How to optimize system for Good Vegas Performance.

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plainman007

Well-known member
Hello Everyone,

Can you please share any settings and optimal settings for a Vegas workstation. My new system arrived and ive just started using it but was surprised that its performing a lil slower than my older P4 2.66 ghz which is a barebone system (no graphics card, no sound card, only 512 mb ram, single HDD). The new systems config is as follows.

System Specs :
INTEL 3.4 Ghz Dual Core with 2mb x 2 L2 Cache.
Original Intel Motherboard 945 GNTL with dolby 5.1 onboard.
1 GB Ram x 2 @ 667 Mhz.
3 x 250 gb sata 2 HDDs @7200 rpm.
Nvidia 6300gs with 256 dedicated+256 shared Ram.
DVD RW, Twin Monitors, Firewire Card (3 inputs).

I put an mpeg 2 file on the timeline and selected a small area (about 5 secs) Hit render and found the preview window and render bar stop after every 3 secs. Like it will progress 3 secs...stop for 2 secs....progress 3 secs...stop for 2 secs and so on till the end of the render. My older system never did that and it had only one partitioned drive. Whats wrong here. By the way ive only installed Vegas after XP Pro. Ive not fiddled the customised controls etc within Vegas. Can we have an optimization check list from you guys. What are all the ideal settings within Vegas and the OS to ensure a smooth running Vegas experience ? Such as preview settings, ram allocation settings, no antivirus/or should be disabled etc. This would be useful for many people here who will want to fine tune their workstations. Thanks.

PS : Is there a way to transfer vegas settings including layouts etc which were on a different system onto a new system ?
 
Oh, I never knew that. But David, How come it never stopped in intervals on my previous lower end machine ?

Secondly its not matching up to performance speed to my older machine (p4 2.6 ghz single core, 512 ram, single hdd 40gb). I just cant believe it. It ought to perform slightly better or at least equal.

Then the machine makes such a huge noise if i pick 4 files of 1gb each. Like its howling ! I thought having seperate HDDs would smoothen file reading. But i am disappointed.

Did i make a mistake ? I know its not a space age machine that i configured but at least its a decently powerful machine right ? And this is what it does ? :undecided
 
Hi David > I tried the patch you gave me. Thanks. It seems to have improved the performance a lil. But it never stops when rendering to DV or AVI etc. They dont use keyframes is it ?

Any Idea on this noise thing from the hard disk running when i pick large files ?
 
What do you mean, it never stops?

When I went to a dual-core processor, my render times decreased significantly. I'm not intimately familiar with the exact processor you chose, but I don't see why you wouldn't see an increase in speed -- unless it has something to do with your mobo, but I don't think it would.
 
David > was refering to the keyframe pauses. It never stops or pauses when rendering to fomats other than wmv. Ive noticed my new system pausing every 20 frames or so for about 3 secs then it renders another 20 frames or so in about a sec and waits for 3 secs. Its irritating to see the waits are longer than the actual renders time. Unless its actually rendering in the background while pausing the preview & render progress bar. Same clip renders to DV or avi in lesser than real time. ??

Im using a Intel Dual Core (D) 3.4 Ghz, 2mb x 2 L2 Cache, 2 Gb Ram 667 mhz.

And to add on the rumbling of the HDDs are driving me crazy.
 
I did this a couple of days ago when I saw the thread, too bad I didn't do a before and after.
Thank you for the link!
 
I see.

No, DV doesn't use keyframes. It's an intra-frame format, meaning that all of the information for a frame is contained within the frame, so there's no need for a keyframe.

Other codecs, like MPG and WMV, are inter-frame -- so it only records a full frame every so often, and then the only information in the next few frames is what's different.
 
David > Hmmm, That makes sense yes. Anyway theres a lot more to experiment on how its rendering to mpeg etc. I just burnt my first dvd with DVD Arch. Never got to make a successful dvd since the media discs were of bad quality. Now i got a new brand and tried architect and it works very well. Even recompressed mpegs looked crisp.

1. Do you recommend turning off Indexing Service in the properties dialog of the HDD to improve performance ?

2. Do you run an Antivirus Solution on your workstation ? Will this slow system performance ? Any workarounds such as deactivating antivirus prog while working on Vegas ? Or it doesnt make a difference ?
 
1. No.

2. No. Well, yes. My anti-virus program consists of three words: don't be stupid. This, of course, doesn't interfere with any processing . . .

What I generally do, though, when I'm rendering something serious, is turn off the LAN connection, and also go into Task Manager and shut off EVERYTHING non-essential.
 
Hmmm....so you run without an anitivirus solution ? Ive opted for the same because a lot of people told me here that norton really slows the system down. So ive decided to go without AV protection on my Workstation. My laptop has AV uptodate. So anything going to the bog guy gets scanned first here. Do you do that too ? My workstation has no Lan. No Internet. Etc. Purely used only for Visual Effects and other cases of dementia. :Drogar-Mad(DBG):
 
David, why would you want the indexer running when you are rendering?

David Jimerson said:
1. No.

2. No. Well, yes. My anti-virus program consists of three words: don't be stupid. This, of course, doesn't interfere with any processing . . .

What I generally do, though, when I'm rendering something serious, is turn off the LAN connection, and also go into Task Manager and shut off EVERYTHING non-essential.
Click to expand...

---
Jerry
 
VideoMaker said:
David, why would you want the indexer running when you are rendering?
Click to expand...

I don't mean to say you should have it running. I just don't think you'll see much of a performance difference.
 
plainman007 said:
Hmmm....so you run without an anitivirus solution ? Ive opted for the same because a lot of people told me here that norton really slows the system down. So ive decided to go without AV protection on my Workstation. My laptop has AV uptodate. So anything going to the bog guy gets scanned first here. Do you do that too ? My workstation has no Lan. No Internet. Etc. Purely used only for Visual Effects and other cases of dementia. :Drogar-Mad(DBG):
Click to expand...

If your work station has no LAN or modem or any other connectivity, then you surely don't need virus protection, as long as you're careful about what you load onto it. You have complete control . . . use it wisely. :)
 
Yes Exactly, No modem in the system too. If at all im loading some plugins/software etc. Is it ok if i scan that disk/thumb drive/device thru my laptops AV program and then if its clear i can load the device onto my workstation ?
 
I like more of a visual flair on my machine for every day stuff, so I have one Windows profile for my gaming and other activities, and then a separate account for editing. That way, I don't have anything running in the background when I'm editing.
 
David > having serious problems capturing normal dv itself (just think what about HDV). Last night i hooked up my firewire port to the sony camcorder. Tried the capture application. Must say it behaved very wierdly. Controlling the camera was perfect from the cappture interface. But then it wouldnt rewind beyond some points. Then preview would disappear every now and then. Preview very jumpy and with acute banding. Thats all ok. Just wouldnt capture. Hit capture. Its says its capturing. Hangs. The capture worked once only to grab a small clip of 5 secs. Then it stopped saying there were dropped frames. Now the irony is. I immediately opened Windows Movie Maker. Hit capture. And it captured like a dream. Not a single drop frame. I could even work on other stuff and the captures were perfect. Whats happening ?
 
If you mean settings within vegas capture, NO. Some basic XP tweaks from videoguys.com page thats it. But i also noticed when i click my computer and u can see your harddrives. I click on the drive letter and it doesnt navigate into the drive. Show some windows script error missing some .dll !! But if i right click and select open or explore it goes into the drive. Any Tips ? or is it time to reload XP ?
 
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