Re: New high end Vegas system - recommendations please by John Rofrano on Aug 16, 2008 at 1:04:07 pm
I'd say minimum a Quad-core system but an 8-core would be better. Vegas doesn't use a GPU so any graphics card will do as far as Vegas is concerned however you might want to get a good OpenGL graphics card for use with Boris RED or After Effects.
You'll need a RAID with at least 4 discs to handle uncompressed HD (e.g., 4x500GB) and, of course, a camera that can deliver uncompressed and a capture card that can ingest it. Something like the Decklink Blackmagic card can capture uncompressed HDMI if your camera can deliver it.
The HP xw8600 Workstation line is something to look into unless you want to build your own. My Quad-core specs are on my web site. This system is a year old so you can get it for a lot less or build one that's more powerful for the same price. I don't do uncompressed but this system edits HD just fine.
Re: New high end Vegas system - recommendations please by John Rofrano on Aug 17, 2008 at 11:28:58 am
It should run on 64-bit right now as a 32-bit application. Sony is working on the 64-bit version of Vegas as we speak and they announced at NAB 2008 that it will be a free upgrade for existing Vegas Pro 8 customers so while Vegas does not take advantage of 64-bit today, it will very soon.
Yes, some plug-ins do take advantage of the GPU. Magic Bullet is another one that will as will Boris FX, Boris Graffiti, and Boris RED, so it does pay to get a good graphics card if you feel you will be using plug-ins like this. It's just that Vegas itself does not so I didn't want you to think that you could make Vegas render faster by getting a better graphics card. Vegas rendering is CPU bound.
Re: New high end Vegas system - recommendations please by John Rofrano on Aug 18, 2008 at 10:55:55 pm
Right now it will only use 4 cores when rendering because having 4 rendering threads is the current limit, but the 64-bit version will use all 8. How efficiently is dependent on how well the work can be parallelized. There are some plug-ins that are not multi-threaded and these will force Vegas to only use one core when rendering that plug-in.
