Vegas Video 3 - works best with single or dual processors?

aavz wrote on 1/24/2002, 2:29 PM
I am tyring to determine if I would gain anything by building a dual-processor AMD MPX-processor system. Is Vegas Video 3 written to take advantage of dual processors?

Would any of you who have direct knowledge of this please give me a heads-up about whether I should spend the extra money to go with a dual system?

Thanks!

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 1/24/2002, 3:12 PM
If you do processor-intensive audio (lots of plug-ins for instance) then dual proc really shines. If mostly video, a super fast single proc is a good pick. You do get a speed jump with dual, how much depends on the project.
Cheesehole wrote on 1/24/2002, 4:05 PM
i agree with SonicEPM, it depends on the project and also your editing style.

search this forum on 'dual' and you'll find many posts with details.

why do so many people ask this question without searching first?
FadeToBlack wrote on 1/24/2002, 4:34 PM
Rednroll wrote on 1/24/2002, 4:47 PM
Thanks GG, I couldn't agree with you more!!! And that's why you will see me flaming people on occassion, for asking the same question that's been answered by myself at least 3 times on seperate occassions. Then there's those people who defend them, and say they are a "newbie" and I shouldn't be so harsh on them. (exp delete) take some time and read and maybe you won't be so ignorant. How do you think I got to be able to answer most of the questions on this forum? I spent the time. Why must people keep asking if they can remove vocals from a wave file, or how do you record in Sound Forge?...I mean come on!! Get off your lazy (exp deleted)and take some initiative.
aavz wrote on 1/24/2002, 9:24 PM
Everyone:

Thanks for your responses, and each of you are entirely justified in voicing your annoyance at someone asking the same question that's already been answered umpteen times before. It was my mistake for asking it without doing a search, which I will now do.

My special thanks, however, goes to SonicEPM, who, nonetheless, answered the question. Your response, Sonic, was a lesson in diplomacy. And, by the way, Rednroll, it was only an oversight on my part, not because I was lazy that I failed to do a search. But, point taken.
SHTUNOT wrote on 1/24/2002, 9:46 PM
How about updating the FAQ:Frequently Asked Questions page a bit more then. Isn't that what its for anyway? There are of course topics that come up from time to time but you can't expect everyone to care about whats been said a week/month/year ago. I don't remember seeing a dual processor Q/A there. For the people who go to sites on a daily basis have a default "Do a search on..." template in a wordpad doc. Copy/paste...no more than 4 seconds wasted. Or at least by now you should be able to type it in less.

How about compliling a list of "If I have to answer this freakin' question one more time!!!" page with detailed answers for tech heads to dummies. That way all you would have to do is just add a hyper link and be on your way.

Back to mixing. Later.
Rednroll wrote on 1/24/2002, 10:50 PM
aavz, sorry my comment was not meant to be directed at you. Although, this same question was asked last week. I particularly mentioned the people who ask, how to record or how to remove vocals from a mix. I'm really referring to the basics of using the software. If you can't take the time to at least be able to set the software up so you can play and record, you deserve to be shot and have a fine piece of software like Vegas stripped from your possesion.

regards,
red
aavz wrote on 1/24/2002, 11:08 PM
Red:

Thanks for the post; no offense taken.

For all others following the post, I have since gone back to October in my search under the keyword "dual." I only went back that far because Vegas Video 3 came out in November, so I thought my answer would at least be found during the last 3 months. (There are earlier posts about VV2, but I did not go back that far). There are some good posts by Red and Cheesehole, genie and others.

But, I guess SonicEPM summed it up the best in his post above -- at least, that seems to be my interpretation of the posts since October. Someone (don't remember who) had a good suggestion about using dualies for multitasking; but seems VV3 for rendering uses a double procs no faster than it uses a single proc.
PipelineAudio wrote on 1/25/2002, 2:26 AM
"I particularly mentioned the people who ask, how to record or how to remove vocals from a mix."
...Rednroll

ROFLMAO!!!!!
Damn guitar center and their spawning of thousands of "instant DJ's "
Cheesehole wrote on 1/25/2002, 8:55 AM
yes SonicEPM summed it up pretty good, but if you want to know if you personally will benefit from the dual processors, given your editing style and type of projects you'll be working on, you'll have to read the back posts.

but you may have missed this tidbit... if you are rendering to Windows Media, you'll get 100% use of both processors:
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=88563

it's easy if you aren't on a tight budget. if you want the most responsive, and best editing experience you can get, then use Win2k with two processors. (more than two IS way too expensive, but if you are really serious and you have the cash, you might want to go with dual XEON's.)

personally at this point, i'd spring for the new dual Athalon systems. has anyone used a dual Athalon with VV3?
kosstheory wrote on 5/25/2002, 1:09 PM
I have gotten excellent results with the following system:

Dual AMD Athlon MP 2000+ processors
ASUS A7M266-D Motherboard
1 GB PC2100 DDR RAM ECC

When Rendering From DV to DV I achieved 100% CPU usage on both CPUs for the duration of the render, which was quite fast! I was in awe! Seeing those frames shoot by on the preview was a sight for sore eyes. I've never seen anything quite so beautiful.

A lot of people say that the AMD Athlon MP processors are not stable enough to compete with the P4s. This baby is rock steady! I can throw anything at it, and it just gobles it up, and keeps on trucking. And I saved hundreds!

One thing that I am a little concerned about is the CPU usage during other types of renders. Like the mpg2 file I'm rendering right now. The CPUs are only being used to 50%. I suppose that the main concept mpeg2 encoder has no optimization for dual cpus? Looking at the performance tab of the task manager, it looks like CPU 1 is at about 80% and 2 seems to vary between 20% and 30%. There was an earlier post that stated that dual processor support for activities other than DV encoding might use one processor for decoding, and one for encoding. I suppose what the performance tab is showing might be proving that this scenario is true.

I hope that future releases of the main concept mpeg2 codec included with vegas will utilize the dual cpu configuration more efficiently. It is a puzzle why 100% of atleast one of the CPUs isn't being employed. As it is 80+20=100. So, I would probably get about the same results with a single CPU when doing anything other than DV encoding. Oh well. Maybe they should advertise it as "Limited" Dual CPU support, until it's further optomized?

Just my 2 cents