Vegas Pro OS tweaks...

jmpatrick wrote on 6/6/2008, 4:24 AM
I just built a new machine based on an Intel Q6600, 2 gigs of RAM, and a couple SATA II drives (1 for system, 1 for data).

I'm running Vegas Pro, Adobe CS2 (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.), and SoundForge. The PC is mainly for video and audio production. In the past I've messed with Windows pagefiles and Adobe scratch discs, and I'm wondering if I need the same tweaks for a Quad Core system on XP Pro.

My old system had a separate physical drive that I used for pagefile and scratch files. Is this necessary any more, or can these dynamic files reside happily on the system drive? Is there a pagefile setting that will work best with XP? I used to manage the pagefile manually in Win2K. Should I let XP handle it now?

How about RAM allocation? Anything to optimize the system for video?

Thanks!

jp

Comments

busterkeaton wrote on 6/6/2008, 7:20 AM
videoguys.com used have an optimization list from a few years ago. I would guess a lot of them are still valid.

I think the best tip is not to let Windows manage your pagefile. That is you want a static, not a dynamic pagefile. You do this by setting determing what the maximum size you want for your page file and then setting both minimum and maximum to that. This also keeps the page file in one chunk if you do it on a new machine.

If you're interested in playing with tweaks, there is a Vegas render test file, you can use to see if your tweaks have any effect. You can google that.

There's a also a couple of settings in Vegas preferences that you may want to play with. Number of rendering threads and memory allowed for RAM renders. Those probably have more immediate impact than system changes.
video777 wrote on 6/6/2008, 8:09 PM
I think the best tip is not to let Windows manage your pagefile. That is you want a static, not a dynamic pagefile. You do this by setting determing what the maximum size you want for your page file and then setting both minimum and maximum to that. This also keeps the page file in one chunk if you do it on a new machine.

Excellent advice. In addition I would put the pagefile on a totally separate hard drive from the OS and program files.

My old web site has some Windows Tips. I just checked them and they are still good. http://video777.com/tips.html#wintips. Definitely focus on running chkdsk at least once a month, defrag the hard drives, turn off indexing (what a waste this is). Turning off the services may not get you much in terms of performance and you might want to avoid following those tips unless you are positive you don't need the service for anything.

Also keep Windows updated as well as download and use the latest drivers for your video card. More memory is always a good thing. On WinXP SP2 you can go up to 4GB but after 2GB the difference is nominal. I hope this helps. Ask questions if you would like more information.