T2i and Vegas: 32 v. 64 or i3 v. quad?
 

I shot some movie footage with my new T2i: 1280x720/60 and 1920x1080/24. btw: I forgot the settings on these two clips, so I opened them in Zoom Browser and it gave me everything I needed to know about the two mov clips.

Anyway, I have two computers, both with 4GB RAM: Core2Quad Dell tower and i3 Sony Vaio laptop. The Dell is running Win7/32 and Vegas 32; the Vaio Win7/64, Vegas 64.

On the laptop, these two clips open fine and playback fine, no further help needed.

On the Dell, playback stutters. Can only do basic edits of this stuff in its native form on the Dell. So I transcoded to MXF and Cineform (video only, audio is OK, and yes, I know I need to go double-system for any mission-critical gigs, I'll use my H4).

The results are interesting and my own observations, nothing empirical. Both CF and MXF playback fine on the Dell, now normal editing is possible.

On closer examination, I find that there's a difference in the sharpness in both compared to the original, and the colors look minutely off. So I add a Sharpness FX set to 0. Now the CF looks better than the original, but the colors are still off a tad. So I add Levels, Studio to Computer RGB, and now the CF image looks stunning!

I repeat the Sharpness/Levels combo on the MXF clip - much better, but CF still wins. Just to be thorough, I slap the combo on the orig - also much improved looks-wise, but I still couldn't edit it on the Dell.

I don't draw broader conclusions from this: V64/WIN7/64 handles HD better on my i3 than 32/32 does on my Core2Quad - in my setting.

Looks like I'll be doing much of my HD editing on the laptop...

64bit processing is undoubtedly making a difference, but you may also have hardware H264 decoding built into the laptop's video adapter. Some Vaios have a Radeon mobility that has this, in which case it might make more of a difference than the 64bit, although it will still be a CPU intensive job.

Might be worth considering that editing smoothness is not the only potential benefit of intermediate formats. Cineform in particular will lose less fidelity through processing than the original format

I've been cutting the footage on my G5 dual 8 gig of ram (the motorola 2.7 chip) and footage runs great in Final Cut after using Streamclip. But after exporting to a full QT, playback stutters. I suspect the HD footage can't be handled that well by the older video card.

But with Vegas, the guy I'm working with uses Vegas, I've been asked to shoot in 720 because the rendering is less. He's cutting a new show this weekend and handling 720 footage for the first time. I'll post the link to the show and his workflow. He cut some 1080p I shot for our Kick Ass show and told me that it took forever to transcode.

I used to use Vegas and from what I've seen from the guy I'm working with, it is a great program.

If only there was a plug-in for the G5 so that I could avoid using Streamclip (which is fine but another step outside FCP)....