Video card recomendations

chazborazbo wrote on 5/2/2007, 9:57 AM

Hi all,
any recomendations for a medium priced card? and do I need a special brand that works best? (like nvida, etc) I notice that video stutters on my present card (256mb, don't know brand) Would a card with more memory help or is that processer stuff? thanks all.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 5/2/2007, 10:03 AM

In Vegas it's all up to the processor. As long as you have a video card that can display 24 bits in the resolution you want to use, you already have all the video card power and features that Vegas needs or can use.

Well, for now anyway. There's lots of rumors that Vegas may eventually make use of the GPU, but they're only rumors.

Laurence wrote on 5/2/2007, 11:47 AM

I like my GPU. It's an ATI Radion 9500 or something like that with 256 meg of memory. At the time I got it because it was the best card I could get that didn't have a noisy fan and fit in the single narrow space available on my toaster sized Shuttle PC.

The GPU does nothing for Vegas, but with the nVidia Purevideo accelerator I can preview 1080i m2t video from media player smoothly with about 30% cpu usage on my P4 3.06 (in contrast to jumpy performance at %100 without Purevideo).

I also use the GPU for previewing the HDV video I capture with HDV Split. Again the GPU lets me preview at a number of sizes with the GPU doing the work rather than the CPU.

Another thing I use the GPU for is doing animated titles with Bluff Titler. Bluff Titler uses the GPU to animate titles in real time vs the lengthly renders that other animation software programs do with the CPU. Initially some of the Bluff Titler examples looked a little low resolution, but I find that that is because many of these samples are demos that use low resolution jpegs. When I substitute much higher resolution png graphics, the same animations look pristine.

Anyway, for these and other uses, you don't need the latest and greatest video card, but you do need a competent card with a decent amount of memory.

Laurence wrote on 5/2/2007, 11:55 AM

As far as your current stuttering problem goes, a better graphics card won't help.

One thing that I've noticed causes stuttering is when Vegas scales the preview window. If I turn both the scaling that fits your preview into the preview window and the scaling that stretches the HDV 1.3 aspect out so that it formats properly as 16:9 in the preview window (doing this makes it look like 4:3), my preview is much smoother. I find that half sized draft resolution with no scaling looks quite good and previews smoothly on my machine.

vitalforce wrote on 5/2/2007, 2:28 PM

If you supplement Vegas with graphics or 3D programs also on your computer, some of them leverage the GPU hardware in the video card to speed up operations. It's worth doing a little research, I noticed that some programs use the nVidia card specs for rendering & playback.

mcfallison2 wrote on 5/3/2007, 10:57 AM

Does the Boris titler use GPU? And, if do, which type card is best?

chazborazbo wrote on 5/3/2007, 5:37 PM

Thanks for all answers and other info. I find that when my project is all on the screen, it does not stutter, it only happens when I stretch out the tracks to zoom in to a paritcular small portion of a clip.