Wanted: PC Setup Advise

[pucho]

Can you share your hints or tips to get the most speed and rendering performance out of VS9?

Even on fast PCs in the office, VS9 hangs up, crashes and displays "out of memory" error messages.

Brand: DELL
CPU: 2.8 GHz P4
RAM: 500MB
HDD: 40 GB

In your experience, what is ideal RAM Type, RAM Amount, HDD Type, & HDD Amount? What other enhancements should be made to make PC suitable for VS9? Any clues appreciated. TIA.

[hathmilao]

you should have atleast
512MB DDR and above ram (more than 1 GB is ideal)
> 100 GB Hard drive about 7200 rpm speed
the motherboard speed should be 533 or higher
Your processor 2.8 Giga Hz seems fine

[Ken Berry]

... and if your computer is at the lower end of the resources stakes, (and often even above that, especially with only the minimum amount of RAM), make sure you have turned off as many background processes as possible which all eat into both CPU usage and RAM usage. And set your virtual memory to at least twice the amount of real RAM....

[DVDDoug]

Perhaps you're working with a bad video file.

All of my crashing problems (and A/V sync problems) were caused by corrupted MPEGs. It took me a long time to figure that out because they had "sneaky corruption"... They would play-back OK but caused crashes during editing or DVD authoring, or resulted in DVDs with "lip-sync" problems.

[heinz-oz]

An office machine, with the typical set up for office use, with internet/email, wordprocessing, networking, file sharing, virus protection/firewall etc., even at the higher end of the spectrum, tends to be the least suitable for video work in general. You should not disable the virus protection and firewall on a machine which is connected to the www and network at work. Yet, we all know how much grief is constantly caused by these necessary processes.

The ideal set up is along the lines of what has been said before, but stand alone, at least for the duration of video work. At least two HDD's are also advantageous and as much RAM as you can afford and supported by your mobo.

[pucho]

Thank you very much for your helpful advise. I really appreciate it.

At least two HDD's are also advantageous

Now what is best practice to configure dual HDD system for VS9?

1. Should VS9 be installed on C or D
2. Should virtual memory be configured on C or D?
3. Should VS9 "scratch" space be configured on C or D?

Any clues appreciated. TIA.

[DiscCoasterPro]

Hi. You mentioned a 40g HD. Thats kind of small, how much free space is left on it? I'm imagining in an office environment there must also be a ton of small files on it. Editing mpegs requires some contiguous space also. Has this been defragged? Lots of potential strikes against the hopes of success it seems.

[maddrummer3301]

Leave VS9 where it is and you operating system as is.
Simply add another harddisk to the computer and format it as NTFS.
I would get at least a 120gig drive minimum for video.
Preferred 250 gig. Western Digitals are nice & reliable.
You can never have enough disk space for video.

When you start VS9 always make the working folder on the new harddisk.
Also under "Preferences" (F6 key) redirect the "Preview" folder(s) to
a directory on the new harddisk and Un-Check the default that uses
your home directory on the original drive.

Your 40 gig drive is to small. Your probably running out of disk space.
Adding more ram may not speed up the rendering process.
Adding ram will make the recording process, editing processes, previewing
processes go faster.

Hope this helps,

MD

[sjj1805]

Take a look at this thread

http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic.php?t=9611

Where we have previously discussed this issue and have placed some detailed and lengthy suggestions about this subject.
Regards
Steve J

[2Dogs]

you should have atleast
512MB DDR and above ram (more than 1 GB is ideal)

RAM is the least significant factor - 512Mb can be plenty, and you'll only see an advantage in Smart Rendering with more RAM.

I would wholeheartedly agree with Heinz-Oz, best to use your own pc and not try to work on an office machine.