I hope someone can explain this to me.
This new release will offer "more" effects and "more" files on the timeline.

How many is "more" than "unlimited"?
What happens when "more" than "unlimited" is still not enough?

Bob.

I guess "unlimited" turned out not to be true.

Kind of like "all you can eat".

Rob

Bob, are you just being facetious?

I think you know that you are limited by the system specs and the way the OS & program handles memory. A pc that has 128mb of ram and a 433mhz cpu cannot handle as much as one that has 2 gigs of ram and a 2ghz dual core cpu. The amount that can be handled on the timeline will be greater with a 64 bit OS and a 64 bit program that properly handles memory and cpu cores.

j razz

"happy too, but i think i want a stable 32 8c before i worry about 64."

For sure.

I may be wrong but I would expect enough bugs in this new Vegas 64 so that it can't be treated 1/2 way serious.... at least for the first couple of patches.

Will 64 bit improve my Preview frame rates?

Y = Yes

N = No

TIA,

Grazie

Will Vegas 8/64 support gpu preview?

--------

in 32 bit Unlimited = limited by system specs, but in 64 bit Unlimited = not limited by system specs? That's quite an achievement, overcoming the limitations of the system.

So, a 64 bit system with 1 GB of RAM will be able to work with unlimited clips without any limtations. Wow.

May I own up to being very ignorant about 64 bit, so could someone please answer the following:

1. OS - presumably this means Vista 64, but I believe there's a 64 bit version of XP - would this be ok?

2. Other software - could there be problems with other software or plugins not being 64 bit?

3. Hardware. I have "fairly" recent Core2Duo and Quadcore machines - how do I find out if they're 64 bit capable?

Thanks for any education.

1) I believe that Vegas64 will be Vista64 specific, although I don't know that for a 100% certainty.

2) Probably not. Everything I have installed on Vista64 (which has been primarily 32-bit software) has worked fine.

3) All Intel Core2Duo and Quad-core processors are 64bit capable.

Thanks very much John - when you say "64 bit capable" - is that something that happens automatically when a 64 bit OS is booted, or is there a switch somewhere?

Hi,

Vegas Pro 8 (32bit) runs perfectly well on XP x64 and Vista 64, even in not officially supported.

The upcoming Vegas Pro 8.1 (64 bit) will run supported on Vegas 64 bit, but NOT on XP x64. It might run (unsupported), but who knows. You could say that VP 8.1 is Vista 64 specific... Believe me, this was the ONLY reason why I switched to Vista 64...

Just to be on the safe side I switched to Vista 64 bit, and Vegas Pro 8b runs totally fine on it. Nevertheless, VP 8.0b aslo run perfectly on XP 64. For more than 6 months of heavy use I had not a single hang...Call me lucky ;)

32-bit applications run gerenally fine on 64-bit XP (or 64-bit Vista). They are installed in their own 32-bit environment and the 64-bit OS is running in compatibility mode. You get no benefits, whatsoever, other than that your applications can get full 2GByte of memory for themselves, assuming you have a lot (4G or more) memory on your mobo.

Can't hardly wait to see how the rendering and editing speed is affected with the 64 bit VP8.1 release. Wonder if the SSP4 instructions are already implemented? Hopefully they are. There has not been any rumours about that detail, that would dramatically increase render performance. However, more important is that the overall stability improvement that these releases hopefully address.

Vegas 8.0b new rendertest runs SLOWER on Vista 64 than on XP x64 (84 seconds versus 82 seconds). That must be because of some stupid background tasks running in Vista. Must experiment to turn them off, as instructed recently in PCWorld mag...

Christian

It's been clearly stated that XP64 will not be supported, and my guess is that (if there are problems running Vegas 64 on XP64) it will be related to Dot Net which seems to now be a large part of Vegas.

I do not believe that Dot Net on Vista64 is the same as that on XP64. The other issue that we have had version trouble with is the SQL server..... as well as a runtime32.dll error.

Get past that, and I don't see why it wouldn't run on XP64.

The questin I would ask however.... is that if you're doing this editing thing for a living.... then why would you want to take the chance?

Will my Previewing be be nearer framerates in 64 or not?

Grazie

Yes Blink - it was just an open question - I thought that sooner or later Vista would find its way into my life, and I knew that it would probably be because Vegas needed it - cometh the hour ....

"Will my Previewing be be nearer framerates in 64 or not?"

My GUESS is yes. 64 bit means more memory on tap and in Vegas anyway, memory is a large part of preview performance.

Not withstanding, when I change (the present 8b) Vegas's file header to handle "memory above 2 gig" there does seem to be improvement in thumbnail refreshing as well as framerate on palyback.

Grazie:
You know if that were the case maybe a snowball would not melt in hell.
JJK

Thanks B3T. Let's see the actual eating of the pudding - yeah?

JJK? eh? I got lost on the double negative .. I think? Are you saying there IS or ISN'T a chance of this happening?

Grazie

Grazie:
Isn't, no chance. But I do keep an open mind for Hardware boosting or some new trick to use a couple of the "4 cores" in the processor for video playback. MY HD 120 HDTV card will play back 40 meg HDV flawlessly. (720P)
JJK

Ah, thanks JJK.

G

I hope you're right however I think this needs to be qualified.

Clearly if what needs to fit into RAM doesn't and data in RAM has to be paged to disk then things will slow down dramatically. With HDV things can get pretty ugly quickly. A frame of HD requires 4x the amount of RAM however HDV uses a 15 frame GOP and one wouldn't want the codec having to decode the sequence everytime Vegas requests a frame. It'd be way more efficient to decode all the GOP once and hold that in RAM. Now you need to hold 60x the amount of data compared to SD.

But it's not all about getting at the data. HD requires 4x the amount of data to be processed by FXs. More RAM doesn't help, more CPU speed does.

My biggest problem with relying on more RAM to solve the issue is it's a dumb approach. None of us can afford enough RAM to hold all of our projects data, in fact if more RAM could solve the problem you could solve the problem largely today by making your disk speeds as fast as your RAM speeds. This solution is available but the cost is incredible.

I believe I can already see what I'm saying is valid. I run Vegas on systems with slow and fast CPUs and between 0.5GB of RAM and 2GB of RAM. Performance scales according to CPU speed not RAM size. More RAM gives a very quick initial render time from what's cached in RAM and then slows. For more RAM to make a big performance hit I'd need an aweful lot more RAM and there's the next issue. How much more RAM would we need to get a significant improvement if any. Currently we're maxed out at 3GB, most affordable mobos peg out at 8GB, to go beyond that costs go up per GB.
Having said that I am at the moment pretty happy with how Vegas performs doing basic editing with XDCAM EX (apart from the bugs). Playback is good enough to get the job done although a few too many audio tracks and FXs can slow things down. The real cruch comes when doing compositing in HD. Frames rates can slow to around 1 minute per frame! This would be pretty unworkable for most, I can live with it because I use an engineering approach to planning my composites. Other compositing apps seem to get around this problem by working smarter and giving the user more control over what gets rendered to speed up preview of what you're adjusting.

The other solution to some of these issues is to give HDV / AVCHD the flick off the T/L and use an intermediate codec. Avid and FCP have taken this tack, Adobe certainly support it well via the CF codecs. Even Vegas got on the bandwagon with CF for a while and then recently dropped the ball in part. Pity really.

Bob.

You and I are thinking along the same lines. So let's say that Vegas must hold an entire GOP in memory just to show you a frame of HD. You're giving some numbers to compare this to SD. The comparison gives a sense of why SCS decided to develop a 64-bit version, they could foresee needing a heck of a lot more memory.

Taking the SD/HDV comparison a little further, if Vegas needs to hold 60x the data to show you a frame out of HDV media versus an SD frame, then consider a frame out of a crossfade of 2 HDV events. Vegas would need 2 GOPs held in memory. Then consider you've got a few tracks of media with effects and stuff. There could be a lot of dependent GOPs in there that have to be loaded into memory just to show you a frame of the timeline. They're overlapping on the timeline like bricks. Consider the guy with 30 tracks of media doing a lot of compositing and it seems pretty obvious that Vegas is in danger of crashing. It's not really a memory leak but the effeect is the same.

So the solution, as you point out, is for Vegas to work smarter (or for Vegas to prevent you from working dumber) in addition to providing more brute memory.

What would be smarter? I mean, aside from dropping support for HDV and AVC directly on the timeline? (Won't happen, the train has left the station) Background rendering? Maybe, if Vegas could do it in the background to individual locked tracks and locked track folder groups. Locking is a key to this because as long as a track is locked that's a simple flag to tell vegas to prerender the track and not to keep validating that bit of prerendered media against its sources.

Another thing that could help is maybe for Vegas to monitor and meter itself a little better. Can't play back media? Running out of physical RAM? give a warning. Prompt people to start trying to work smarter earlier, before they get themselves into deeper trouble.

Rob

BTW, a little tidbit on maximum memory. Some of Intel's chipsets that are listed as supporting 8GB may actually support 16GB once 4GB dimms are available at reasonable prices. If that time has arrived, look for a BIOS update for your motherboard before replacing it.

Rob Mack

" is that something that happens automatically when a 64 bit OS is booted, or is there a switch somewhere?"

It's automatic.