# ATI Stream + Vegas Movie Studio Platinum HD 10



## deviess (Apr 7, 2010)

I have bought Sony Vegas movie studio...... and my HD5830 has ATI Stream technology, is it possible to use it in this software or any other sony vidfeo editing software? if not, which software would someone recommend I use so that I can use my GPU to it's full extent?

Thanks

John


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

Isn't this putting the cart before the horse? 

Surely you would want to be getting the best from your editing software - your system is only there to serve your software - not usually the other way around.

What level of editing are you wanting? if you want or need to go past using consumer level editing software you can step up to the Pro versions - in your case Sony Vegas Pro. 
Even then it is not just GPU based performance that is needed to run the heavier duty editing software - CPU speed and RAM are more important than video card specs for video editing.


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## deviess (Apr 7, 2010)

What i'm doing is rendering 720P videos for youtube. THough i tend to record a few hours at once, then render it all at once. This takes a long time to do just using my RAM and CPU.

Is it possible for movie studio to use my GPU to decrease render times? Or would I have to upgrade to a better piece of efditing software?

My system specs are:

Intel core 2 qaud Q6600 @2.4GHz
4GB HyperX DDR2-800MHz RAM
Sapphire Radeon HD5830
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

I sometimes get errors when running this software to render long videos and jsut want to make sure i'm making my pc go full speed!

Is upgrading to vegas pro worth it? or would some other video editing software be better?


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

Rendering HD video is a slow process whatever software you use - upgrading software won't greatly affect render times. Some of the newer software does make better use of graphics cards - Adobe Premiere CS5's Mercury playback engine for example - though it is designed for Nvidia cards, and not all meet the specs needed.

As far as I am aware Vegas doesn't use the video card capabilities in a similar way, if at all.

Vegas doesn't have a great track record for editing HD footage - jerky playback in editing monitor, render errors causing shutdowns, memory drain again leading to non-finishing renders and eventual shutdown.

Many people transcode the footage to a more suitable editing format first before bringing it into Vegas - transcoded from .mt2s, .mov or other formats used by camcorders or video enabled DSLR's to .avi using a 10 bit codec such as the Matrox VfW codecs available here. Use the I-Frame HD variant.

Using a bitrate of 80-100 Mbps file sizes will be much larger but quality will be preserved and the timeline performance will be excellent.

The best way for you to speed up render times would be to invest in more RAM - your 64 bit system can use way more than 4GB - most prosumer editors I know are using 6-8GB RAM in their 64 bit machines

What I, and many other amateur videophiles do is render any long renders overnight or while you are at work/school/out for the day - set it all up just before going to bed/out for the day and let it render away to its heart's content while you sleep or are out - remember: a watched pot never boils :grin:
The above also works well because your computer is only doing the one task - all its resources not being used for system requirements can be used for that one task.

Hope this helps :grin:


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## deviess (Apr 7, 2010)

I upgraded my computer a few months ago, i have a fairly old computer (2008 i think) for high-end things, aka gaming and hd editing. but i used to have only 2GB RAM. so i took that out and put 4GB of faster RAM in. thign is, i don't want to spend another load of money if i don't have to.

When i have big renders, i do set it to go overnight, i left one on last night that rendered 4 hours of video in 8 hours. Thing is, the file i got out was worse quality than the one i put in, but the one i put in was a smaller size....... Anyways, i'm pretty sure i've seen somethign in vegas that says something along the lines of 'use CPU even if GPU is available' or something like that. so i'm pretty sure it can do it.

If you can suggest some software i could purchase that can use ATI Stream to speed it up (even slightly) without having to upgrade my system again (if i do that, i will probably start from scratch as this is an OEM machine) pelase do. I would really like to get good quality videos quickly!

thanks!

john


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## deviess (Apr 7, 2010)

Also, could you suggest how to edit my videos too please? i'm very new to video editing (hence why slightly lower specs on upgrade) and i'm still experimenting with every viedo i make.


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

As far as the rendered (exported) video being larger in size and worse in quality from the original files - this has nothing to do with the software or your comp specs - it is solely about the export settings you are using.

The best export format for uploading to Youtube etc is an mp4 container with the H264 codec - this is a link to some Vegas export settings for upload to Vimeo (an upmarket version of Youtube) but the settings are good for Youtube as well. 
I use the same settings (different to the ones here - more specific to Premiere is all) for uploading to both You tube and Vimeo when exporting from Adobe Premiere Pro.

I'm not really aware of any editing software that will take any further advantage of your video card - most software is still much more based around CPU and RAM configurations.

I don't use Vegas so am not familiar with any settings for using GPU/CPU workload sharing - there may be some slight advantage to be had there - look in the help files of Vegas for further clarification.


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## deviess (Apr 7, 2010)

The bit rate was lower on the higher file size copy. it was 7.2k but it was 8k (kbps) on the smaller file. though the small file was wmv whereas the bigger file was screwed up and sony avc format.

I'm actually usiong windows movie maker right now and i'm very impressed so far.


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

wmv has come a long way from when it was considered a "low qual" encoding option - many arguments now rage across forums about whether wmv is better than mp4's encoded with H264 - some say H264 still holds on in terms of detail (less artifacts, less pixellation) when displayed at full HD resolution but the jury is still out I think. 
I use H264 encoded mp4's purely because most of my videos go up on Vimeo and they are still recommending mp4 as their preferred format.
What you have to remember with hosting sites like Youtube and Vimeo is that they are going to re-encode it their end and whatever format they recommend for uploading is geared to what they are going to do with it their end to give the best viewing results.
If you want archive quality files you encode with a lossless codec - and end up with monster file sizes :sigh:
A warning about bitrate - dont go too high thinking it will give you better end product - in theory it will but the problem comes in playback - too high a bitrate and most average computers will not handle it well - stuttering and choppy playback will result. For Blu-Ray to be played in players, fine go high but for computer/web playback keep it max 8Mbps.


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## deviess (Apr 7, 2010)

yeah. I had fraps running at full size (1080P) when recording and trying to play it back just annihilated my computer. but when i toned the bit rate down to 8mbps it was smooth and looked awesome. I have a video which turned out well up on youtube. 

YouTube - TNT Explosion

I think this is a fairly good quality video, but it was taken in 1080P on fraps and the bitrate was about 3,000,000kbps. when i tried watching it my computer pretty much froze. it rendered well though so i think my HDDs managaed to handle it. somehow!

thanks for all the tips people! i'l be sure to look into this in more detail!


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