last ditch effort.. new comp?

cchoy wrote on 2/23/2007, 5:42 AM
so yesterday was a sad day at the studio, though I guess I didn't lose on all fronts.
After a lot of arguing, I have been forbidden to use Vegas for final mix downs, for recording ADR, and for foleying. The reasons were:

"You've been telling us that the secondary monitor should fix sync issues: it obviously doesn't, even after you went out and tried two different new graphics cards. We're losing money while you try to get this system to work properly"

"You need to use a solution that is going to support external control with our board. We don't have room for another control surface in the room." (which uses HUI)

I have been able (because I've got a copy of EDL convert) to convince the powers that be to let me do my editing on Vegas and then port over to another system for the mix... but it shouldn't need to be this way! I want to use Vegas in the mix room! I am especially frustrated because I repeatedly read on this and other forums about other people having no trouble at all with sync issues.

So as a last ditch effort, I'm asking everyone on this forum to give me the specs of a computer that will run Vegas and a 16GB picture off of a firewire drive, 30 tracks of audio, and a few automated DX reverbs and eqs with absolutely no jitter, no bad framerate, and no problems. Maybe I can convince someone in the next few months to budget some money (one of our older comps is due for replacement soon) and give Vegas another chance in the mix room...

sadly,
cchoy

Comments

newhope wrote on 2/23/2007, 4:37 PM
Corey
Well this probably won't fly in your studio with your employers but I'm using a Mac Pro, check my system specs.
Dual 3GHz Zeon 'Woodcrest' dual core CPUs, 2Gb RAM

There are, of course, PC equivalents and I'd be looking at the HP or possibly Dell versions with the same CPUs.

Why? Because that is what I would expect your studio to need to run a ProTools HD system and, if the new PC can do that, it will certainly do Vegas. You get to kill two birds with one stone (or in the case of dual Zeons 'boulder') Your employers would probably be happier with a PC than can do both.

Personally I'm happier with a Mac that can do both but I have other reasons for wanting a Mac besides Vegas.

That said it will still fly on a core2duo CPU. My son has it running on a PC we put together, yeah I build and sell PCs so I'm not a rabid anti-PC, Mac user or Anti-Mac, PC user... I don't have time for those type of idiots....

Chose an ASUS P5N32-SLI PREMIUM WIFI AP Motherboard with 2Gb DDR 667Mhz RAM (though 553MHz would have done) 80GB SATA Boot and a 320GB SATA data drive ASUS EN7950GT 512Mb PCIe Video card (motherboard is capable of supporting two video cards under SLI technology) and a Sony Dual Layer DVD-+R/RW with a Dell 24" monitor. The motherboard has firewire on board as well as external SATA 3Gb/s connector for external SATA drives.

I tend to prefer ASUS boards as, from experience and I've been on PC since 1998 and Apple since 1984, they do video well and are VERY reliable, that said I've heard nothing but good wraps for TYAN boards and I believe that's what you find inside the HP server PCs with Zeon CPUs (haven't confirmed that).

While my son's PC doesn't quite meet the Mac Pro's speed it still handles Vegas without a blink....as well as too many games to mention.

BTW he's a professional video editor working on AVIDS in his day job and his employer uses HP dual (single core) Zeon PCs for their AVIDs at present.

Regards
New Hope Media
cchoy wrote on 2/25/2007, 11:00 AM
anyone else want to weigh in?
farss wrote on 2/25/2007, 12:22 PM
Running Vegas on a Supermicro system down here, smooth as silk even with 4:2:2, I can even feed a SDI monitor from the BMD Decklink card which would be good if you need to get the monitor some distance away from the PC. Supermicro mobos seem to have higher speed busses than the Tynan mobos, well they did when I was looking around. The mobo is running dual Xeon 3.0GHz CPUs, the later CPUs would run even faster.

However looking at what you're trying to run, I'm running the source files typically from an internal SATA RAID off a RAID card. I'm just wondering if part of your problem is trying to pull so many files at once off a drive over firewire, dumping all the files onto an internal drive should help matters no end. Also be aware that mobo RAID uses a lot of CPU power and you need all you can get.

Other thing to watch out for. Vegas will happily cope with have mixed sample rates and bit depth however that gobbles up a lot of CPU at the expense of the video frame rate. I don't think you're actually having sync issues, it's only the frame rate of the video playback that you're having issues with.

I'd also suggest making certain you've got enough RAM, 2GB seems to help.

Bob.
cchoy wrote on 2/25/2007, 3:42 PM
Thanks for the mixed bitrate issue mention... that IS something i've definitely noticed, and will probably go through and fix pretty soon...

what is the difference between framerate playback and sync? I need constant framerate for sync...

as for RAM, I've got 2 GB and I'm running sound off of the harddrive and vid off of firewire... (mixed source is best?)

there is no raid...but i'll look into that definitely.

what kind of price tag is on these computers that you guys built? is building your own definitely better?

ForumAdmin wrote on 2/26/2007, 2:20 PM
cchoy, please check your email...
newhope wrote on 2/26/2007, 5:31 PM
Corey

Both Bob (farss) and I are in Australia so the prices here won't be relevant, and are probably higher than the US.

I've found building my own is a cheaper option, plus you can choose a combination of hardware to suit your needs, not be stuck with a package the manufacturer/reseller wants to put together for you. You can tailor the hardware to be efficient for video by researching the types of motherboards, video cards and CPUs that are going to give you the performance you want for video/audio post work.

Typically in Australian Dollars e6400 core2duo $320 wholesale, the ASUS motherboard about $250, video card $250, 2Gb RAM $150 (more for ECC) case $80-200 depends on quality. Zeon CPUs are around $1500 up each and require server motherboards not the desktop type that support core2duo CPUs. Typically a TYAN dual CPU MB for Zeon CPUs would cost around $800AUS by itself, which was why I decided to buy the Mac Pro because the whole computer came in under AUS$6000 and offered the ability to operate in both XP and OSX.

I'd suggest swapping the location of audio with the video, The firewire drive should handle multiple streams of audio, which has a much lower data rate than video, and the video can play off the internal drive.

I rarely use an external firewire for video replay but happily store audio on them and USB2. I'd give it a try and see if the replay on the current system improves. That assumes that the internal drive isn't the boot drive of the computer as no one advises having video or audio stored on your boot drive.

Steve
cchoy wrote on 3/7/2007, 12:09 PM
Steve and Bob--

Thank you so much for the suggestions. I'm going to be looking out for a solution that hopefully works, though I'm going to have to sneak in off hours to test...

Still hoping that HUI support will enter the Vegas world.

--Cory