New PC's Not Good Enough for NLE
 

I'm currently using Pinnacle Studio 7 and need more options and flexibility.

I'm a Photoshop and Illustrator user, so I naturally looked toward Premiere, specifically Pinnacle's DV500 DVD package. After talking at length with Pinnacle's staff, they have informed me my HP Pavilion with a 1.8 processor and nVidia GeForce2 MX400 video card aren't up to snuff. Matter of fact it seems their hardware requirements are very specific.

Recently, after hours of perusing this fantastic board, I've become very interested in the Vegas Video product.

Can anyone tell me if Vegas Video requires an accelerator card and if so; are they as picky about PC configuration? Also is Premiere useful without an accelerator?

Thanks for your input!

vegas doesn't use hardware accelerators, it's got real time preview.


the way it does this is try and render on the fly, dropping frames and quality as it starts to choke. What a great feature you say! But... what if I NEED to see a crucial 2-3 minute portion of my project? well, Vegas has you covered. You can selectively prerender video as well.

I use Vegas and love it, but I"m an audiophile, and with Vegas you get exposed to professional quality audio plugins (DXi format), and once Vegas 4.0 comes out we *should* be able to use VSTi format plugs as well.

Get Videofactory 2.0 from Sonic Foundry for $60 and try it out.
If you like it, upgrade to Vegas Video for another $200.

That path is actually cheaper than buying Vegas outright at $419.99.

I also use Sonic Foundry's SoundForge 6 to master my audio tracks, and the Noise Reduction Plugins to clean up my audio.

HTH

-Eric

I use Vegas Video exclusively, these days. I started with Adobe Premiere and Pinnacle Studio 7. VV3 has both of these apps beat, in my opinion.

I must say that it is very hard to believe that a 1.8 GHz processor
would not be fast enough.... so what are the minimum specs
for that product?

I'm wondering
 

if that HP model still uses the 133mhz FSB even though that CPU is capable of 400mhz FSB (potential bandwidth bottleneck).

It's the only reason I could think think of off the top of my head.

Regarding any Pinnacle, Matrox or Canopus real-time card, it's always best to build the computer around the card, rather than shoe-horning the card into a potentially incompatible "off the shelf" PC such as a Dell, Gateway or HP.

Consider having your editing system built by an authorized Pinnacle systems integrator, such as Ken Bell at DV Line (www.dvline.com) -- it's only a couple hundred bucks more, it's done right the first time, it's guaranteed to work, it's preconfigured & tested, plus lifetime free tech support. In the long run, a better value ultimately. Hope this helps,

As Chris said, it's better to build a machine around a card than add a card to an exsisting machine. It's not that you machine doesn't have the power, I use a DV500 with a PIII 667 and a Matrox G400, it's the fact that the DV500 is extremely picky about the hardware enviroment it shares. It may not be compatable with the HP motherboard.

The DV500 is a pretty good product but it does take a bit of tech knowledge, or lots of trial and error and heaps of colourful language to set it up properly. The v3.0 driver was a shocker but I've recently gone up to v4.1 and so far so good, the easiest installation yet.

<<<-- Originally posted by Adrian Douglas : As Chris said, it's better to build a machine around a card than add a card to an exsisting machine. -->>>

Yes, I'm getting that impression. Unfortunately I've already got the system. And frankly at this point, if I can get away with it, I'd rather spend the additional 2+ grand on camera gear and editing software than PC hardware. A lesson learned. BTW Adrian, I checked out your Website. I like your webmaster's attitude! <g>

Do I understand this right, Premiere/Pinnacle solves the rendering problem with special hardware and Vegas Video just wants shear horsepower to blast through the 'sticky' spots?


Oh and Eric, I checked on that upgrade path you mentioned with Vegas Video, almost seems too good to be true.

Michael,

First, thanks for dropping by and thanks for the supportive comment.

You are correct in the fact that Pinnacle uses hardware to provide partial RT functionality. The DV500 is getting a little long in the tooth but is still a good entry level board.

By the sound of your system I'd go for Vegas Video, it's a solid app and will do you well until you decide which way you want to go. Myself, I am heading towards a Mac/FCP setup as it seems to be becoming a defacto DV standard.

It is also worth noting that Premiere does not require the accelerator card. It's perfectly capable of being a software only NLE.

There is of course the new Premiere 6.5 with realtime preview (Seems to be a bit buggy) and AVID DV Xpress. Avid is really nice to use but has a couple of strange quirks that I haven't solved in the little time I've had playing with it.

Mike,

Yeah, I was shocked myself, but thats exactly what I did.

I downloaded the VideoFactory demo, and the Premier demo, then quickly bought VF, then realized after the fact that I could get the upgrade for only $199.99!

amazing!

For an audiophile like me, VV fits the bill perfectly!

-Eric

I had all kinds of problems with pinnacle after I started injecting their patches to fix problems (Studio DV7). I am not an editor but have had Vegas Video 3 for a couple of days nows. Downloaded about 2 minutes worth of footage into the media file, dragged them onto the timeline and started playing around with fades, wipes etc. I have cut the film, split it, and taken into sound forge and removed an amatuer sized thump from the audio by finding some other audio in that event, cutting it and pasting it over my great big "pop" . I was a little intimadated at first until I just sat down and read, used the tutorials, and mostly used the indexed "help"feature. I admit I have a lot to learn, but at least now editing is a challenge and not an aggravation. My computer is a pentium III 733 with 512 megs of ram with an ATI 64 meg video card, capturing is a little "jumpy" but it captures all of it and plays it back fine. I am indebted to the DV community for discussing vv3, it appears to be the answer I needed in editing.