Memory won't make much difference. You've got plenty now.

This is a very slight quibble with your question, but in fact, you are seeing the transitions in real-time. The problem you are having is that you aren't seeing them at the full frame rate since Vegas can't process all the information fast enough. The frames you do see are happening at the correct time though.

A faster processor can help. An XP 2100+ is hardly speedy by today's standards. However, i still use a P3 866MHz at home and it's fast enough to be useful for editing video.

What may be helpful for you is dynamic RAM previews. If you highlight the area of the transition and then press Shift-B, that section will be rendered in RAM and afterwards will then play back at full frame rate. With the amount of RAM you have you should be able to accumulate well over a full minute's worth of previews this way.

thanks guys,

but I have tried the dynanic ram previews... and it's still doing the same thing...since windows XP takes so much RAM by default, it doesn't left much ram for the other apps, that's why I was wordering if more RAM could help.

What I'm doing it's that I prerender a selection of the video that I want in real time, it's a bit long for a small part but it's running flawlessly after the rendering.

I've got Windows XP with 512MB of RAM and have about 384MB available for RAM previews. This is enough for over 100 seconds of preview. However, Vegas defaults to only allowing 16MB. If you go to Options / Preferences / Video you can increase the maximum amount available for previews.

thanks chienworks, I will try that.

what are your source files (on the timeline)? I have an AMD XP 1800 & I get RT preivews (or pretty close near) with DV AVI files.

Try decreasing the quality of the video preview to "Preview|Full." It may look a little grainier, but should give you a decent idea of the timing.

memory will not help. a faster processor. windows xp will only reconize 512mb of memmory. i have an amd-64-fx-55, 3gig ddr400 pc320 hyperx kingston memory, and it take me 1 hour and 10 minutes to render i hour of video. i check my system performance and the cpu is working at 100%, and my memory usage is 360mb(152mb used for running windows). windows xp 64-bit reconizes up to 16 gigs memory. when i render on the 64-bit xp 1 hour of video is rendered in 20 minutes.

"windows xp will only reconize 512mb of memmory"

That will come as a surprise to all of us successfully running well over 512mb of RAM. Your statement is completely in error.

John

go a head and render a project. while rendering press ctrl+alt+delete press performance tap and tell me what you see? i bet you will 100%cpu usage and 360 mb memory used.

Yes, transistions, composites, FXs, the whole bunch without any hardware assist and in realtime, no rendering to RAM or anything and in HD, SD a complete cakewalk.
SuperMicro Mobo, dual Xeon 3.2 GHz, SATA RAID, PCI-X to SDI interface.

Sorry but it wasn't running Vegas, just how well Vegas would fly on the same hardware would be an interesting question though.

i bet you will 100%cpu usage and 360 mb memory used.

That is not what we are talking about. That is just the way in which <Vegas> utilizes RAM while rendering. It does not need all the RAM for that process (it would be insane and unfrtiendly if it did).

BUT what has been suggested here (increasing the allocation for RAM rendering within Vegas options) WILL help.... and that extra RAM will be used.

Bottom line... is of course Windows XP can make use of more than 512MB of RAM.

xeons are 32-bit, amd-64-fx-55 is 64-bit it is 2.6ghz with front side bus of 2.2ghz 3gig ddr400 would still be faster. 16x more memory and douvle the process speed. it takes me 20n min to render video on windows xp 64-bit

Then how come this system takes zero time to render :) ?

One other thing you should be aware of, Vegas is a 32 bit app. which means the 64 bit AMD chips have to run in emulation in which mode they are slower than the P4s. Even if the whole thing could run in 64 bit I really wonder just how much faster that makes things. I've worked on systems from single bit to 64 bit mainframes, bus bandwidth was never a determining factor for speed.
Our very ancient 32 bit 10MHz (that wasn't a typo) systems still blitz anything in PC land, but that was pretty well custom built hardware and hand crafted machine code.

Bob.

If it is taking your system 1.5 hours to render an hours worth of video, I'd say you are doing damn good!

Also, how fas are your drive's and their buffer size? Also, have you defragged your drive, at least before doing a render? Have you stopped some services that are unnecessary during a render? Just some suggestions.

If you are looking for timing, then shrink your preview window and quality level until it plays back in real time. if you need to see it in full quality you will have to render.