First of all, setting the LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag may or may not allow 32 bit software to access >2GB of RAM under 32 bit Win XP, since the software was probably not designed for a large memory space in the first place. Even beyond that issue, you would have to set the flag also for any DLL or codec (which are just specialized DLLs) to also use >2GB physical RAM.

At this point in time, the only legitimate way to access >2GB RAM with Vegas is to use the 64 bit V9 under Vista x64. When you encode with CFHD, it uses a 64 bit version of the codec, so unless it has some programming restriction, it should use as much physical RAM as it needs.

As to why all your cores aren't being used, make sure that you confirm that situation by running a system monitor that can display the usage of each of the cores separately, like for example, Everest. I'm assuming that you already did that, but it is a bit unclear from reading your post. You also have to consider that some codecs won't use all available cores for encoding. You'd have to ask David Newman from Cineform, whether the 32 bit VFW CFHD codec used by Vegas will use all 4 cores.

Lastly, if all the cores aren't being used fully, it's also possible that some other bottleneck in your system is slowing the entire process.

i'm running vista 32 not xp.

where would i set the LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag (or is that what the >2gb hack w/cff explorer does)?

i'll check into everest and then follow up w/david newman.

thanks, jab.