Editing 1080p

[DAT510]

Hello all, I want to know what I need for my PC to edit 1080p videos and such with Sony vegas. Currently if i try to edit 1080p, my pc will crash. lol. I'm not too savvy with PCs so go easy on me. PS- i have Vista, 32 bit with AMD 64 dual core 2.60 GHz,and 2g of RAM

 

[DAT510]

So no one can help? I want my videos to play smoothly during playback and when i render it. Even 720p is choppy as hell.

 

[Wamphryi]

What you are looking for is a decent quad core CPU. A C2Q is the bare minimum. A dual core can barely cope with MPEG2 let alone 1080P HD. 4 GB RAM minimum. 16 GB really helps as there is a lot of caching going on. A NVIDIA supporting CUDA is often supported in modern video editing software. The i7 with hyper threading is also quite handy to have. Your current Rig simply wont cut it especially with resource hungry Sony Vegas.

 

[warhead0]

Editing usually requires good amounts of RAM.
I think the cause of your crashes is your PC is running out of RAM to use.

I can't recommend you more without knowing the specifics.
Is your RAM DDR2/3? and what speed your motherboard and current RAM are using.

 

[DAT510]

Editing usually requires good amounts of RAM.
I think the cause of your crashes is your PC is running out of RAM to use.

I can't recommend you more without knowing the specifics.
Is your RAM DDR2/3? and what speed your motherboard and current RAM are using.

I have no idea. is there anyway i can tell?

 

[warhead0]

I have no idea. is there anyway i can tell?

Typically there is a sticker on the RAM module itself, You may need to physically remove it from your PC to read it.

It should read something similar to:


G.SKILL Ripjaws X
SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL

Your's may vary is a few ways, I just posted an example.

If you can provide that information we will be able to recommend the best product for your needs. (winch will probably be more of the exact same model)

Please don't remove it if you are not confident in PC hardware
I hope this helps.

 

[HEXiT]

get a copy of cpu-z it will help you identify your ram properly.
if your running low on ram you may want to for the short term increase your virtual memory/page file size. (google how to theres plenty of guides)

also not all gfx cards can play 1080p smoothly most should be able to handle 720p if there over 1gig but you will have varying success, especialy if its pre 8800gt and only have 512mb or less gfx ram.

 

[Wamphryi]

If you upgrade the amount of RAM you will still not be able to edit 1080p with Sony Vegas or any other editor. I have been down this path. When I had a Core 2 Duo I could not encode in DVD (MPEG2) without dropping a significant amount of frames. When I upgraded to a Core 2 Quad 2.33 MHZ I could. That Core 2 Quad may well be able to edit 1080p but only just. The i5 Lynnfield I replaced it with runs at 100% while my i7 Lynnfield runs at about 40%. I have a 560 Ti offering Cuda support and I note the GPU runs about 30-40 % sometimes 20 %. That is just cropping and encoding without any demanding filters.

Dude you need a certain amount of grunt to edit video. It is more demanding in some ways than gaming. Also if you only have 4 GB of RAM or less then you will run into problems loading big HD files into the program. I have boosted my i7 to 16 GB and the only area I have found that helpful outside of RAM Drive is encoding HD 1080p. 4 is doable 8 is acceptable 16 is desirable. Above all a decent Quad Core CPU. Intel preferably.

 

[lance1973]

forget graphics cards, a modest one is fine. Vegas does not take advantage of a gfx card.

C2Q 2.4Ghz 2GB in XP works just about for me editting 1080p but it's not fun. it deals with 720p perfectly well. But I would recommend a i7 2400 processor, 8GB and a 64 bit operating system, and a modest gfx card to display then mp4 vid you'll end up with.

 

[dizzy_davidh]

If you are considering doing that sort of video work often then rather that upping your memory and cpu to ridiculous heights you could consider buying a complete hardware based editing solution such as a Matrox MXO2 Mini which comes with all the pro software you could want and is pretty much all but guaranteed to get the work done.

 

[MarkG]

That Core 2 Quad may well be able to edit 1080p but only just.

Considering that I've edited hour-long HD videos on a Pentium-4, I disagree.

However, it will depend on the compression scheme used for the source video; in that case it was MPEG-2, whereas there's no way the Pentium-4 could decompress H.264 (say) at that resolution in real time... even 720P would stutter.

 

[HEXiT]

it depends more on your gfx card than your cpu on what codecs are available and what quality you can recode at...
if your gfx card can handle 1080i you will be able to recode 1080 vid's if you have old hardware. nvidia 7 series or the x1950 xtx and below you wont be able to do 1080 anything. in fact you will struggle to do 720p due to gfx memory limitations among other things.