more RAM than 3.2 GB. Unfortunately there aren't any 64-bit Axio drivers yet. PPro is Large Address Aware though so it'd get a little help from a 64-bit OS if you weren't using the cards. Both companies are aware of the need and I'd be surprised if they didn't beat SCS to the 64-bit finish line.

Vegas has a lot less need for the RAM than PPro does.

Rob