What makes a project complex?

TLF wrote on 10/19/2008, 12:50 AM
On the forum there is much talk of the speed increase 8.1 give over 8.0c with complex projects.

But what constitutes 'complex'? My projects are HDV (rendered to SD) with some colour correction using both the Sony Color Corrector and the free AAv ColorLab 1.0 beta. Perhaps some sharpening, a couple of audio tracks, one or two crossfades, some slow motion/reverse motion using the velocity envelope, but nothing more.

Would this be considered 'complex'?

Currently using a core2duo with 4 Gb RAM and XP Pro SP2. I don't want to upgrade to Vista Ultimate x64 unless I'm going to benefit from using 8.1, so any clarification would be most welcome!

Thank you.

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 10/19/2008, 6:42 AM
You can upgrade to Vista 64 and use 8.0c and the extra ram with all of the available pluggins and they will function slicker than camel snot on a doorknob. Deshaker will work fine with a modified script. (with most versions of VirtualDub) DDR2 800 ram is dirt cheap right now. ($30.00 for 4 gigs) (DDR3 is still expensive at $350.00 for 4 gigs) Right now 8.1 is pretty useless as the pluggins will not work and also Cineform. Several very knowledgeable people on this forum are flogging out 8.1 at the present time.
JJK
tcbetka wrote on 10/19/2008, 8:32 AM
Can 8c and version 8.1 be installed side by side on the same OS? I just installed Vista 64, and would likely install 8c as well...if they can both be installed. It's odd that a 64-bit OS will "see" plug-ins with 8c and not with 8.1. Has anyone said why this is?

Thanks.

TB

EDIT: Well dip me in s%& and call me stinky! I just installed 8c alongside 8.1 on Vista 64, and it went perfectly. Wow, I did not know I could do that. Cool!
TLF wrote on 10/19/2008, 8:43 AM
8.0c and 8.1 can run side by side on Vista x64. that's not a problem.

However, if my projects aren't complex enough to benefit from using 8.1, then there's little point in me upgrading to Vista x64. Why spend out on an OS upgrade if rendering speed will be no better (or possibly worse) than at present.

The only plug-in I would miss with 8.1 is AAV ColorLab (but that's being ported when the author has the information he requires).
johnmeyer wrote on 10/19/2008, 9:21 AM
In answer to the original question, while I don't think there is any definition in the Sony help system for what constitutes "complex," I think in general usage here it usually refers to one or more of the following:

1. Compositing.
2. 3D motion
3. A large number of tracks, especially with parent/child relationships.
4. Bezier masks
5. Certain fX which are resource hogs. I posted a table of fX times years ago which shows a huge variation:

Results of render times for ALL Vegas fX

6. A very large number of very high-res still photos. Bugs in earlier versions of Vegas would cause crashes during rendering, and despite fixes to those bugs, this still can bring Vegas to it's knees during rendering (it would be VERY interesting to hear what 8.1 does for this, because it was largely a memory issue).

7. Supersampling.


I'm probably missing a few. Obviously, if you have a project which uses several of these things, and then render using "Best" and render to a codec which is slow, and render in high-def (more pixels is more "complex"), you'll have a long time to wait during rendering.
tcbetka wrote on 10/19/2008, 9:37 AM
Wow John...incredible work you did! You immense experience with Vegas is evident in that thread. Thanks for posting the link.

I just installed 8.1 on my quad core system, and also have 8c on the 64-bit side AND on the 32-bit XP side as well. So if you have any "complex" projects, I would love to experiment with the three different versions, just to see which works out the best. Can you make any such project available, by chance?

Thanks again.

TB
johnmeyer wrote on 10/19/2008, 2:19 PM
Can you make any such project available, by chance?Most of my projects are simple, like those of the original poster.

If you want a benchmark, why not use the HDV benchmark? There are hundreds of posts in this forum and elsewhere, so you can compare your results with those. Here's one of several threads where this is discussed:

NEW Rendertest-HDV.veg
tcbetka wrote on 10/19/2008, 6:52 PM
OK, I went and got that .veg file and ran the test on my system using the parameters outlined by John in the first post in that thread. I ran it on the three different versions of Vegas Pro: 8c 32-bit, 8c 64-bit, 8.1 64-bit. Since there was so little difference between the 32- and 64-bit versions of 8c, I ran each test three times.

Here are the results (all times in seconds):

1) Version 8c, 32-bit: 98, 98 & 98

2) Version 8c, 64-bit: 101, 100, 100

3) Version 8.1, 64-bit: 86, 88, 86

Interesting results.

TB