Help! How to speed up VMS 9???

dglevy wrote on 1/18/2011, 2:16 PM
Hi all,

After getting next to zero help from Sony tech support, I'm hoping some knowledgeable people on this forum can help me. I'm trying to help my office-mate find a way to speed up video processing in Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum v. 9.0B. Current configuration of her computer is here at bottom.

We are wondering if a hardware upgrade from 2 cores to 4 cores will make a significant difference. Sony tech support doesn't provide a lot of guidance:
"I would say it is worth going to 4-cores if using the 64-bit version of Vegas Pro on a 64-bit OS. As you know, Vegas Movie Studio10 is only a 32-bit application and the main roadblock is memory since it can’t use more than 2GB. Having more cores for Vegas Movie Studio10 will still increase performance, but perhaps not significantly."

"perhaps not significantly" is not exactly the sort of confidence level I can act on, especially when the recommended alternative is the $400 cost of upgrading to Vegas Pro.

Does anybody have any direct experience with VMS, switching from two cores to four?

Thanks in advance to those who can provide thoughtful and knowledgeable advice.

Sincerely,

DGLevy
Washington, DC

Current configuration:
--Windows XP 64 bit
--Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 Conroe 2.13GHz
--Corsair XMS2 1GB (2 x 1 GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400), plus another 1 GB of the exact same model but in 512 MB sticks; total: 3 GB.
--Samsung SpinPoint T Series HD501LJ 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/18/2011, 3:52 PM
Vegas Pro isn't going to run significantly faster than Vegas Studio. The only case where it might is that the newer versions of Vegas support CUDA GPU assisted rendering for a very limited selection of formats, though the results are mediocre to minimal, and no improvement at all for all the other formats. For that matter, the new version 10 of Vegas Studio has this support to. In fact, i could imagine that Vegas Studio could well perform better than Vegas since it isn't as bloated and overloaded with so many additional features.

In general, Vegas' speed is directly proportional to CPU power. I would expect 4 cores to let it run just about twice as fast as 2 cores. Not all operations will take advantage of multiple cores but video rendering usually does, and that's by far the biggest bottleneck.

RAM makes very little difference once you've gotten above the level the project requires, and that's usually a lot less than most people would guess. I run Vegas very successfully on computers with 1GB and even my laptop with only 512MB.
Eugenia wrote on 1/18/2011, 4:18 PM
What do you even mean by "video processing"? Do you mean video playback while editing, or video rendering when exporting?

There is no easy answer for any of the two, apart from "buy the fastest PC", unless you give us more information. For example, what kind of footage/format are we talking about here? The format may be more important than the PC you use for example.
dglevy wrote on 1/18/2011, 8:13 PM
Thanks so much for your replies! I suspected that Sony tech support's reply was not particularly carefully considered, and Chienworks' reply tends to confirm that. I'm hoping that boosting the four cores will increase processing speed by at least 50% and hopefully more.

As for Eugenia's post, I will talk with the user tomorrow about what her usage of the software is, where she encounters the most wait time, etc., and post again. (I provide tech support for the office, am not the user of the software.)
dglevy wrote on 1/20/2011, 2:24 PM
I talked with my colleague. Apparently, she uses the software for one thing only: to transfer videos from a camcorder to her computer and convert the format to mp4. The camcorder is a Samsung SCD23.

I don't think there is much that can be done to speed up the import process since it appears it has to be done in real time, no faster process is available. (See details here below*).

Once the video is imported, she edits it and exports to mp4 format. She says the export function takes at least an hour to complete. She thinks that 'export' and 'rendering' are two words for what is the same function. Once it's been exported, if she discovers a flaw in the final product, she has to fix the flaw and export it all over again--another hour. Apparently, VMS doesn't take time to load the video after it's been converted to mp4; it just takes time to export it.

So, maybe a more precise query is: Will a hardware upgrade from 2.1 GHz core 2 duo to 3.0 GHz 4 core make a signficant difference in export time and, if so, how big a difference?

Thanks in advance to any thoughtful and well-informed advice that can be offered.

David

*She imports the video data in real time. I checked the manual, which is pretty skimpy on details, when it comes to transferring data. From what I could figure out, it appears there is no way to import the data any other way than real time, i.e., pushing the 'play' button on the camcorder and waiting for the whole thing to finish. This is pretty annoying, esp., if it's a two hour seminar that is being transferred. But I suppose the only way to resolve this aspect of the problem is to buy a new camcorder.
MSmart wrote on 1/20/2011, 4:04 PM
As the Samsung SCD23 is a MiniDV camera, capturing to DV-AVI video can only be done in realtime, no way around it.

Yes, exporting and rendering are the same.

If you just need standard def video, you could buy one that records mpeg files onto an internal hard drive. The import process is simply connecting the cam to the computer with a USB cable and "copying" the file(s) to the PC HD then edit with VMS. For your 2-hour seminar, she'd realize a one hour 50 minute savings.
Eugenia wrote on 1/20/2011, 4:40 PM
The new PC might make her exporting/rendering up to twice faster. However, she has a fundamental misunderstanding how video editing works. You're not supposed to re-edit an already exported video in MP4. She first should export a low resolution version (e.g. 320x180 (16:9) or 320x240 (4:3) MP4 at 500 kbps bitrate), watch it thoroughly, maybe show it to clients/family, and only when it's 100% done, only then export in MP4 in full resolution -- which is the version that would take a lot of time to export.

Another way to get around the slowness of re-exports before the very final export is to export in DV-AVI. Vegas has a nice trick, called smart rendering, that it does NOT re-encode everything if your source file is DV-AVI and you export back as DV-AVI (provided that your project properties are correct and you used no plugins on the clips). Smart rendering only takes a few minutes! You should only use DV-AVI exports for archival, or writing back to tape though, not as a way to export for the web, or watch on your PC. MP4 is better for that.

Also, if your friend ever upgrades to an HD camera, she should expect at least 5x-8x slower exports, even on a faster PC. The bigger the source format resolution and difficulty to decode, and HD exporting, the more difficult makes it for the CPU to work fast enough. It's how we all go by. Renders are slow, it's a fact of life.
dglevy wrote on 1/21/2011, 6:29 AM
Many thanks to MSmart and Eugenia for your replies. They were HUGELY HELPFUL! At this point, we will have to decide where to put our money--in a new camera or a new PC, or both...

If we decide to get a new PC, will VMS 9 work with Windows 7? If it does, is there any difference in speed?
shambels wrote on 1/21/2011, 10:24 AM
Get a new cam. I switched from tape to flash memory. Downloads are much faster and can be done thru a card reader. In my case the card readers are in my hp printer. A cam with a hard drive might download faster but I've never owned one of those so I'm not sure. You will have to decide how to archive your vids if that is a consideration.

I believe that one of the FAQs says that MS9 works with W7. Hope that is correct as I am about to buy a new computer to use with MS9.