New Vegas User - is my system sufficient?

[Brian Huether]

I am new to DV and Vegas. I am familiar with audio editing (with Cubase SX) and have a decent system for that use but am wondering if I am all set for DV. Here are the specs:

Intel Quad Q6660
2GB RAM
3 SATA Drives (each 233 GB and each with about 88% free space and all recently defragged)
nVidia GeForce 7300GT

I was having some choppy playback issues but I think that was the result of some setting mismatches. Seems pretty good now. Haven't sene the RAM spike too high but I am testing with pretty small video files, no FX, etc.

ALso, I am trying to figure out how to do realtime video capture. My camcorder (HG20) has no firewire out. It has USB (but just for file transfer not for streaming). The video outs are HDMI and Component. ALso there is an analog video composite RCA out. I don't want to get a separate video card for input. Is there a good video card with HDMI output as well as video inputs (HDMI, Composite or Component)?

Sorry for so many questions, but I am also wondering how much more disk space would be taken up if I were to record realtime the HDMI stream copmpared to the AVCHD files. What is the quality difference between HDMI video and AVCHD decoded video?

thanks!

brian

[Jeff Harper]

I can't speak to the capture issue as I have not used HDMI for capture, but I can assure you your system is sufficient for Vegas.

If you are a hobbyist, you're fine and need to do nothing. If you have extra money laying around you might you can consider upgrading your RAM to 4GB for a bit of improvement, but it is not totally necessary. Windows 32 bit will use up to 3.5 of the ram and will permit you a better experience overall. I forget how much ram Vegas itself uses, maybe 2GB, but you still might want to have more headroom for Window's benefit.

Some others may or may not suggest that you upgrade to Vista 64 bit. I run 64 bit with 8GB of ram and am glad I do, but I edit my videos for a living and need to squeeze the best performance I can out of my system.

Others will also suggest trying out Vegas 8.1, (64bit viersion). Many have found it to be a really great performing program. I cannot use it, as it freezes when I use the external preview function and it also does not support plugins that I depend upon. (This freezing is despite OS reinstalls, etc.)

[Edward Troxel]

Originally Posted by Brian Huether

but am wondering if I am all set for DV. Here are the specs:

Intel Quad Q6660
2GB RAM

Well... I started editing DV on an Intel 486 with 256 Meg of RAM. I think your system should be sufficient.

I'm typing on a Q6700 with 2Gig of RAM and it works great for DV.

[Brian Huether]

I should have also mentioned that I run WinXP Pro, so not as RAM/CPU heavy as Vista.

thanks,

brian

[Laurence Scott]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Some others may or may not suggest that you upgrade to Vista 64 bit. I run 64 bit with 8GB of ram and am glad I do, but I edit my videos for a living and need to squeeze the best performance I can out of my system.

Others will also suggest trying out Vegas 8.1, (64bit viersion). Many have found it to be a really great performing program. I cannot use it, as it freezes when I use the external preview function and it also does not support plugins that I depend upon. (This freezing is despite OS reinstalls, etc.)

I recently put together a 64bit quad-core editing system and the increase in performance is pretty substantial when compared to my 32bit dual core system.
I have both 32bit and 64bit versions of Vegas Pro 8 installed and they both perform as expected. The only real exception being that 8.1 doesn't render MainConcept AVC [mp4]