How to tweak my athlon 64 3000+ AGP box to use Sony Vegas

September 26, 2007 4:52 PM

(PC)VideoEditingProFilter: I want to make Sony Vegas do what it totally seems capable of besides cutting & pasting video - fx, etc, sweet stuff - do I need a new system? (I know, I know... but if you know the ins and outs of setting up a Vegas PC box, from the info I provide you'll easily tell if its no good, I suspect, for what I want to do). Details after the jump...

Yes. I want to use Sony Vegas to make the coolest videos I can (with Vegas, I understand it may have limitations...), but really, nothing longer than 4 minutes. Only music videos, you see. I have tried Premiere and it was much more difficult for me, and don't have the option of buying a Mac at this time due to cost reasons. I have many years of just audio DAW experience, including (unfortunately) building the damn boxes, but not much video experience.

I currently own an AMD64 3000+ w/ 2 gb ram, a variety of hard disks varying in quality for use up to a pair of maxtor7200rpm Sata150 drives, and no matter what AGP card i stick in there (even the stupid expensive ones that are left), how much I tweak XP or overclock the thing a few notches (haven't gone higher than around 12% or so using the Gigabyte mb overclocking utility) it doesn't help the super-lag that occurs even though my video work of choice is barely up to 30 seconds. Of course the stuff works pretty ok if all there is is cut&paste edits, but that's no fun.

I have come to the conclusion that I should just give up and scrounge pennies to afford a cheap core 2 duo system with a pciExpress video card in there. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much mefites!

p.s. I don't suppose Windows XP 64 bit would help with this either.....

posted by bitterkitten to Technology (2 answers total)

Sorry, not familiar with Vegas but it sounds like you need to do some rendering, or the equivalent of it. Give the software the chance to build the FX you've described on the timeline so it doesn't have to do so on the fly when you play the timeline.
posted by trinity8-director at 5:10 PM on September 26, 2007

Response by poster: Hmmm.... I guess I could render each and every time I altered the thing... but I'm pretty sure that would take waaaaay more time than I'd like to spend. Which is not to say that isn't a good suggestion.

But I'm just saying that it seems crazy that I can't do the stuff I want with the gear I currently have.... i have got the window for watching the playback pretty darn small, and on a pretty crappy quality as well.

I still suspect I will need better gear. Is there anybody out there who does use Vegas who might have a ballpark idea? Thanks again, folks, I really appreciate it.
posted by bitterkitten at 3:27 PM on September 27, 2007