I don't feel so bad now. It killed my P4 3.2 CPU and gig of ram as well. Not the ideal setup but it has never failed me until it encounterd Spot's Render of Death!

Spot, thanks for going through all the trouble on these tests. A lot of geeks like me really enjoy this. And it does help us find irregularities or tuning issues with our systems.

By the way, I noticed this most recent test only really utilized one of my two K8WE Opteron CPU's. Usually when I render MPEG2, I can fully utilize both processors. I guess we have the AVI background rendering going on, but even then I think it is possible to set the media and choice of effects so that the render will utilize more than one CPU most of the time. This will really help us test the power of dual-core and dual proc systems better.

Thanks a bunch for doing all this work DSE, it is much appreciated - The DEATH RENDER has been a good way for me to check a few things on my system. Would love to see a slightly less deadly render test up so I can actually test how long it takes to finish :)

Of course this is a good way of finding system configs that can actually survive...DEATH RENDER!

Looks like the older systems can crunch through o.k. - maybe, like Yoda, they can turn away from the power of the Dark Side!

I did 3 % or 31 frames of the render in 15 minutes. Then I gave up. CPU usuage 100%, 4 gig ram, AMD dual core 4600+, V6c at defaults, render at 1080i 60i best quality.

JJK

Dual Xeon 2.8, 1 Gig Ram, SCSI Raid 0

After 55 minutes, still chugging with estimated 4.75 hours to go. But based on previous posts, this will likely crash or balloon nearer the end.

I don't know much about RAM vs pagefile stuff. On this rendertest, CPU usage is dancing around 1-7%, PF Usage is at 1.39 Gig. RAM preview is at 64MB. Is there something I can tweak to increase CPU usage. Would adding a second Gig of RAM make much difference?

3 hrs 59 Min 9 sec. rendered to "Good."

Sony Vaio laptop (plugged in, not battery power)
2Ghz Pentium M
1 GB Ram

I tried the new test file and it managed to crash two different machines. It wasn't an "out of memory" error this time. Something about an "exception".

Has anyone else tried the new file yet?

Carroll Lam

I think Vegas 6 has had performance problems all along. I am soo glad that I did not uninstall V5. It outperforms V6 in previews and rendering. When I have a job that needs to get done quick, I do it in V5 rather than V6. What good is RAM preview if it is limited to 64 mb? In V5 I have it set to 400mb with no problems. I have been a faithful Vegas user since the orignial Vegas VIdeo and am really growing tired of fighting this latest version. I have recently purchased AVID and hate the interface compared to "what I know" but I can not depend on Vegas 6.

JAB

I had some initial problems with Vegas 6, but i set the number of threads to 1 to match my single processor and now it runs faster and smoother than 5.

Why are you limited to 64MB? I've got 768MB RAM in my computer and i can set my preview size up to about 600MB.

Never had a problem with RAM preview set up to 400 MB but, yes, there is a point where if you set it too high you'll force Windows to start swapping. Then your preview slows to a crawl.

Rob Mack

Exactly 3 hours - no memory problems.

AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (laptop) with 1GB of RAM and a pokey 4200rpm drive.

Vegas 6.0c, WinXP Pro.

Duncan

Chienworks,

I too set the threads to 1 and it helped, but it still isn't as good as V5. Frame rate in previews is my main concern. I have 1.5gb of ram and V5 did not seem to care how much of it was dedicated to RAM previews. V6 chokes with any more than 64mb assigned. I see frame rates that drop with even the slightest processing. I came from the linear world in the late 90's where EVERYTHING was full frame rate and adjusting to Vegas's reduced frame rate was difficult at first, but with faster computers and time, I was able to settle in just fine. I just feel that with V6, I have taken several steps backwards in work flow smoothness and I have read this forum extensively and tried everything suggested. Nothing gets me in the ballbark as well as going back to version 5. That tells me that something significant changed in V6 and in my opinion, it wasn't for the better.

With all that said, I still love vegas and will continue to use it for my day to day editing. I will also continue experimenting with AVID. Who knows, I might just get used to the AVID interface and buy a mojo. From a client standpoint, AVID still carries more weight than Vegas (much to my disappointment) but Vegas has not developed to the point that makes an edit session smooth and fun without prerendering.

If I had one wish for Vegas, it would be to concentrate on 29.97 sustained frame rates. If that means hardware add ons, so be it. I don't think I am alone here.

Thanks for listening,
JAB

P.S. Sorry DSE for kind of getting off the subject, but this looked like a good audience for a performance rant and rave.