I'm using 9.0b 64bit and 8.0c .. Here's why. 9.0c cannot handle jpgs or pngs without problems... 9.0b 64bit does fine for me on SD but not so well on AVCHD. So I'm using 8.0c when using AVCHD and 9.0b 64bit when using SD. If you are not using still images and 9.0c 64bit is very good for AVCHD or SD. My two cents.
I thought I was doing just fine too with V9.0c under XP 32 but now I've found I can reliably lock it up badly.
XDCAM footage on track 1.
HDV on track 2
Enable external monitor.
Use event pan/crop to H flip a short clip on track 1.
All good so far.
Now add a Bezier mask to clip.
It gets increasingly tardy as I add more keyframes and then goes over an event horizon. Preview render (the "....." thing) runs for a while then it stops, GUI fails to respond. Eventually have to drive a stake through it's heart to kill it.
Highly repeatable.
Anyways I'll just scrap my little creative notion and keep on cutting away.
Well I've made the issue go away by not adding a mask with lots of keyframes. Screwy thing was after I restored the project complete with all the keyframes I'd added it played out fine. It was the process of adjusting keyframes / nodes that caused the grief.
One thing that is interesting. Vegas of old would abort trying to render the current frame if you moved the cursor, now it doesn't. Maybe it's possible a queue is overflowing or some such and that's what brings it unstuck.
Didn't push it hard enough to make it crash but the problem in the command processing queue is still there. I can outrun Vegas updating the preview by many seconds.
I jog forward a few frames and the cursor doesn't move, tool selection does nothing and then blatt, the cursor has moved and the tool under the cursor has changed. This happens immediately I start adding keyframes to change the mask. Even if it didn't crash it's unusable, one would go bongers trying to live with a GUI that works like this. Even when things settle and Vegas has caught up with me the response time to changes to a node's handles is way too slow. It feels like I'm dragging a block of concrete through treacle.
I've done this same kind of thing with XDCAM footage in V8. V9.0c is a new world of pain. For this job I'll just keep it simple and get it out the door.
Thanks for all the input thus far guys. As of now I have decided to give 9.0c 64-bit a shot. I will be attending CES in a couple of weeks and I hope it serves my needs well for some HD H.264 editing (9.0a did just fine last year at E3).