Hardware for Vegas

KUKI wrote on 10/1/2003, 5:27 AM
Does Vegas NLE needs hardware acceleration?
My opinion on this matter is in terms on inclusion of as much end users as Sony can target. One approach could be to create DIFFERENT FLAVOURS of Vegas in offerings:

1. VEGAS HOME/SCHOOL: as is software package only, based on DV and Digital-8 formats, which can be bundled with new Vaio laptops or desktop/workstations from Sony.

2. VEGAS PROSUMER/VIDEOGRAPHER: Sony should develop hardware support in league of Matrox RT.X100, Canopus DVStorm2 Plus or Pinnacle Pro-ONE RTDV boards. Sony would have to put Vegas’ acclaimed CODEC onto chip in order to get real-time output to tape. “Holy Trinity” of CPU power + Dynamic RAM + 3D capabilities of graphic (GL) card would take care of colour correction, transitions, FX etc. Native support for DVCAM and DVCPRO 25 should be also implemented for competitiveness. Standard composite and Y/C inputs and outputs included.

3. VEGAS PROFESSIONAL/HIGH DEFINITION: Mainstream/High-end product with hardware I/O support for: HDCAM HD-SDI, IMX MPEG2, DVCPRO 50, DigiBeta SDI and component Betacam SP. All connectivity options from above are also included. Must features would be EDL import/export as well as OMF and AAF, not to mention support for 4X (or more) capturing speed.

Possibility of modular design of hardware-assisted acceleration can be investigated so when you want to upgrade your system, you just add new module.

Addition to all of this is bringing Vegas NLE software to 64-bit platform, thus utilising performance boost on AMD Operton-based workstations with upcoming 64-bit version of WindowsXP. Same goes for Sony drivers for any capturing board configuration.

KUKI
Video editor

Comments

Tampa wrote on 10/1/2003, 6:03 AM
Sounds ok, but I liked buying the high end software without adding more hardware. I'd hate to see that go. Vegas is Hyper Thread enabled. That's kind of hardware accelerated.
johnmeyer wrote on 10/1/2003, 10:24 AM
Does Vegas NLE needs hardware acceleration?

No. The beauty of this program is that it runs on just about anything, and runs fast. Modern computers already use the fastest processors in the world. If software is properly written (and Vegas is properly written), there is plenty enough compute power to do just about anything.

The simplest, and most generic way to get more processing power is to purchase a multiprocessor computer. This configuration lets any program that supports multiprocessor to run faster. By contrast, when you spend a fortune getting a proprietary NLE board, you only speed up one program. The idea that these proprietary boards are doing something "special" is kind of silly: They just have a processor and some memory, just like the main computer. Do we have special boards for photo editing, statistical computations, simulations, and other processor intensive tasks? No. We just purchase more powerful computers.

Lots of other threads on this subject in this forum, most of them very long. Do a search on "hardware" and I think you'll turn up most of them. Worth a read if you're going to do a story about this.
Jay Gladwell wrote on 10/1/2003, 10:37 AM
Actually, Kuki, this topic was covered in some depth just a few months ago. I'd suggest you do a search and read those posts, thus saving some of Sony's precarious bandwidth.