I7 920 frustration....
by Mark Moss
on
Aug 10, 2009 at 4:39:59 pm
Well....I purchased the new computer that has the I7 920 2.66ghz processor with 9 gigs of ram etc.
I loaded Vegas 64bit and dropped the AVC footage on the timeline. Here is what I noticed.
1. It loads the footage on the timeline very quickly.
2. When I resize a clip, (by clicking and dragging the end) the video does not scroll with it. I get the choppy look with the frame numbers showing a ..... Does that make sense? I don't know how else to explain it. I've been able to do this since I started using Vegas.
3. At 1080 24p, the playback is just okay. Choppy until it plays back enough and then stabilizes. If I add any transitions or anything, the playback drops to extremely choppy. I have not even tried effects yet, and fear that it will slow it even more. With this type of processing power, I shouldn't have to rely on ram rendering should I?
I had thought that this machine would would smoke my dual core 2.0Ghz 2gig of ram laptop, but so far it is just slightly better. I have no doubt that maybe it is operator error, but I don't even know where to begin. I hope this is not what I will expect from HD for the future, otherwise I'm going back to VHS. :)
Also, I am using the 64 bit version of Vegas. Why am I using it? I am not sure that I see a significant improvement in performance over the 32 bit version.
Once again, I hope that it is operator error. If someone can point out what I can do to improve performance, please let me know.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by John Rofrano on Aug 10, 2009 at 5:12:11 pm
You will be smiling once you start to render. Preview is not very multi-threaded and so you won't see significant improvements in preview with multiple cores unless you get faster processors (not more processors, but faster ones). The big performance improvement will be when you render. Then you'll never go back to your DualCore again.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by Dale Spetz on Aug 10, 2009 at 10:27:34 pm
I concur. Previewing on my new i7-950 Vegas9s-64 has been underwhelming---still sluggish. Maybe slightly better than my old dual-core. But, it is a rendering race car.
It does seem to help to turn off the new auto-quality feature, for previewing.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by Charles Avanti on Aug 10, 2009 at 11:15:54 pm
That's true. I upgraded my Q9300 dual quad core by adding 4 more gig of ram to total 8, and I went from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit. Now my render times are 33% of what they were before.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by Libby Csulik on Aug 11, 2009 at 7:53:24 pm
I don't have an answer for you, but I was wondering, is your new computer by chance the Asus Essentio Desktop from Best Buy? I've been looking at this computer for several weeks now, and the specs you mentioned sound the same as this one. It seems like a good computer at a very decent price, so I'm curious to know how it's functioning for you overall, if it is in fact that computer.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by Alan Britton on Aug 12, 2009 at 5:56:34 am
Unfortunately, this isn't going to change much, dispite your CPU's power, until Sony adds GPU support to Vegas to really help decode AVC. The CPU just can't handle AVC very well. Once they do that, playback will be smooth as silk. Other apps already have it. I may be wrong, but I think Premiere already has this. This is the top item on my wish list for Vegas. Hopefully 9b or c will include it. I will keep my fingers crossed.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by Mark Moss on Aug 12, 2009 at 6:44:21 pm
What exactly is GPU support? Is there anyone in the know that has information if Sony will add this support? Smooth as silk playback would certainly make me a happy camper.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by Alan Britton on Aug 12, 2009 at 7:35:00 pm
GPU is the Graphics Processer Unit. Applications are starting to utilize the power of the graphics card's processer along with the CPU to help speed up certain types of processes on the computer. In this case, the decoding of AVC footage so it can be displayed realtime. Sony needs to implement this as soon as possible IMHO.
There is a media player out there called Splash that takes advantage of this. It plays MTS files perfectly. There is also a plug-in for Vegas available, but I can't remember the name and I think it is around $99.
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by David Shirey on Aug 13, 2009 at 5:19:39 am
[Alan Britton]"There is a media player out there called Splash that takes advantage of this. It plays MTS files perfectly. There is also a plug-in for Vegas available, but I can't remember the name and I think it is around $99."
Re: I7 920 frustration.... by Alan Britton on Aug 14, 2009 at 12:07:53 am
Yep, that is it. Thanks! I will be looking forward to hearing how it works for you. You would think Sony would be able to do this in one of there next releases.
