Wasn't there some announcement at NAB about the next version of Vegas running HDV full-frame rate in conjunction with AMD processors?

The June EventDV magazine says:

"Sony Vegas 8
64-Bit Edition

This new version of Vegas (no ship date or price at press time) will take full advantage of 64-bit CPUs running 64-bit versions of Vista. This will speed up rendering, allow for more complex productions, enhance CPU performance, improve access to memory, increase editing flexibility, and leverage systems with up to 8TB of RAM. It will be available towards the end of this year or early next year. More details likely to come at IBC this summer (Sony introduced Vegas 7 at IBC last year)."

Obviously that's all subject to change.

8TB of ram. WOW! Count me in.

JJK

It'd be nice if they could fix the major bug in DVDA 4 first.

Bob.

8 TERAbytes?? Surely you mean 8 GIGAbytes? Oh yah....sorry for calling you surely.

But you still have to get a system that can address 8TB. Most systems have chipset limits of 8 or 16 GB.

Which ought to be enough :-)

Rob Mack

No they mean terabytes, but they're talking out of their butts. Theoretically, a 64-bit memory space lets you address that much memory but motherboards usually have practical limits set by the memory controller. Common limits are 4, 8, and 16 GB (less memory mapped I/O space, of course).

That magazine is the only place I've seen so far that claims that the 64-bit Vegas is actually Vegas 8 (64-bit edition). But then I haven't been looking.

Rob Mack

1. agree with bob re problem in dvda

2. sort out the two black frame problem - it's a real pita.

and both of those in 7f

wont stop me buying 8, but i'd have more confidence knowing that when i buy 8, i'll have new bugs to worry about, not the same old ones as well.....

leslie

ok... I'll bite... which DVDA bug are you referring to?? :-)

Memory exploitation is a red herring marketing ploy and means absolutely nothing. The only reason you'll need a bunch more memory is if the application requests and needs to hold on to massive additional amounts of memory. Unless the fundamental function and existing code structure of Vegas changes dramatically, the memory working set will not change dramatically. As long as you aren't requiring more memory than is installed, adding more memory (or the ability to have more memory) will make zero difference.

It's kinda like you are working on two sheets of paper on a card table. You could buy an executive size desk and put those two sheets of paper on it. But it won't make a bit of difference in how efficiently you use those two sheets of paper. The only time buying a bigger desk would matter would be if you were trying to work on 30 sheets of paper at the same time on that card table. Vegas isn't typically using more than 1-2GB right now. Won't hurt if in the next release it can theoretically handle 8TB. That simply means you'll be working on the same two sheets of paper, but now you've got them sitting on a football field.

Basically, don't think you're going to get anything great with that advertised feature (assuming it actually is marketed with that feature). And yes.... I'm a software architect with 30 years of experience....

2G

Imagine how fast we could render a movie if the whole thing was already sitting in RAM. And we rendered to RAM. The only limiting factor then would be how fast the CPU could apply the effects. And with four cores or more that could get pretty fast even with HD.

Valid point... but I suspect that would require significant redesign of the render engines in Vegas. Would be great. But I'm choosing not to hold my breath... :-)

2G

Well, going 64-bit makes me assume that they were seeing a need for more memory. This is not to say that Vegas will be exclusively 64-bit. I'd be surprised if they stopped offering a 32-bit version.

We're using PPro here at my office along with Axio cards. On that platform we're desperate to get into a 64-bit system because we're constantly running out of memory.

So what does 64-bit Vegas get you in terms of memory?
--The application itself can use more than 2 GB (applications for 32-bit windows are usually built to top out at 2GB)
--If you are using several memory hungry applications you can make more memory available to them.
--Hardware uses up memory address space starting at 4GB and working on down. Graphics cards with lots of memory use up lots of address space that couldhave been used for RAM. A 64-bit OS makes more RAM available. Our Axio systems, for example, have enough hardware installed that we only get 2.4 GB out of 4 GB installed.
----If (and it's a big if) graphics coprocessing comes along then you might see cards that Vegas can actually use with a gig or more of RAM onboard. These would be pretty close to unusable in a 32-bit system because they'd limit the memory available to applications too severely.
--Vegas currently runs out of memory when working with stills, and it's had memory issues with m2t files.
--Building a 64-bit version also probably has the effect of opening up the development budget for other big and needed rewrites. In for a penny, in for a pound.

That's my two pennies worth, anyway.

Rob Mack

ok... I'll bite... which DVDA bug are you referring to?? :-)

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=519626&Replies=11

Having a client find this for you is NOT a pleasant experience.

Over 2 months now and no sign of a fix or workaround in sight.

Bob.

"Imagine how fast we could render a movie if the whole thing was already sitting in RAM. And we rendered to RAM. The only limiting factor then would be how fast the CPU could apply the effects. And with four cores or more that could get pretty fast even with HD.

The CPU is already by far the limiting factor. Disk overhead is generally a pretty miniscule part of the rendering time. I suspect that the decrease in rendering time would be minimal, and mostly offset by the time it would take to load all the media into memory and then save the finished RAM render back to disk afterwards.