Memory...
 

Yes..the great question, how much is enough is what I am getting at. I have a newer Dell PC running I7 CPU Vista 64 Bit 920 @2.67..12Gig Ram
Wondering if it can handle everything I am doing in Vegas..I have so many bizarre crashes over the last few weeks. The more work I do with HD, the more complicated it gets. If I am editing with HD footage from the Canon XH-A1, I don't have too many issues, but once I throw the Rebel XTI footage in, Vegas starts reacting buggy, crashing, creating many memory issues, than once I throw in a second camera shot on p2 cards with a HVX200, its basically an inoperable program with every type of crash you can imagine. Perhaps their are memory settings in Vegas, or my PC that I am missing, or perhaps the latest versions of Vegas just straight up can't handle this powerful footage. Do you think a memory upgrade could help?

Any advice would be great..

I could be wrong, but I absolutely do not believe more memory will help you. I know nothing about p2 cards, but from what little I vaguely remember reading about them they are not fun to edit in Vegas even under the best of circumstances.

Peter running Ultimate S on my fairly quick i7 PC with 12 GB of memory, when I use the multicam feature and run 3-4 cameras, preview can get choppy once in a while (even if only for a second here and there) and that is with SD footage.

If your video footage doesn't reside on a fast drive, you might consider moving it to a faster dedicated drive to see if that helps. If you're using a dedicated Velociraptor as your "video drive" or as I call it my "scratch drive" you likely won't see much improvement going raid, as I tried that it and it was of no help.

RAM is not your issue. At least not the amount of it. Depending on the size of your photos from the Rebel, you could be having some issues though. HVX footage should be a cakewalk. Vegas 9 was built to handle 4k footage, and I've done some of that. Not an hour's worth, but some.

In terms of "powerful footage" I would say that you haven't put any on that timeline other than maybe some stills from the Rebel. I assume you are using Raylight to do that HVX stuff though and I don't know how that might be reacting.

I think Windows Vista has a lot to do with the errors.

I am hoping an update to Windows 7 will resolve most of my issues.

I am not using high-res pictures on the rebel, it's actual video footage that is 1920..and as for the stuff coming from the P2 cards, its rendered for me in h264..and it still crashes the system..

I have no tried bringing in the raylight footage yet to see if that works..sometimes I do wonder if its time to go over to Final Cut...not that I think that would solve all my issues..

Final Cut will transcode all your footage to Pro-Res. Then it works seamlessly. I have a feeling if you transcoded all your footage to HuffYUV or Lagarith AVI files, your problems would disappear in Vegas. And without the added expense of a new computer.

But hey, it's your money. :)

-P

What's the container and codec of this footage from the rebel?

Could be this, especially if the container/wrapper is QT, or, if the codec calls QT to decode it. If so, one solution would be to transcode all the rebel footage.

EDIT: I see Perrone beat me to it, we're basically on the same page. Vegas is the best out there for handling multiple media types on the timeline, but mixed codec footage can still present some challenges. FCP won't handle it on the timeline. In either case, the solution is usually to do some transcoding.

Yeah, another possability here you could try would be to get Cineform NeoScene and transcode your footage into a common Cineform format. Then you'd be working with similiar footage on the same timeline.

Your problems are odd though but I definately don't think it's the RAM. 12Gb is probably twice as much as you need.

When Windows 7 comes out, I'd get that, do a backup, format and reinstall and start from scratch. My guess is that your problems will go away.

Jon