Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 Goes 64-Bit: Render Errors Finally Solved

A couple of the most read posts I have on this site have to do with overcoming render issues many of us had with Sony Vegas Movie Studio. It was amiss of me not mention that I upgraded to Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 in the summer of 2012 and that it was the first rev of the software I got to render complex projects cleanly without having to hack all those dll files.

There are two big changes in my mind: first they dropped 'Vegas' from the name and second, this consumer level software went 64-bit. Why is 64-bit such a big deal? Most modern versions of Windows are 64-bit and without this feature they are severely limited in the amount of memory they can use. In previous versions of Movie Studio we were running 32-bit programs often on a 64-bit OS. That's OK but it means that the 32-bit program can't use all the memory that you've installed. It also means that when that 32-bit program reaches the limit of the memory it is allowed to use, but it really needs more, strange things can happen and often these resulted in render errors.

Sony made their consumer level product 64-bit and I speculate that this is the main reason that I can render fine in version 12 of Movie Studio. This is why I'm totally recommending this upgrade to anyone on a 64-bit version of windows - it's a small price to pay for the performance and stability gains. That said, it's still not fast. I recently switched to Adobe Premium Production Suite and the combination of Premiere and Media Encoder blows Movie Studio away. But that comparison is a little unfair is the suite costs a fortune compared to Sony's product. If you're looking for a great value NLE I heartily recommend Movie Studio 12.