real time- your opinion please?

tasos wrote on 10/29/2003, 2:37 PM
Hi there

My name is tasos and i am a videographer from NJ. I end up downloading Vegas 4.0 and I think that i ll stick with it. Worked for years with adobe, and lately with storm2 and hopefully these days are over...
I am impressed with Vegas, it's simplisity and effectiveness. I all ready bought the ACDV from Canopus to work with it.

But i need some help and your opinions. I often use 3-4 video tracks and even though Vegas 4.0 handles that it goes very slow when i start adding one or two video effects.

I work with a P4, 2 fast drives(one for OS) and 768 of RDRam.

From your experience, how much does Vegas will take( video tracks, effects in real time)? What can i do to get the best of it? I would appreciate your input.

Thanks for reading.
Tasos>

Comments

Jsnkc wrote on 10/29/2003, 2:48 PM
Usually if you have just one track of video with no effects you will get a real time preview on a decent system. IF you start adding effects and transitions and additional tracks you will notice the frame rate will drop quite a bit, but the more times you play the clip the better the frame rate will get. One thing I do a lot is RAM renders which will allow you to select a small portion of a clip, like when you put a transition between 3 clips, and then vegas will render out that small section to your RAM so you can get a real preview at the full frame rate. Vegas is hardly a real-time system, but for the money it is well worth a little rendering time.
farss wrote on 10/29/2003, 3:25 PM
For a software only NLE it's way ahead of the competition. Unlike Premiere in this mode when it hits an unrednered effect you dont just get a blank screen, it does its best to show what it'll look like at a lower frame rate. If you loop that protion it'll slowly build a RAM preview.
JohnI wrote on 10/29/2003, 4:37 PM
The real time results depend on many things - For example I run a 2.6 P4 and had three tracks/layers running (main one was DV others Graphics and text overlays including simple effects) and if I watched in in draft quality the result was real time, of course with audio as well (in sync). Not bad really and as previously reported if it can't do it you still get an output which is usable. John I
PAW wrote on 10/29/2003, 5:23 PM
Tasos,

Can you elaborate on your setup a bit more, your say P4, what Ghz.

Vegas is software only which has a lot of benefits, have you been uing a real time card like the Matrox/Canopus.

If you have it is possible that your PC setup is biased towards other NLE's not a software only NLE like Vegas.

There are alot of good working practices for Vegas like muting tracks that are not required for the effect you are working on that can improve realtime frame rate.

Can you give some examples of what yor are doing?

PAW
tasos wrote on 10/29/2003, 8:32 PM

Thanks everybody for your sugeestions and comments.

For Jsnkc: i tried the "render ram" but didn't got exactly the performance that i wish.

For PAW : my pc is a dell 2.4 nothing special but it rus good with dvstorm2 and adobe(it used to). Now i have the canopus ACDVio card with Vegas and it still runs good.
I get 4-5 tracks (pip) but when i try transitions or effects then is slowing down.

Do I want too much? Like FARSS says, Vegas is only software,,, and he is right. Is just so hard to believe that such a beautifull program goes down so easy with a few transitions. But i am willing to get the best of it and I will.

Once again, thank you all for your help

Tasos>
StormMarc wrote on 10/29/2003, 9:13 PM
I'm in a similair boat as a long time Premiere/Storm user who has been converted to Vegas. I got sick of hearing Canopus making excuses for Premiere poofing to the desktop when the editing got tough, taking forever to update features and then nickling and diming us for them, and the effects interface is still dated back to the 90's. Color corrections sucks big time and keyframing is a joke. Admittedly there are still some things I like about Storm realtime and the Old movie effect for blending fields is top notch. Of course I would love to see a Mojo for Vegas cause the rendering can be really long sometimes but if that does not come I will be investing in a monster machine in the next 6-12 months as the new processors come out in hopes of speeding up Vegas.

That said... I have found that the more I learn about this innovative little NLE called Vegas the more I enjoy editing and the faster I get. Not sure if you've tried it but get familier wtih the different preview modes as on effects heavy editing going into draft is useful. Also if you set your split screen mode to "select all" you can click all effects on and off with the push of a button.

Welcome aboard.

Marc
rebel44 wrote on 10/29/2003, 9:24 PM
When you unpack Vegas it come by default with 16M reder mem.
Under "options "preference" "video" sety the ram to 64M or higher.
That should improver rendering time and more smoth playback.
With AGP vodeo card in bios setup increase video ram.
Do not use full screen preview. I have now 2.5gig athalon, but before I was using 1G cpu with 256 133ram and was doing ok.Just rendering time was slower.If you have more that 256ram give some to video and effects will improve.
tasos wrote on 10/29/2003, 9:55 PM
Thanks rebel44

I gave it 678ram (or so) and it does work better.

For StormMarc : The "bypass" for the filters is very good! Thanks!

Regarding Storm2 : I see it more as a plug-in(for the premiere) than a program, and i don't like these people(their support).
But you re right Storm has a few good things, but you can buy their new "let's edit" (just the software-doesn't work with adobe) and still have these filters,,,"old movie" e.t.c.
"let's edit" has the same interface like storm, no intergation with adobe but i believe is only $99.00,,, Is good to get it just for the effects.

Thanks.
Tasos>