So I'm just getting into the whole HD video thing and got my first camera and have decided (I thought) on sony vegas platinum movie studio 10 for editing. I found a good deal on an i7 quad core laptop with a great display so I got it. I proceeded to upgrade to a 7200rpm HDD and from 4 to 8gb of RAM. Excited to see how this affected my rendering times I rendered a 60 second clip in vegas and brought up task manager to monitor how much cpu and ram was being utilized. To my dismay I was only using about 2.5gb of my available 8 gigs of RAM (I am running win 7 64 bit by the way.). So I did some reading and it turns out that sony vegas platinum 10 is only available in a 32bit version and beyond that it only supports the use of 2 gigs of RAM.

Is there any way around this? Even if there isn't a 64 bit version, is there someway I can at least set it to us 4 gigs of RAM?

I downloaded a trial version of vegas pro 10 64 bit and it STILL is only showing that it's using 2gigs of ram. It did bump up the GPU usage from 10% to about 25% which which was good. But I'm still at a loss as to why the pro version which is 64 bit will only use 2 gigs of RAM. Is this an issue with the trial version that would be fixed if I purchased the full version?

Vegas is not a ram intensive application. I suspect it is only using what it needs.

I believe that all consumer video editing applications, including Vegas Movie Studio, are strictly 32-bit. As such, these $100-ish programs cannot use more than 2GB per process.

Daniel, stop looking under the hood. Just pay attention to rendering times and timeline performance. My PC has 12GB of ram and when rendering is only using 2.5 or so of ram also.

The performance you need to pay attention to is the amount of time a render takes, not what is happening in task manager, etc.

You will also find your cpu is likely not utilized 100% during rendering. That too is normal.

Just edit, everything is fine. Vegas is not a car that can be tinkered with to "go faster". Just buy the fastest cpu you can afford, etc. Other than overclocking there really isn't much you can do to improve performance. Faster hard drives are nice, etc., but for the most part it's all in the CPU when it comes to Vegas.

For AVCHD I've heard running RAID 0 with 4-6 drives can be a huge help with timeline performance, but I've not tried it.

Duplicate post.

well at least that makes it an easy choice for me between pro and the $80 suite on amazon.

You can't use scripts with Studio versions, and some plug-ins, such as Ultimate S will not function with them either.

64 bit versions tend to render a cleaner product, at least that has been my experience.

If the studio version is all you need, lucky you, you'll save lots of money. But you will lost LOTS of flexibility (plug ins, unlimited lines of video, etc). I had a studio version early on, but eventually needed to upgrade. Kind of depends on your needs.

Daniel,

Download CFF Explorer which is a program that allows you to access the .exe file of Pro 10 to allow it to use more than 2gb.

NTCore's Homepage (http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php)

It does work.

Lee, what is the end result of using more ram with Vegas? Better previewing, timeline performance?

Daniel,
Download CFF Explorer which is a program that allows you to access the .exe file of Pro 10 to allow it to use more than 2gb.
NTCore's Homepage (http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php)
It does work.

Lee is correct about this program.
Here's the thread (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=647907) on the Sony Vegas forum where CFF Explorer was first talked about and the responses from many thrilled users.

It's much easier to just upgrade to the Pro version and use the 64-bit version of Pro.

Ed, I think his complaint is with the 64 bit version not using adequate amounts of RAM. From what I read in the link Mike put up it is an issue, apparently...though I really don't know much about it.

32 bit apps have a 2 Gig limit. You can fake it into using more using a program such as that mentioned above. However, you do risk instability when doing that. 64-bit apps are not limited to 2 Gig so simply switching to a 64-bit app will immediately make more than 2 Gig available to you without having to go through tricks of any sort. And the original post here was about Vegas Movie Studio and all Movie Studio versions are 32-bit.

I downloaded a trial version of vegas pro 10 64 bit and it STILL is only showing that it's using 2gigs of ram.

Ed, according to the link Mike put up this is an issue many have found. The program being recommended apparently is helping many people with crashing during complex renders.

I just started up Vegas Pro 10.0b 64-bit and the "available RAM" for ram previews is 2,814 Meg on my 4 Gig system so it's accessing roughly 3 Gig of my 4Gig. I'm sure the number would be higher if I had more RAM. I don't see why a program such as that would help on the 64-bit version of Vegas Pro. Now the 32-bit version running on a 64-bit OS, I can see it increasing the number.

Looking through it again, I can see that it mentions the possibility of updating 32-bit dlls accessed by the 64-bit app but for 64-bit apps, it is NOT needed as they can already access more than 2 Gig.

I'm sure the number would be higher if I had more RAM.

Yes, it would. Mine says:

Memory
Physical memory: 24,567.2 MB
Paging memory available: 49,132.6 MB

I have 12 GB of ram and Vegas uses only about 2-3 GB. I just don't think of Vegas as using much ram.

Lee, what is the end result of using more ram with Vegas? Better previewing, timeline performance?

Hi Jeff,

Yes I noticed a considerable difference when rendering, especially in that I don't get the low memory notice anymore. I did ask a local computer specialist about whether I should add more RAM, but they said 4GB which I have is more than enough for HD editing and rendering. So in essence, give it a whirl buddy.

32 bit apps have a 2 Gig limit. You can fake it into using more using a program such as that mentioned above. However, you do risk instability when doing that. 64-bit apps are not limited to 2 Gig so simply switching to a 64-bit app will immediately make more than 2 Gig available to you without having to go through tricks of any sort. And the original post here was about Vegas Movie Studio and all Movie Studio versions are 32-bit.

But not all can afford yet another upgrade to 64 bit.

especially in that I don't get the low memory notice anymore. So in essence, give it a whirl buddy.

Lee, I've never had problems rendering or a low memory notice(Yet). If it doesn't increase speed or timline performance it would be meaningless for me to play with it. Thanks for your reply.

Speed would be determined by how powerful your PC is.

So unless someone has issues with crashing, there is no benefit or reason to messing with increasing the amount of memory Vegas utilizes, is there?

So unless someone has issues with crashing, there is no benefit or reason to messing with increasing the amount of memory Vegas utilizes, is there?

No, I don't see why there would be. Enabling the LMA would only help when total process memory usage exceeds 2GB, and the only time that ever seems to even come close to happening, is when rendering, and even then only in some particular cases.

That being said, having it enabled doesn't appear to cause any issues. There have been a fair number of people with it enabled and no extra curious behaviour reported that I'm aware of.

The important things are to get all the EXEs LMA set (the vegas EXE and FilIOSurrogate), and if you're on 32bit Windows, do the boot modification. Some places suggest fixing the DLLs also, but that is nonsense.

I also noticed when I had the demo version of Pro 10, that there was still a 32bit FileIOSurrogate. No doubt, it was to facilitate opening up videos where only a 32bit codec exists, but I think that even on a 64bit install, setting the LMA on that file might help with some codecs.

So unless someone has issues with crashing, there is no benefit or reason to messing with increasing the amount of memory Vegas utilizes, is there?

What's interesting is when I went to adjust Vegas 10 and increased its capability, I also have Pro 9 installed as well, and went to increase that but it was already done by default!