Vegas Good for Weak Computers?

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notharrylume

Active member
Am I correct in understanding that Vegas is better able than other editing programs to operate on older and weaker computers like mine (Dual E2140 1.6 GHz)? I would rather not buy a new computer now. I will be editing DV for the time being and then perhaps HD from AVI transcoded files.

Thanks very mcuh.
 
Vegas is one of the least-taxing NLEs, yes. But with your specs, while DV will probably be fine, HD will present issues.
 
I'm editing SD short films on a crappy old single core laptop with 1 gig of memory - it's painfully slow if I add effects and filters, but otherwise it still runs fine.

Yes, HD footage is much more of a resource hog and so may be a problem for you.
 
Also, you might want to consider using an older version. I'm running 512 MB Ram with a celeron 2.6GHz, and I have to run Vegas 7. The computer is six years old and I'm able to cut features with no issues.
 
notharrylume said:
Am I correct in understanding that Vegas is better able than other editing programs to operate on older and weaker computers like mine (Dual E2140 1.6 GHz)? I would rather not buy a new computer now. I will be editing DV for the time being and then perhaps HD from AVI transcoded files.

Thanks very mcuh.
Click to expand...

I say download the trial versions of Premiere, Vegas and Edius. Edius might be your best bet depending on the codec. It can do true realtime effects using DV-25 on a mere 2.0 GHZ Pentium 4. The GUI is not bad. I like it better than Vegas myself. If you want to edit native AVCHD a Quad Core with Premiere Pro would work OK.
 
medeamajic said:
What is your point? All video editing programs will run on a laptop. That does not mean that you will be able ot edit AVCHD at full resolution.
Click to expand...

There's no need to jump down his throat. The OP didn't ask about AVCHD; he just asked about using Vegas on a "weaker" computer.
 
I didn't miss anything by running at 1/8 res on the notebook with USB drives. I rarely edit at full res on the big rig -- and then usually only for CC work.

When I started editing it was on scratched and faded 16mm workprints on a ratty Steinbeck, and we never got to see our work until the negative-cutter got done with it (a month later -- and then sometimes only in the theatre). And we had to walk a mile to work through snow!
 
I did some field editing on a laptop with a core2 2.6 + 2 gigs ram. I was working with 1080i HDV and it handled fine - real-time preview without plugins. the render to h264 wasn't bad either. the weakest machine I had vegas running on was p4 2.6 ghz + 1 gig ram. HDV choked on that, but DV played back real time. I'd say 1 gig of ram is minimum you need for DV. The HD formats would need at least 2 gigs of ram.... pre-render (shift-B) is very useful on weaker machines.

In response to the above poster,
I think its easier (and possibly cheaper) to purchase a newer machine (dell refurbished = cheap and powerful) then to buy and migrate to a different NLE.
 
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