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I have done some research and a search on this forum and think I know the answers to my questions but would like some confirmation.
I have VS9 and VS10+ running on a 5 year old Pentium IV with XP. I am looking to upgrade to a Quad Core or possibly one of the new i7's running Vista. I am looking at buying Pro X2. I don't do any HD work at this stage but want to continue capture from my Panasonic NV-GS400 digital video camera and video editing and making DVD's. I don't see any need to be able to capture analogue video. From what I can find out Pro X2 should be OK for me.

My questions are:
1. Has anyone had any experience with Pro X2 on an i7 processor;
2. It seems I need the Quad core to get the best out of Pro X2;
3. Will VS10+ run on Vista and the Quad core;
4. Are Pro X2 files backwards compatible with VS10+ files? I have some videos partially edited in VS10+. Do I have to complete them and render in VS10+ before going to Pro X2?
5. Can I upgrade from VS10+ or do I have to pay the full new price?

Thanks.

1. Has anyone had any experience with Pro X2 on an i7 processor; Not me.
2. It seems I need the Quad core to get the best out of Pro X2; Not true. I use X2 on a P4 and have no problems. It's possible a Quad could improve rendering times somewhat.
3. Will VS10+ run on Vista and the Quad core; Yes, with a patch. But I'm not sure the patch is still available.
4. Are Pro X2 files backwards compatible with VS10+ files? I have some videos partially edited in VS10+. Do I have to complete them and render in VS10+ before going to Pro X2? You can open a file started in v10 and finish it in X2. An X2 project saved as an X2 project cannot be opened in v10. But X2 has a nice feature that can save a project as a v10 or v11 project.
5. Can I upgrade from VS10+ or do I have to pay the full new price? You can upgrade.

Thank you.

I still use my old P4 for editing standard definition video, either DV avi or mpeg2, usually with output to DVD. It's fine for that, and in fact it seems like my old clunker can now encode DV avi to Mpeg2 in just about real time, which seems significantly faster than it could do with all previous versions of VS. (I wonder if you have noticed any rendering speed increase Jeff?)

Of course if you're buying a new pc, it would seem short sighted not to go for a quad core if there's any chance of the pc being used for video editing. The core i7 is very good at encoding video, benefiting from the return of "hyperthreading". Since VS seems to work fine with AMD quad cores and the previous generation of Intel ones, there's no reason it should not work equally well with the core i7. Hyperthreading on the P4's resulted in an improvement in rendering speed of at least 15%. By the end of this year, the price of DDR3 memory will have fallen to match DDR2. The lower priced core i5 will also be introduced, and since there's not any advantage in having triple channel memory for video encoding, it might be a very good basis for a video editing pc.

I've got a quad core with 4 gig of memory running XP and not surprisingly the render time compared with my old 1700 is unbelievable. However, I use v10 and it always crashes two or 3 times within the first few minutes of use and then it's absolutely rock solid. By crashing I mean it just vanishes, one second it's there and then it's gone. I've installed both patches I can find but wonder if anyone else has this problem. I've also noticed it seems to leave a few process running when I close it. I'm tempted to upgrade it but can't see what the new versions give me as I'm not interested in blue ray, HDef etc.

Any suggestions as to the crashing?

I can't really help with the crashing, as I don't experience it.

As far as upgrading, I was a v10 user that never upgraded to v11 because of lack of new features that were important to me. I have, however, upgraded to v12 (X2). BTW, I don't use HD and Blueray yet either. But v12 does have some nice, new features that you might be interested in. Two being the ability to cut clips in the overlay tracks (this was actually introduced in v11) and the ability to have transitions in the overlay tracks. Both these features are great for doing picture in picture effects. There are others they may interest you too. My advice would be to download the trial and give it a spin.

Someone bought me VS12 as a holiday present.

I've never had any problems with any earlier versions of VS, from 7SE up to 11, but VS12 has a nasty habit of just shutting down with no warning on my old P4 2.8c pc. There are no error messages, no information in the Event Viewer logs, it just shuts off instantly, unnanounced. I have to make sure to save my projects on a regular basis.

I also seem to have found an oddity in both VS11, which I still have installed on my laptop, and VS12.

Neither of them will perform Smart Render on DVD compliant video imported from a DVD that has a bitrate above a certain threshold, which seems to be something more than 9200kbps.

I'm not sure that VS10 was any different, but I don't have a copy of VS10 installed on any of my pc's to test it out.

Ken Berry reports VS10 to be the only version of VS capable of writing back to an HDV camcorder.

Rendering to mpeg2 seems to be quicker in VS12 than for the last version I ran any render tests with - which might have been VS8 or VS9.

Editing footage from digital cameras seems more problematical in VS12 than it was in VS11.

I really dislike the graphite colour scheme of VS12 - anyone know how to change it?

Now that the forum is behaving I've been looking round and the "disappearing application" seems to be a common problem across all versions with no suggestions as to why. I may try the trial version but is it .backward compatible and if it's no better will any output I make be able to be loaded back into v10. There's no way I'll be parting with money if it isn't trouble free.

Re the slow forum.. if Corel can't keep a forum running, why should I believe they are capable of producing any stable code on complicated applications

While I'm trying trial versions I might give Adobe elements a whirl. As you're probably realising I'm a bit fed up with purchasing software that seems to only have a life of a couple of years and is flaky.

You sound a little bitter.

Will_cain wrote:Now that the forum is behaving I've been looking round and the "disappearing application" seems to be a common problem across all versions with no suggestions as to why. I may try the trial version but is it .backward compatible and if it's no better will any output I make be able to be loaded back into v10. There's no way I'll be parting with money if it isn't trouble free.
I wouldn't call this a common problem. I, for one, have never experienced it. As far as projects from v12, they can be saved as v11 or v10 projects. If you save it as a v12 project it cannot be opened in a previous version.

Re the slow forum.. if Corel can't keep a forum running, why should I believe they are capable of producing any stable code on complicated applications.
A valid concern, but in Corel's defense they inherited this forum from Ulead. In criticism of Corel, they never upgraded the forum software and they believe, as a result, that the forum was hacked. They upgraded the software and things seem to be working fine.

While I'm trying trial versions I might give Adobe elements a whirl. As you're probably realising I'm a bit fed up with purchasing software that seems to only have a life of a couple of years and is flaky.
I must assume you are referring to VS. I don't know why you think VS has a life of only a couple of years. It will last as long as you want it to. Sure, they come out with new versions with enhancements, but most of those are due to technical advancements (HD, Blueray, etc.). You certainly can't expect $50 software to have every bell and whistle.

Yes, Bitters a good description but I'm an old g*t. I wondered where your 50$ upgrade came from here in rip off Brittain its 57£. Can I buy it from the us site, I suspect not. It's cheaper as a new boxed set from Amazon. Its a mad world. I'm tryingv12 so far its OK but I've not rendered anything yet. Just as a matter of interest can I change the idiotic grey on black font that the audio track etc use, and I can't get the audio editor to kick in but I sure it will.

Thanks for your interest

Other than the crashing AFTER I have closed VS I've not had any problems...Not many will come to this forum other than to sort out a problem so it skews the perspective.

VS has always been pretty stable for me...(fingers crossed)

I really dislike the graphite colour scheme of VS12 - anyone know how to change it?

Just as a matter of interest can I change the idiotic grey on black font that the audio track etc use, and I can't get the audio editor to kick in but I sure it will.

From Videomaker Magazine:

It is ideal to work in a dark room while editing and color correcting. Glare on the monitor can alter the perceived contrast. If you prefer to work with some light, all lamps in the room should be daylight balanced. Normal household bulbs give off a yellowish tint, again altering perceived contrast. And if you really want to have the most calibrated video signal on your block, paint the walls of your editing room a neutral gray. (Entire article HERE)

So it makes sense (to me) to have a gray color scheme in your video editing software.

As for the audio editor, it will only work with clips in the Voice or Audio tracks. If you want to apply audio effects to the audio associated with your video clips you must first use Split Audio, which will put a copy of the audio in the audio track and mute the audio in the video track.

The trial version does seem more stable on a quad core with lots of memory. So far the only problems are it doesn't like long text boxes if you try and paste them in, crashing during pasting though eventually it works OK, though takes ages, it also crashes on some small scrolling text boxes that have been pasted in. I suspect that paste has been half disabled as most of the paste commands are greyed out, but they forgot about CTRL V.
Most annoyingly it won't let me add chapters. The fix identified at the top of this forum won't install it says it can't find V12. The version is 12.098.0 on the trial and the web site does say fixes can't be installed which means in my case the trial stops just short of completion. I've saved it as a v10 project and v10 is happy to do the chapters.

Will_cain wrote:The fix identified at the top of this forum won't install it says it can't find V12.

Perhaps this is because you are using a trial version!

That's correct, you can't patch trial versions. Not the brightest of marketing moves, since a potential customer can't determine if the problem is truly fixed.