X2 Go6150 combo with Sony Vegas HD?

Wondering if anyone has tried running Sony Vegas for HDV video editing on a X2 Go6150 combo. I don't know that spending close to 2x the dollars on a Core2Duo setup would be worth the money.

Here is my thinking, right now I would like a machine to do some HDV video editing. It's not a must, but certainly would be nice. I would also like to have a small portable laptop like the HP 2000 or Compaq 3000 series. However, I know that in the end, maybe less than a year from now, I'll be wanting that quad core god box to easily do my video editing, and would be happy to have a competent laptop for other purposes.

I just want something that is workable now for HDV editing. If not I can wait. Will the X2 Go6150 do the trick?

Mike

 

It'll work fine. I do recommend buying the fastest X2 you can of course. Strongly consider upgrading to 64-bit Vista as soon as Sony does a 64-bit port of Vegas since video codecs get a nice boost from AMD64 mode.

You'll probably want to look at the upcoming AMD 4x4 desktop platform for your "god box". Start out with a pair of dualcore CPUs, each with their own memory controllers (doubling memory bandwidth never hurts), and swap in quadcores when they're ready. I'm not clear on when 4x4 will be ready but watch for it.

 

Do you have experience with Sony Vegas HD? Just wondering if you've actually tried out a rig like the one I describe with the software.

HDV editing is very demanding.

Mike

 

I have a HDTV tuner. HD is still 2D so you don't need a powerful 3D GPU. As far as CPU power goes the Turion X2 is just a low-power Athlon 64 X2 and that's used heavily for HD work. Configure the best X2 you can get and 2GB of RAM and you'll be fine.

 

The way HDV and AVCHD are processed, played back isn't the same as an HDTV tuner that simply uses the LCD as a display. There is heavy codec action used which can put a load on a PC.

I'm including a link to a Japanese page with sample AVCHD clips which are listed as .mt2s files. They are a little large, 22MB. Maybe you could download them and try to play them back. From what I understand you will need an mp4 codec, as far as I know Nero Showtime is the only software that can play this format.

Mike

 

Hmm, I'd hoped VLC would play it, but nope. Anyhow, codec work is done by the CPU, not GPU, and a Turion X2 can handle that. I've played 1080p Quicktime movie trailers (mp4 variant) on my Athlon 64 X2 desktop (my notebook is a ML32 singlecore, alas) with CPU power to spare and LOTS of power to spare if I'm running 64-bit Linux and 64-bit VLC (nearly 2x speedup). Ideally you'd get a TL60 which I don't think HP offers on the dv2000z but a TL56 should be more than adequate. Yeah, mp4 is tough so now I understand your concern.

 

Just in case anyone is interested, I dug up an article talking about H264 decoding requirements. Looks like even the most powerful CPUs will have trouble decoding H264 so my question turns out to be somewhat moot.

Here's a link to an ATI Solution but it requires high end hardware.

Mike

 

H.264 is what Apple is using for their 1080p movie trailers and it's just not a problem on a dualcore AMD CPU. So long as your codec is multithreaded (QuickTime is) and/or 64-bit (VLC is singlethreaded but has no problem under 64-bit Linux) you should be fine, unless Sony's codec is particularly inefficient.