Sony Vegas Going 64-Bit Soon

[Jerry Jones]

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/news/ShowRelease.asp?ReleaseID=660

I advised Ulead to do this ages ago.

Now Sony appears to be almost there.

This could make the Vegas software the leader on the PC platform, in my opinion.

"HD content production workflows really push 32-bit computing platforms to the limit. Many performance barriers are removed when you combine the 64-bit Vista operating system, native 64-bit software and 64-bit hardware technologies from processor providers like AMD," stated Dave Hill, vice president of technology for Sony Creative Software. "A software-only solution like Vegas is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the increased memory and threading capabilities available in the 64-bit world.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Hulk]

That's interesting. I don't think I'll be upgrading to Vista until I can move to an entirely 64 bit platform. All of my apps must be available in 64 bit for and show tangible performance and useability enhancements.

Until then Vista is just window dressing for what I'm doing. I don't want to start a flame war so I just want to say it again "for what I'm doing." I realize that there are lots of people out there loving Vista and that's great.

[ND66]

Sony Creative Software plans to release a 64-bit version of Vegas software by the end of 2007.

Not that far away........ .

End of 2007.......means more like Christmas......or Jan, 2008.......by the time the first Service Pack (bug fixer update) is released we should be in May.......wouldn't buy brand new, unproven software anymore......

You know, every time I think of an upgrade, there is always something worth waiting for...

But, by the end of the year they should have some requirements and recommendations laid out. I say 64bit is a way to go for HD Video Editing.

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[wkulecz]

64-bit video editing and 64-bit photoshop would be about the only way to get me to 64-bit Vista, but I'll be looking equally at moving to a Mac. Everything else I can do fine with Linux. For 32-bit Windows at present, Windows 2000 is more than good enough for me and I've stayed with it and will for the near term.

--wally.

[Hulk]

You guys know I'm always for advancing the state of the art but I'm going to play devil's advocate here just for fun.

It seems like everytime we are supposedly moving ahead with a new operating system, performance-wise we seem to be slowing down.

When we moved from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 just about every important performance benchmark showed Windows 95 being "almost as fast" as Win 3.1, and that was best case scenarios. Sure we gained a lot of useability but we lost some snap in the OS and applications. Of course it was quickly made up for with the release of faster processors but we did lose.

Win95 to Win98 same thing.

Win98 to whatever to whatever to XP to Vista > same thing.

All the while faster and faster processors have covered up what could be considered lazy programming to some. Or since 16 bit apps wouldn't run natively on 32 bit OS (and vice-versa) we couldn't make fair comparisons. We just had to take the manufacturers word for it .... "it's better!!!"

Now we are finally looking at the holy grail of compute intensive applications. 64 bit

Will it be the same thing that has always occured in the past? Preliminary benches will show the 32 bit software being faster due to all of the optimizations that 32 bit has had over the years? Or at least that's what proponents of 64 bit will say.

But then after 6 months or a year everyone will have forgotten about the 32 bit vs. 64 bit performance comparision and we'll all just assume 64 bit is faster now because "things have been updated and optimized and revised." Of course most of us will have also upgraded our hardware as well. Making meaningful comparisions impossible.

And then there is the psychological part of it. It's 64 bit SO IT MUST BE FASTER! Just like the how the $25,000 amplifier must sound better (waaay better) than the $5,000 amp. Or the $10,000 speaker cable must sound better than the $100 speaker cable.

My point is that I really, really hope that when I upgrade to the 64bit version of Vegas that it performs better than the 32 bit system right out of the box on the same computer system. If it takes a couple of releases then hindsight tends to get a little hazy.

Oh yeah and I really hope Sony would incorporate a few things into Vegas (like SmartRendering) before investing too much time in what I hope is NOT an advertising driven move to 64 "bitness."

End of rant

[ND66]

Very true, yet I think that the slowdown is related to those “running” processes in the background.

How many processes were running in Windows 3.1?

Not to mention ad-aware, spyware and all those legit programs calling home every chance they get or sitting in system tray loaded just because you may need to use them once a month. But it helps you start them faster.

When I see Vista starting up from cold boot, I can’t possibly imagine how many processes are loaded in just to bring Vista lightening fast from the suspended mode. There has to be a reason to recommend 2 Gigs of RAM for it.

If I needed to go 64bit, XP has 64bit version out there too.


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[Hulk]

I know some people would call me crazy but I'm not running any anti ad, anti spyware, anti virus or other stuff like that. I find IE7 to be pretty good at keeping the junk out if you keep the security setting reasonably high and stay away from all of the garbage websites.

I remember when we moved from 16 bit to 32 bit we were told the reason for the slowdown was because of all of the "hand coded assembly in the 16bit kernel."

I wonder if WinXP is actually any faster than Windows 3.11?

I guess I wish the programmers would keep in mind that sometimes less is more.

[ND66]

I know some people would call me crazy but I'm not running any anti ad, anti spyware, anti virus or other stuff like that. I find IE7 to be pretty good at keeping the junk out if you keep the security setting reasonably high and stay away from all of the garbage websites.

You're crazy!

Or just lucky!

My Video PC is just OFF line 100%! No need for any of the above.


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[Hulk]

Version 8.1 of Sony Vegas Pro will be 64 bit. It will be a free update for version 8 users and should be out in the next few weeks.

It should be interesting what good things these extra 32 bits bring to the table.

[ND66]

Version 8.1 of Sony Vegas Pro will be 64 bit. It will be a free update for version 8 users and should be out in the next few weeks.

Now, this is nice.

Thanks for the news Mark.


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[Hulk]

8c for 32 bit and version 8.1 for 64 bit OS's is out now.

I'm still running XP 32 bit so I loaded up 8c and the first improvement I have found is better preview playback of AVCHD video.

[ND66]

I'm running Vegas on XP Pro x64 Edition.

The only problem, I'm so busy I haven't even turn my video rig on for the last couple of months... . I’m hoping for a long and cold winter this season, it’ll allow for more editing time.

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