Vegas 10b (64) on new hex-core workstation

Guy S. wrote on 12/29/2010, 11:41 AM

You never really appreciate how bad something is until you get something better. I've been editing 720p AVCHD files from a Panasonic GH1 on an HP 2x dual-core Xeon workstation and it has been painful. Even HDV was painful. Slow frame rate. Stuttering. Video woefully out of sync with narration. And Pro Type titles? If I was lucky I'd see maybe two frames in a 6-second title clip.

Yesterday I received a new workstation, an HP Z400 with a six-core Xeon running at 3.33GHz, GTX 460 graphics, 12GB RAM, Intel SSHD, 10k RPM scratch drive, and 2TB mirrored data drive. I got Vegas 10b installed this morning, opened the last project I edited on my old workstation, and hit the space bar.

Watching the screen I began to wonder if my old workstation actually had any CPUs installed...

At Preview Auto the frame rate held at 59.94fps, and it continued to hold that rate as it played through the ProType titles! When it hit the section with p-i-p layers it dropped to 28fps (2 layers), 18fps (3 layers), and 10fps (4 layers) - still very usable.

For reference, here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/user/seesnake

If you are having performance issues like the ones I described earlier, I strongly recommend upgrading to a 6-core CPU. My company has standardized on HP, but there are plenty of less expensive 6-core options that will yield the same performance. AT home I built a core i5 (4-core) system for $700 that works pretty darn well for straight editing (no multi-layers or ProType).

FYI, I did a quick comparison of Prem CS5 to Vegas 10b. Premiere simply couldn't play my Panny 720p AVCHD files correctly. There was color shift, artifacting, and tearing (it looked like the footage was encoded with Macrovision). I prefer the Vegas interface for the types of projects that I do and it's really nice to see that I can get a smooth editing experience with it. It's like having my cake and eating it, too.

Comments

dibbkd wrote on 12/29/2010, 5:42 PM

I agree, before I got my first AVCHD camera, I heard nothing but horror stories about how poorly it would edit, but I was quite sure that in the future (now), everything would be OK.

Sure enough, I got an i3 running at 3.2GHz earlier this year, and it's been great!

Steve Mann wrote on 12/29/2010, 8:56 PM

Run the old and new through Rendertest:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=741182

ritsmer wrote on 12/30/2010, 12:45 AM

Really strange what you write about your 2 x Xeon machine: I have the MacPro from 2008 with 2 x quad Xeons 2,8 GHz - and it previews 1920 x 1080 50i 25 Mbps at full speed and at a CPU usage well below 20%.
2 layers of the same media type plays at full speed too and at below 40%.

Please note that some Windows systems do not support more than 1 physical CPU. I had to get the Ultimate version of Win 7 here in order to make use of the second CPU.

Looking forward to seeing your results in the Rendertest threads.

Guy S. wrote on 12/30/2010, 7:54 AM

I've got three projects due by the end of Feb so I won't likely do a render test. And rendering was never an issue for me anyway - for me it was being able to accurately preview my timeline.

Those who already have faster systems don't experience the same issues, or folks edit a different flavor of HD, or they transcode to an intermediate CODEC.

I know that others have expressed many of the same issues that I did and I wanted to go on record with a very clear statement that:
a) I experienced specific and significant timeline performance issues with AVCHD
b) A faster CPU solved the problem *completely *

Frankly, it's shocking to see a ProType title sequence play over native AVCHD at full framerate on my secondary monitor. My expectations have been so far exceeded it's not even funny.

Guy S. wrote on 12/30/2010, 7:58 AM

<<I have the MacPro from 2008 with 2 x quad Xeons 2,8 GHz>>

That's four more cores than I had (2x dual-core). Also, I was running Vista 64 with the latest service pack and all 4 cores were operating at 85% - 90% during timeline playback in V10.

Steve Mann wrote on 12/30/2010, 9:17 AM

"...so I won't likely do a render test. And rendering was never an issue for me anyway"

It's not for you, it's to share the information point with others.

Guy S. wrote on 12/30/2010, 11:26 AM

<<It's not for you, it's to share the information point with others. >>

Other test results I've seen on this forum reveal at most a 2 - 3 second difference between comparable processors, and based on past experience I would expect the HP workstation to be a tad slower than a decent roll-your-own system.

But I see your point and will be a team player and run the test when I get some time. Until then, I'll enjoy the illusion of having a shiny new "fast" workstation.

Guy S. wrote on 12/30/2010, 11:49 AM

Render Test Results for Z400 (w3680 hex-core):

Ram Preview Amount Result
350MB 180 sec
1GB 151 sec
2GB 151 sec
4GB 152 sec

NOTE: Hyperthreading is not enabled on this system. I'll see if I can get it enabled and then re-run the test. It'll have to wait until next year, though.

Steve Mann wrote on 12/30/2010, 8:09 PM

Interesting. I would have expected less Ram for preview would have resulted in faster rendering.

ritsmer wrote on 12/31/2010, 1:13 AM

Steve: this has been discussed in the New Rendertest thread. The conclusion is that at a given amount of preview RAM you can make all your processors work at nearly 100 pct. Over- and especially below this amount of preview RAM the CPU utilization goes down.

You have to find this best amount of RAM on your own machine and using your normal input and output video formats.

So far, however, nobody has been able to explain why the amount of preview RAM has such a surprising influence on render time.

On my machine I deliberately render with too little preview RAM because this leaves more CPU power to my editing.

Kevin R wrote on 12/31/2010, 8:10 PM

>> Also, I was running Vista 64 with the latest service pack and all 4 cores were operating at 85% - 90% during timeline playback in V10.

YOU [probably] SHOULD HAVE 8 CORES SHOWING.

2x dual-core = 4

Each core is hyper-threaded (most Intel CPUs) and appears as two cores in the Windows Task Manager.

Can you confirm WHAT VERSION of Windows Vista? And WHAT CPU?

JHendrix wrote on 1/2/2011, 8:31 AM

"I have the MacPro from 2008 with 2 x quad Xeons 2,8 GHz "

i wonder how much difference would make against the new macs

Guy S. wrote on 1/3/2011, 11:21 AM

Hi Kevin, my old system definitely did not support hyperthreading. The system is gone now so I can't say what model # CPUs it had, but it was a HP XW800 from 2005 or 2006 and had two dual core Xeons running at 2.66GHz on XP(32) and then on Vista (64) for the past ~18 months.

My new system does support HT, but it's not enabled, which is curious - I would have expected HP to deliver it with HT enabled. I've seen benchmarks that indicate HT yields about 10% improvement in most cases and I'm wondering whether or not HT would benefit Vegas, as Vegas seems to max out all the cores when rendering.

Has anyone seen any improvement in Vegas' timeline playback and/or rendering performance with HT enabled? I don't want to harass my IT folks about enabling this if it won't improve Vegas.