Now that's a legitimate request I can live with.

Thank you John

When will V13 be release? Sony mentioned anything about the newer video card?

perhaps not with standing the famous johnmeyer's long thread - he is now about to see the light in this circular argument he is making.

AND actually before SCS is going to design to spec and very long before they publish that spec - we as forum members are going to have to be aboard with a little self-exam. ALL FORUM Members - please publish your system specs in detail.

perhaps not with standing the famous johnmeyer's long thread - he is now about to see the light in this circular argument he is making.Other than the fact that both posts use the words "spec" and "specification," there is very little in common, and certainly nothing approaching circular reasoning.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the point you are trying very hard to make: that in one thread I am berating people for asking for system specs, and then in this one I am asking SCS to provide all of us with video card GPU specifications, and that if they do, we will in the future need to ask people if their system conforms to these specifications. I get your point.

But, while your point is correct, it completely avoids the main point of my other thread which, to repeat, is this:

It is nothing but hazing when people ask for "system specs" when those specs have absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand. I don't know how I can be any clearer than that.

While I haven't actually done a spreadsheet listing every thread where system specs were needed, and when they were not, I actually have read almost every single post in this forum for the past dozen years. From that experience, and from my almost-10,000 posts, I can say, with a great deal of confidence, that system specs are virtually never, ever needed in order to help the person who started the thread.

However, just to make everyone feel better, I will concede that in the future, if SCS does indeed publish a specification for exactly what is needed in order to get fast, stable performance from a video card GPU, then when someone posts about a problem with GPU acceleration, we should all immediately ask for the video card specifications, if they are not provided.

For everything else, asking for it when it is not needed will continue to be a form of ritualistic hazing, often designed to intimidate, not to help.

And here again:
___________________________________________________________
Subject: Please fill out your System Information in your profile
Posted by: SonyPCH
Date: 4/30/2005 11:04:45 AM

For those that are seeking tech support, please take the time to fill out your system specs. Make sure to check the "Display system information on my forum profile page" checkbox on your forum settings page.

This really saves us time from having to ask what sound card, video card, CPU speed, and other details each time.

Thanks
Peter
___________________________________________________________

When you join this forum you are expected to fill out your system spec so that SCS and others can help. Whether that information is in your opinion irrelevant or not, out of courtesy you should fill out your information as good as you can.
Look at the many posts related to GPU acceleration since VP11 and tell me which one has nothing to do with hardware.

[I]"While I haven't actually done a spreadsheet listing every thread where system specs were needed, and when they were not, I actually have read almost every single post in this forum for the past dozen years. From that experience, and from my almost-10,000 posts, I can say, with a great deal of confidence, that system specs are virtually never, ever needed in order to help the person who started the thread."[/I]

I'll go further and say I know of no case where the problem was resolved to the hardware being used. I have several times asked those who champion the systems specs cause to provide an example and yet not one has been provided.

As to the suggestion that by analysis of the provided data we might be able to deduce something of value i.e. how to build a stable system I say that statement serves only to show how bereft some here are of any knowledge of computers and statistical methods.

At a more general level the most important factor, the one most likely to impact a user's Vegas experience, is being completely overlooked; what the user is trying to do with Vegas. I do know of one user here who has very few issues with V12 and he edits with multiple tracks of hours of footage from a variety of cameras but several can be from RED cameras. The project is in 32 bit float. To get it to work he has one HDD per track, 12 cores of CPU, a Quadro 4000 card and as much ECC RAM as the mobo can handle. Such a system costs well over $10K.

Now should SCS promote such a system as the "recommended" system for Vegas?
In a general sense Adobe spec such a system if you want to seriously run their entire collection of software but then the Master Collection from Adobe costs more than 90% of Vegas users spend on their computers.

Bob.

How about this case:
___________________________________________________________
Subject: RE: "System specs:" Insulting; useless waste of ti
Reply by: GeeBax
Date: 4/1/2014 4:17:32 AM

I have been involved building a new computer lately for use with Vegas and Resolve, and I was able to identify someone on this group who had a similar configuration. How? Because I was able to view their system specs. As I result I contacted that member and received some very helpful advice. Thank you, you know who you are.
___________________________________________________________
And by the way, how do you know about that fantastic 10k system?

First of all, video editing requires more of the system than virtually any other type of software, it requires large amounts of RAM, as much processor horsepower as possible, and the timing of everything inside a computer is critical, there are literally billions of instructions being executed per second. No NLE is bulletproof, I have machines that will or will not run Premiere or Avid reliably and there seems to be no rhyme or reason why or why not, there are just too many variables. Most problems with NLEs have to do with video card drivers, sound card drivers, other software (like anti-virus or other apps that run in the background), poorly written third-party plugins, flaky RAM due to heat or stress during rendering and power supplies running out of steam. In my opinion, it's a miracle that computers work at all, particularly PCs, considering the infinite number of permutations of hardware and software combinations down to the individual component level, NO two machines are exactly the same.

"Like everyone else in this forum, I can't get any specific guidance from SCS as to what card and driver will be guaranteed to work with Vegas... Now is the time to change that."

That is simply not going to happen, it can't and it won't. Vegas 12 runs fine on my custom-built desktop and my laptop and that's probably due to luck as much as anything. The only problems I am currently encountering are the abysmally slow performance of GoPro .MP4 files and the fact that Cineform .AVI files will not smart-render.

"It is nothing but hazing when people ask for "system specs" when those specs have absolutely nothing to do with the problem at hand. I don't know how I can be any clearer than that."

And this thread started so well.

John, look, number one, there is no way to base 'information required' on future technical questions based on past questions answered. That's just silly. Number two; sorry man, but you have no business asking people NOT to do what comes directly from scs in sticky number four. And point three, you have all this completely reversed. If those asking the technical questions simply followed the instructions in sticky number four, this entire issue would be moot and there would be no such thing as the "spec police".

Are there some out there "hazing" when demanding a system spec list be filled? Sure, I don't doubt that a bit. Some people have nothing better to do, but that doesn't delete the fact that there is a sticky on the top of the board telling them to fill it out before posting their technical questions, and had they followed the sticky in the first place.....

On the other hand there are definitely times when that information is an asset. Now maybe you don't see it that because you're looking at it through your eyes (a video guy's perspective). I however am not a video guy. This is just a hobby. I'm actually an Engineer and I spend 5 days a week troubleshooting and designing fairly complex building systems and I'm here to tell you that it's not fun, indeed extremely frustrating when I'm staring at 1/2 a blueprint bundle because they couldn't find the other 1/2 (or too lazy to look for it).

In other words... ALL the information one can possibly provide allows different people to look at the problem from different angles, thus bettering the chance of solving the issue at hand.

In other words... ALL the information one can possibly provide allows different people to look at the problem from different angles, thus bettering the chance of solving the issue at hand.

+1

[I]"How about this case:"[/I]

How do we know how actually valuable that advice was?

For my last PC build I got a lot of advice about the components. None of that advice related to the functioning of the unit. All of it related to the colour co-ordination and physical considerations e.g. some video cards will not fit in small cases, some powers supplies will not fit in some cases or their supplied leads are too short to reach the mobo connectors. I selected the case because not only does it look good to my eyes but I can remove the filters for cleaning very easily.

The facts are the vast majority of the complexities of computers today takes place inside the little black boxes on the PCBs. Mother board and video card manufacturers differentiate their products pretty much only by aesthetics. There's a little wiggle room around the reference design to boost performance or cut cost and performance. There's some room in mobo design for more efficient power supply design to appeal to serious overclockers but that's about it. That's why you can build PCs motivated by the bizarre to the inspired.

[I]"And by the way, how do you know about that fantastic 10k system? "[/I]

Not through the person's systems specs, it was in the middle of a discussion about multi-cam editing. I once built a similar system myself which was one of several systems I used to run Vegas on at the time. It was pretty much all Supermicro hardware.

Bob.

"How do we know how actually valuable that advice was?"

I am not sure what you mean by that. I thought the user stated clearly that it was very helpful to him.

"Mother board and video card manufacturers differentiate their products pretty much only by aesthetics."

And you seriously believe that. You really think that a GTX570 or 7950 from one manufacturer is the same as from another? There is plenty of room to cut corners; the reference design doesn't specify where you buy your capacitors and other components from and what grade it has to be. Binning is a very common practice for component manufactures, even Intel does it. The same applies to motherboards, hard disks, literarily all components.

So you know about the 10k system by extend but wouldn't it be good for others to know too?

If FARSS is calling out computer manufacturing as a commodity industry - then he is completely out of his element. It has been the history of and is even more true today ...that the design and manufacturing processes today are about as much art as science.

In today's market you can literally differentiate motherboards from the same manufacturer to nearly the same degree that you can differentiate from different sources. The only real similarity is that each has a CPU and on-board chipsets etc. Always true, but they are far apart on implementation. far apart on quality control and reliability as well.

Now throw in the various subsets of OS like Windows, Linux etc and expect them to all fly with no differences on the hardware. No siree Bob, no sir.

[I]" I am not sure what you mean by that. I thought the user stated clearly that it was very helpful to him."[/I]

I meant how do we know he ended up with a system that would run Vegas without issues compared to one that wouldn't.
For sure there's traps when deciding which components to use when building a PC, I listed one of them in my previous post, I could name several more but this has nothing to do with ending up with a system that will or will not run Vegas.

[I]"You really think that a GTX570 or 7950 from one manufacturer is the same as from another? There is plenty of room to cut corners; the reference design doesn't specify where you buy your capacitors and other components from and what grade it has to be. Binning is a very common practice for component manufactures, even Intel does it. The same applies to motherboards, hard disks, literarily all components."[/I]

I think I mentioned this in my previous post and I'm well aware of how corners can be cut and the perils of cheap capacitors and I'm well aware of binning.

Again I would ask what has this got to do with Vegas running correctly or not?

Cheap caps fail quickly, generally that involves smoke. I've got a goodly collection of consumer stuff that's died through cheap caps and I know techs who spent years replacing caps in Sony's uber expensive broadcast VCRs.

Again though how is this revealed in a user's systems specs?
I'm anticipating a thread where someone says: "Please help me, Vegas keeps crashing" and quickly someone chimes in and says "Oh dear, the GPU you're using isn't compatible with your CPU, buy a XYZ GPU and your problems will be over."
Unfortunately I've never seen this and like JM, I've read just about every post on this forum for over a decade. I can relate a couple of issues Vegas had with specific hardare:

1) Firewire chips.
2) UAD-1 audio cards and Vegas had issues.
3) Anything from BMD but that wasn't a hardware problem, that was and is a "their drivers and Vegas problem". BMD knows about this and lays the blame very squarely at SCS.

[I]"So you know about the 10k system by extend but wouldn't it be good for others to know too? "[/I]

I thought it common knowledge that for serious video editing enterprise class systems are to be highly recommended. SCS at one stage did suggest we use "professional graphics cards". They also did spec out some recommended systems that were to be sold through turnkey systems suppliers. Pretty well everyone here recoiled in horror at the cost.


Bob.

Everything farss said in his last two posts is completely true: the computer industry, by any measure is a commodity business. If you don't believe this, then read articles in the Wall Street Journal about the computer industry the past fifteen years. Better yet, read Dell or HP's annual reports. You can find lots of articles that says it is a commodity business, and lots which say that it isn't, but the real acid test are the PC makers' margins. [I]Profit margins define a commodity business[/I]: when they are high, it means you can charge a premium because you can offer something that is significantly differentiated, in the minds of your consumers, from the products offered by competitors. Commodity businesses are never high profit margin businesses (profit margin is defined as the percent profit on each unit sold). Low margins indicated the opposite, namely a commodity business.

One thing I know for sure, and which farss has already noted: there is 0.00% difference in performance between computers based on the type and quality of electrolytic capacitors used. Yes, better capacitors will last longer, but they will not contribute to the performance of the computer. I say this as someone who has re-capped dozens of switching power supplies, motherboards, amplifiers, and many other types of electronic equipment.

Finally, like farss, I am still waiting for one single example of a situation, other than some of the GPU issues, where a poster's problem was shown to be entirely related to some specific issue with the computer configuration. The one thing that keeps being quoted (multiple times) is a ten-year-old sticky from Sony (or was it still Sonic Foundry back then) that asks for system specs. That is completely and totally irrelevant to every point I've made. In fact, I'm pretty sure that sticky was a marketing tool to collect data about people's computers so they could decide how many customers would be left behind if they decided to release a new version that required certain hardware. The undeniable fact that it hasn't been updated for nearly a decade tells you all you need to know about how important it is regarded by Sony.

@johnmeyer

Your request is very well-founded, and as necessary. I understand your agony. You get my +1 000.

Please SCS - do all a big favour - including yourself - publish FRESCH compatibility info on your GPU infopages!

I had an old (from 2009) 8800 Nvidia card that worked OK with Vegas 7, 8, 9 - replaced it about one year ago with an nVidia 670GTi. I just had so many problems with both VP11 and all versions of VP12. My frustration grew to the limit that I finally opened my wallet. However, I had to invest blindly since SCS provides no assistance. I bought an R9 280X card and have been happly surfring since then. I'm lucky and "knock wood". It seems that AMD works much better with VP12 than nVidia. Don't hold me responsible if you decide to go the same way, but at least it worked for me :)

Cheers

Christian

PS: Fully agree about the archaic SCS system spec page... It also deserves and update to be really useful - or professional

"The undeniable fact that it

As usual John, you're being very selective in your conclusions. The ENTIRE FORUM has not been updated in a great many years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Finally, like farss, I am still waiting for one single example of a situation, other than some of the GPU issues, where a poster's problem was shown to be entirely related to some specific issue with the computer configuration.'

You claimed 2% in your other post did you not? We can go back and look if you don't remember ;)
So clearly by your own admission there have to be at least 2% worth of examples. Either that or your pulling statistics out of the air to fit your case.

People have given you examples already, including me. You have simply chosen to ignore them or rationalize them away.

@Christian
And here is another example why system specs are so important. If you would have been able to read everyone's specs and experience with their hardware it would have saved you form purchasing a GTX600 series card. Especially a year ago it was very clear which cards work the best and which don't.

@johnmeyer
The capacitor is just one example of the many components that go into a product like a motherboard or graphic card. Micro controllers are also binned according to their performance and so are PMW drivers, voltage controllers and so on. My sister in law works for ST in Singapore and that is where I got my information from on how components, and not just capacitors, are binned and how manufactures cut corners. If you want to believe that every part that has the same model number is the same regardless who manufactures it then dream on.
Even products from the same manufacturer with different batch numbers are different, sometimes small differences sometimes bigger ones.
If what you say would actually be true, computer companies like Dell and others would be out of business a long time ago because everyone would just buy their PC from the cheapest manufacturer.

"The capacitor is just one example of the many components that go into a product like a motherboard or graphic card."

Agree completely. There are cheap caps (ceramic) and then there are the more expensive ones (tantalum). As for electrolytic, you can tell a cheap one from a more expensive one. The more expensive ones have scoring on the top as sort of a 'relief valve' if and when they should blow.

There is a big difference in SOME of the components used is this equipment, and if someone says otherwise, you can be pretty sure they're just repeating the same inaccurate information that's been handed to them by another.

"In fact, I'm pretty sure that sticky was a marketing tool to collect data about people's computers so they could decide how many customers would be left behind if they decided to release a new version that required certain hardware. "

I was going to stay out of this, but since motive was questioned I will clear this aspect up.

At the time I wrote that post, I was answering more questions about audio related issues that I did need to know what audio hardware and driver model being used. I never hazed anybody, but asked that the user fill out their specs and then followed with specific audio hardware and driver related questions.

It help me when the audio specs were filled out and saved one or more back and forth.

Rarely do I ask anymore, but when I do see a vague question related to audio hardware, I will ask that the user fill out their system spec.

I assure you I did not request this to gather marketing data. I am an engineer at SCS.

The original post was made a sticky on all forums by the VP of engineering back in 2005. He thought it would be helpful. Nothing more.

I will - and have - brought it to the attention of those here that we should revamp the system spec info. It is out of my hands, so whether it will or won't change is not my call. It has helped me to help users. Not always, but enough times that it was worth it.


Peter

"I will - and have - brought it to the attention of those here that we should revamp the system spec info. It is out of my hands, so whether it will or won't change is not my call. It has helped me to help users. Not always, but enough times that it was worth it."

I think and hope i can speak for a lot of us here and say that would be most welcome Peter, its way out of date. And if i may add, could someone add the sentence "and you cannot post images with https links, please use standard http types..' in the other markup sticky, that would save a lot of problems too.

thanks
Paul.