vegas 11 on a mac

Jason King wrote on 10/17/2011, 11:27 PM

I've been running Vegas since V9 on an 8 core Mac Pro under bootcamp with no problems until now.
I am currently running Windows 7, 64 bit, and while V9 and V10 work great, V11 is currently crashing randomly.

There's no pattern to it, sometimes you're editing, sometimes playing back. Just a few minutes ago it crashes as I was exiting.

It is possible I have something corrupt in Windows, so I am considering a backup of my files and a complete reformat of my Windows drive and re installation of Windows.

I'll post back here if I do this, and if V11 stops crashing.

J\

ritsmer wrote on 10/18/2011, 1:42 AM

I have been running Vegas Pro 8 + 9 + 10, now running 10.0e on a 8 core Mac Pro (2008 model) using Windows 7 Ultimate directly (no Bootcamp or anything).
It works very well.

Using Vegas 11.0 I see that 11.0 will not render using some templates, that worked well under 10.0 a,b,c and e - but renders well using other templates.

My only problem is that SCS support will not answer my questions because "they do not support Mac's" :- )

So next time I buy a genuine and 100% Intel PC I will get one that does noy say "Mac" on the outside of the cabinet. :- ))

JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/18/2011, 4:01 PM

> "My only problem is that SCS support will not answer my questions because "they do not support Mac's" :- )"

That doesn't make any sense. A MacBook Pro running Windows 7 is no different than my home built PC running Windows 7. It's an Intel computer running Windows 7. I would tell them it's a home built computer. The hardware is irrelevant if you have a software question.

~jr

stopint wrote on 10/19/2011, 9:18 AM

my mac i believe has a nvidia geforce 8600 and i think only 256 gpu memory...so vegas 11 will be fine on my mac but i don't think i'll be able to take advantage of the gpu acceleration...

[r]Evolution wrote on 10/19/2011, 1:58 PM

I run Vegas Pro on a Mac via Parallels + Windows 7.
It runs the same as I've seen it running on PC workstations.
(parallels allows me to interact with OS X & W7 simultaneously)

JHendrix wrote on 10/19/2011, 7:48 PM

i have not tried it yet but i did wonder if my 2008 mac pro running NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB would enable GPU

ritsmer wrote on 10/20/2011, 9:59 AM

According to this list: http://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus
the 8800 does not have the required 2.0+ Computing Capability.

Just ordered a GTS 450 for my 2008 Mac 8 cores - Btw an incredibly strong and reliable machine - and at a reasonable price, that time....

Just a shame that the new Mac Pros are prohibitively overpriced.

JHendrix wrote on 10/22/2011, 9:24 AM

GTS 450 ?

is yours the MacPro2,1 --- 8 Core --- 3.0?

thats what I have but I thought no other cards would work in it.

TheRhino wrote on 10/22/2011, 9:56 AM

Does FCP utilize the GPU?

We have a single MAC Pro running FCP so that we can convert uncompressed video from Vegas to ProRes 422 or 4444. We normally just let it run overnight, but if a GPU would speed things up, we might upgrade it at the same time we upgrade our main Vegas rig.

ritsmer wrote on 10/22/2011, 10:35 AM

@JHendrix: Yes, I bought it 3 years ago - but I have a strong suspicion that there is a communication bottleneck between the CPUs and/or the RAM and the Graphics card - so that the cheap 450 card probably will run much less than 100% - while still improving my preview/ render speed nearly as much as possible with any other (high end) CUDA GPU assist.
The 450 is due monday - I will post my findings here.

JHendrix wrote on 10/22/2011, 11:56 AM

thanks...pls do post findings...that would be amazing if it worked...i had given up thinking any card beyond the 8800 would work on this mac

ritsmer wrote on 10/24/2011, 10:12 AM

So I got my GeForce 450 and - after some troubles finding the necessary power connectors etc. in the Mac Pro - it is now up and running with the latest drivers - and the results are:

Preview is mostly slightly faster, but
Render is 15-20% slower (rendering from AVCHD to mpeg-2 full HD - as this is what I normally do).

In order to get just the same results with / without GPU assist a bigger graphics card might help - but it seems a long way before GPU assist can beat the 8 physical cores in the 2 Xeons by a substantial margin.

JHendrix wrote on 10/24/2011, 10:16 AM

thanks for the update....bummers that i didnt help much

ritsmer wrote on 10/24/2011, 2:20 PM

I can add that without GPU assist the CPUs are running 95-100%. With GPU assist the CPUs are running around 75% and the GPU usage on the graphics card is around 40%.
I have tried with more rendering threads, more previewing memory (helps sometimes also the rendering speed) etc - but se no improvements there.

From this I think that the communication between the CPUs and the GPUs is the bottleneck - maybe the PCIe 2.0 - meaning that neither faster CPUs nor a faster graphics card will speed up the rendering process in this PC.

WillemT wrote on 10/24/2011, 2:38 PM

I see more or less the same thing on a non Mac PC.

A Q6600 with a GTX 460 graphics just about balance and no gains are seen. I think the 460 is probably faster than the Q6600 but the overhead in driving it cancels any advantage. Where I do see a major gain is when CPU heavy FX are used (like Gausian Blur) - that also reflects well in the pre-view frame rate. The Q6600 can really use the GPU assist in those cases.

Willem.

ritsmer wrote on 10/25/2011, 3:12 AM

Tried - and yes, the GPU assist does improve speed significantly when previewing Gaussian Blur in this machine: stacked 3 clips , added GB to 2 of them - preview and render speed improved by a factor 1.6 - So it will help for other similiar FXs also.

Also tried to go back from the latest Nvidia drivers to version 275 as proposed in another thread (where the 275 was much faster than the newest driver) - but on this machine there was no noticeable difference at all.