Are you serious? I wasn't complaining - just making comments about my experience with the software. Buying another computer is really a dumb response. buying 4 computers is even dumber.

my post was titled with a question and your answer is.. useless..

"My whole video production business concept and sales is about us spending more time creating the video than waiting for it to render."

Once you adapt your workflow to the "Vegas way" you will find you do in fact spend far more of your time creating. The point is that Vegas gives you real time editing - that is, you can instantly see the effect of everything you do whilst building your programme - this is far better than say DV500 where certain effects can be seen instantly but many cannot. The only time you need to render is when you're finished.

Now if you have a dual CPU machine you can start Vegas doing that then open another instance of Vegas and start a new job whilst the other one renders, or as BillyBoy says, let another machine do this. I have 3 machines, a full time professional business and rendering has never been a problem for me. I never sit around waiting for renders. Even if you don't have another job waiting to start there are always things to do rather than thumb twiddling - for instance designing and printing sleeves, labels, making phonre calls, printing invoices etc ..

On the other hand, if you're doing news gathering or something that needs to go out to tape immediately, then you will need hardware assistance if your work involves effects, compositing, colour correction etc, but if it's mostly cuts etc then Vegas can turn stuff around pretty quickly.

Also, many Vegas users find that they take far less time to build a program, and save a lot more time that way.

Hi,

I'm also a professional convert from Premiere/Canopus-DV Storm. I wrestled with the same issues as you are at first. But as others have already said, your work habits will change and the benefits of real-time as you work rather than immediate real-time output will become more apparent.

That said, we still use Premiere/Storm for certain tasks such as real time color correction for a long clip or real time speed control to slow down a surveilance tape for example.

You didn't describe what type of work you do but if it's quick edits with a few transitions you'll find rendering a non-issue because it's pretty fast. If you do a lot with stills or multiple layers or effects then rendering before output definitely becomes a factor. After a while however, you'll start building this time into your workflow and plan things a bit differently.

There are lots of people who offer great advice and help here. Keep coming back and you'll begin to realize the full scope of this great program and it's maker, SOFO.

Mike

The key here is if work under multiple deadlines, then yes, hardware is important. I manage to arrange my work so that I leave plenty of time for rendering. Remember, Vegas is very inexpensive and very powerful.

BillyBoy (if you're still out there...)
could you give me some more details on how you are switching drives, mid project, to another computer?
I'm also using two, but I've got one set up as a "Pre-edit Pre-effect render" machine, where I put together my effect intensive scenes and then move them to my other "Main Program" machine.
How are you working it out?
v.

One other thing to remember-- I work at a TV station and edit on an Avid D|S, one of the most state-of-the-art uncompressed "realtime" systems out there. But guess what? I still have to render 90% of the projects I work on, because after adding a layer or two of graphics and effects, the realtime factor goes out the window. And you wanna talk long renders? Sheesh!

In fact, there is a distributed rendering plugin that is offered for the D|S-- they fully expect you to render on another machine while you continue working on other things (unfortunately, we don't have that option. I spend a lot of time twiddling my thumbs during long renders).

And I don't get the peachy-keen "realtime" preview that Vegas offers. Much easier to see how your project is shaping up. In many ways I prefer Vegas over the D|S-- in fact, just the other day I edited my first project for work at home. My boss was amazed. In fact, he wants to set up several Vegas workstations at the station. Much cheaper alternative than adding another D|S or Symphony...

Bryan

I've found this method useful: Assumes you have or want two PC's.

Buy yourself a couple removable drive drawers.

example:

http://www.startech.com/ststore/itemdetail.cfm?ProductID=DRW110ATA&topbar=topbarp.htm

They are starting to show up in retail computer stores, price should be just $20-$40 or so a piece. The plastic ones work fine. They are rather well build and MUCH more sturdy on the inside (where it counts) when it comes to the all-important interface card, unlike the cheesy interface card in many so-called external drives that come with an external power supply and are WAY over priced in my opinion.

The only thing to watch is that they support the IDE interface you use on BOTH machines, which should be the same. For me I've got a fast IDE 133 interface in both, so that's the interface I bought for the drive drawers. It should say what kind it has on the box. This SINGLE drive inside the removable drawer gets switched back and forth from PC#1 to PC#2.

Set up PC #1 to do all your editing regardless if you just use Vegas or other application besides. You don't have to have your application on this drive but do save all your files to this drive.

Take your project right up to the finsh point, except for rendering. So your VEG file and all you sources files are on this drive in the drawer. The size of the dirve should be big, the bigger the better. I'm using a 200GB Maxtor which comes with its own IDE card, which also means I can and have set up a extra pair of IDE channels. With most cases you'll need to purchase a sperate and longer IDE cable, ($15-20) otherwise you'll fight trying to get the shoter cable to reach the interface card, besides having this drive on its own master IDE channel apart from your computer regular IDE channels (necessary anyway if you get a fast 133 IDE drive with itw own BIOS.

Remember this is NOT an external drive, (there are those sold as such) just a fast 133 IDE drive installed in a drawer which makes it mobile and the bonus is it runs off the PC's power supply, not any external power supply.

Set up PC #2 to also have a drive drawer and of course has Vegas installed. As long as you don't use both PC's at once your license allows this.

Now once you finsh your project, meaning you've done all the editing... everything BUT the rendering. Shutdown PC #1, pull the removable drive and slide it into PC #2
and load the VEG file. Start to render.

You've now have PC #1 free to do something else. This why I don't give a $#$%$# how long PC #2 takes to render the project.

I've been working with SoFo products for years. Starting with audio and SoundForge, I do all my audio work with one SoFo product or another.

Now that I'm getting heavy into video - I'm coming to speed with rendering times. I guess as a profession I didn't get into doing video because of the rendering and somo of the older products I used had to render to see the transitioins (waste of time). So I'm digging the realtime changes prior to rendering.

I think the removable drive is a fine idea...but what I find is a better bet (especially having multiple PCs all networked) is....all my files sit on the file server anyway. I can work on the VEG file on one PC....then open it on another and render it there. Since I'm not "working" on PC2, I'm not concerned about any sluggish behavior reading from the file server...so I'm free to go about doing more editing on other projects.

Well...that's my 0.02.

Kameron J

yes -- same thing here , the big avid system is going for sale and keeping avid dv on one system (to say - yep we got an avid system). everything else we do can be done on Fusion or Shake and Vegas for the "most" part.

kameroni -
i'm not too familiar with server usage...
does this mean that two different computers could be accessing the same source files?
if so, can you play one source (to continue editing) while you render on another machine, but with the same source??
if not, would you kindly explain how it all works?
v.