Vegas and dual processors

electrifying wrote on 7/10/2002, 1:52 PM
I'm considering investing in Vegas Video and a dedicated system for video editing and DVD burning. I hear conflicting opinions on the value of the system benefitting from having dual processors versus a single hefty processor (2.0GHz and up). Does anyone have experience and advice on this? Can Vegas take advantage of dual processors? Is it worth the expense? Thanks!

Comments

Cheesehole wrote on 7/10/2002, 2:25 PM
conflicting opinion #1:
dual procs are an all around good investment if you plan on doing lots of things at once on the same PC. Vegas will be more responsive on a dual processing machine, but you won't necessarily get more tracks, or significantly faster render times, although in certain cases you will. with dual procs you can render with Vegas, and pop open another Vegas and continue editing or rendering with little or no noticable slow-down.

when it comes to dual procs and video editing, in general you should think 'wider' not 'faster'. you can play your project and interact with the interface at the same time without sacrificing frame-rate, audio playback stability or responsiveness, but you won't get a higher framerate on your preview window if you are just watching the project.

in the long term I believe dual procs are well worth it especially on your main workstation and if you are a heavy user or, like me, an abuser.

btw - i'm still running on a dual pIII 1GHz (ASUS CUV4X/D) and am happy but that year-and-a-half mark is approaching... might be time for a dual athalon 2ghz soon.
Control_Z wrote on 7/10/2002, 7:29 PM
Forget it. Spend the extra money on a separate box. Even a cheap one will allow you to do something you can't do on one really fast one - capture and edit at the same time.

Easy for me to say since my wife's P2-220 captures much better than my P4-1.8G. Even while running Sound Forge to suck down DV channels 3&4 via the analog audio card.

But if I need something rendered the P4 smokes it.