xpc and vegas....?.

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thinking about Mac and PC, still not sure which to get.

how stable is the vegas on a PC(xpc with 1agp 1pci slot adequate??) If I get the PC should I get an AMD or Intel system? any suggustions on the specs I should get? like type of ram(amount), HD, graphic card, cpu...

also do I need a capture card? or use the built in 1394 is good enough?

need to get a system end of this month, also y is the dvx better than pd170? )) thx
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

Vegas is very stable on the PC, (had it crash once when I accidentally brought in a 500MB PSD file instead of the 10MB one I shrank down for use in Vegas). :)

What's an xpc? Only one pci slot? you don't need any aditional PCI slots to run vegas, but I've got four on mine, and still wish I had more room for gadgets.

Either AMD or Intel will be fine. Just try and find the fastest chip at the lowest price. Make sure it has a large FSB. Also get a Gig of ram, a must have for the seriouse NLE solution.

1394 is fine as Vegas does not need any type of hardware acceleration to run.

I prefer the dvx personally, hence the reason I'm on this forum. It all boils down to personal preference. Do you like good looking footage, or boring 60i soap opera footage. :) Just kidding, the pd170 is a good cam as well.
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

all pci's full? why? whats needed? the small xpc has only 1pci...which is what i want to get... but don't want to be stuck later on with no more pci's to plug in
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

Let's see, Ive got my extra fire wire card for aditional hard drives, my Ez8 optical IN-out for digital multi chanel audio recording, I also have left a blank space underneath my video card for in order to let cool air get to it better. I am currently in the process of getting a new sound card so there is one more pci slot. They go pretty quickly so it might hold you back in the future if you are ever thinking of expanding.
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

the xpc has 2 firewire slots, optical I/O, 5.1 6 channel sound, built in.

I am just worried the built in 1394 is not good quality that when I capture the video it's not high quality, it's a VIA 1394 chip by the way. Also have any idea what graphic's card should i get.... ATI 9600 pro good? has tv turner and FM? type of hd....is 2 120g seagate 8M ram good enough? I am thinking of intel 2.8g 800fsb or AMD xp2500 for cpu.
The main thing I am worried about is capturing the video..it's a built in 1394, not one of those expensive dedicated capture cards. thx
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

I use the "built in" 1394 port on my system all the time. I've got one on the back of the mother board and one on the front of the system, no problems here. You should definatly be fine with that setup. I have a radeon 9600xt with dual monitors and it runs great.
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

You won't get a lower quality capture from a "lesser" firewire port. It either works or not, but never a difference in quality.

The onboard sound should be good enough depending on what you want to do. For high quality recording, audio master, etc. you probably would want something of higher quality. Thankfully, if you don't have any free PCI slots there are some very good external soundcards that connect to your PC via USB2.

Regarding Vid cards, Vegas doesn't make use of vid cards to accelerate much of its operation, so you're not going to benefit much from having some super expensive one compared to a more modest one. A good vid card will just enhance your overall computer experience as the displays will work better, and you can take breaks playing games :). The 9600 is a good card. If you don't get that one, at least look into one that gives you dual monitor output so that you can extend your desktop over two monitors. Add two 19" LCDs and you'll be set! 8)

What you want to pay attention to when choosing hard drives is primarily that you have a second HD (either internal or external) solely for media files (captured DV, audio, images, etc.). Your other drive should only hold your operating system and your installed programs (vegas, etc.), therefore it doesn't have to be so large. Even a 40GB drive would be sufficient as a system drive.

Having your second drive (your media drive) as external may be worth looking into because then you can devote a drive to certain projects, and plug-in another drive (via USB2 or firewire) when you need to work on another project. It also makes it easier to take your work (footage, etc.) to another computer if need be.

When choosing the size of your media HD, keep in mind that raw DV footage is roughly 12GB/hour. That means that a formatted 120GB drive will hold a bit less than 10 hours of raw DV footage (due to formatting, temp files, and render files). HDs are getting up to 400GB in size so you have a lot of choices! :)
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

to hudson: the question is y? as in why
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

Thx..

how bout 2 OS, one on each disk? boot up one for regular programs games and net..etc. Boot the other for DV editing only, OS and NLE on this drive only. good way? should be more stable right?
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

Two os's are a good idea, but you still want to have your DV data stored on a separate hd than your os. You could definatly store both os's on the same drive, in separate partitions and then use your second drive for video editing only.
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

There's really no reason for two OS's (unless you want to run two different OS's such as Linux and Windows).

For video work, it's very important to have a separate drive to store your video files on, as media files, especially video files can be very large and intensive work for the hard drive to access.  This way, you have one hard drive working to run the OS and the installed programs, and the other hard drive only has to worry about feeding the video (and other media) files to the programs you're running. Basically:

*Hard Drive 01 "System Drive" - For OS and programs.
*Hard Drive 02 "Media Drive" - for all media files to be used in your programs (video, audio, still image, etc.)

Hopefully that makes things clearer.  

Just FYI, having two OS's for one system (one for games/programs, and the other for Video programs) does not aid in having a more stable system.  If anything having more than one OS will require more work and maintenance as you have to deal with hardware configuration, etc. for every single OS you have installed.
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

thx

so... should I get the SATA drives? or ATA100 is good enough? or one fast SATA 10000 spin drive for OS and programs... and one regular SATA or ATA for media files.

any recommended drives?
 
Re: xpc and vegas....?.

ATA 100 drives work fine for me, but some people always want the bleeding edge of performance.  While you may not notice huge increases in speed when working with DV, some would say: "every little bit helps".

Put simply: You don't need SATA drives to work with DV.  ATA 7200rpm is fine.
 
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