Boosting Performance in Vegas - I want faster renders!

Myke_Hart wrote on 12/30/2003, 5:51 PM
OK, guys I am trying to boost my rendering performance in vegas. As we all are. My current video machine in question is a Home Grown Clone. Which includes a Asus P4C800 Deluxe motherboard, Intel Pentium 4 3.2Ghz Processor (hyperthreading enabled), Elixir DDR400 memory (Single Stick 512Meg, and I know that 2 sticks will boost to 800Mhz but the other one failed and is being RMA'd under warranty.) 2x 36G SATA Western Digital Raptors (first one is Boot, Second is Page File for XP), a 160G PATA Maxtor Diamond Max 16 (Data Drive/Capture Drive). I am using a Radeon 9600 256Meg dual head for video. I have disabled the onboard IEEE 2 channel firewire "VIA" piece of junk onboard the motherboard and inserted a Texas instruments 3 channel IEEE firewire card in it's place. I have a extra Intel 10/100 pro network card installed. The Intel card is on my main network, while the onboard gigabit is crossovered to another Gigabit editing machine to transferring video so that I can render on one and edit on another. I am using Vegas 4 + DVD (version 4.0e) on windows XP Pro SP1. I do a lot of green screen work, masking out the green with the built in Sony Chroma Keyer plug-in and then overlaying that video with a static or a moving background. In doing so it takes about 15 minutes to render 1minute 6seconds of video to NTSC_DV AVI at BEST quality. I rarely render to any other format or file type. What I want to know is if there are any tweaks or settings I can change to try to up my performance in rendering. I normally render 2 hours of video at a time but recently one of my customers has had me create an 8 hour movie for him. I have broken it down to 4 DVDs but there will be many changes made to this video throughout the year. This is on "How to pay for college without financial aid" so the tax information and financial aid form information changes frequently, and every time it does, he wants to update the video. I am currently testing the rendering of straight (unedited) video to try to get a baseline. I don't know but 14 to 15 minutes for 1 minute of video seems crazy, but way faster than anything else I have testing on. Any ideas on what I could do, try, or tweak? By the way the captured video is standard DV 4:3 full screen aspect so nothing fancy. Also if you were wondering I am doing this work pro-bono. That's right... For Free! I would like to do this free work in a lot less time and as cheaply as possible.

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/30/2003, 6:24 PM
First, there is no animal named Uncompressed DV. Either it's DV, or it's Uncompressed. DV is compressed at the camera, and I suspect that if you are rendering to Uncompressed-NTSC, this is your primary problem. (OK, there are indeed Digital Video formats that are uncompressed, but if you're using those cams, I'd be surprised if you were using Vegas. DV usually implies DV25) Rendering taking so long on a fast machine indicates that you have this set up incorrectly.
Render that same footage to the NTSC-DV template, change nothing.

Renders go faster if you render to any drive other than your C/boot drive, and store media on an drive other than the C/boot drive.
There is no rendertime of straight/unedited footage, so if you are seeing any rendertime at all of straight, unedited footage that was captured as DV footage using Vegas' capture app, then you are definitely doing something incorrectly.
Try rendering just to that template, changing nothing. I think you'll be happy.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 12/30/2003, 7:40 PM
Here's a tip. After you finish say, a couple minuts of your edited video, save the file. Render the part you've worked on into a file (ie DVD_001.AVI). Open your file in another instance of Vegas. Now, while it's rendering in one instance you can continue editing. So, no time wasted.

If you want to render out to MPEG-2 , do the same thing, but buy TMPGenc. Then you can combine the MPEG files together. I've done it and it works nice.

Or.... :) Render everything out to "low quality" WMV or MPEG-1. Give this guy a copy of the whole project on 1 DVD. Have him look at it, make changes, etc. Then he can give you a list of things to change.

You can't get any new hardware to speed up renders. You can overclock if you wanted, but you need to be more editing efficient with the hardware you got.
Myke_Hart wrote on 12/30/2003, 7:40 PM
My bad.... I am rendering to the NTSC-DV template just changing to best, instead of good (default), for my final render. When I leave it on the default (good quality) it takes 12 minutes for 1 minute 6seconds of video. Well that shaves off 2 minutes... But how much video quality do I lose? I feel I should still render in the Best quality possible because the finished avi will be taken to another program and recompressed to Mpg2 for dvd. Then the avi printed to broadcast beta for airing to the public through local cable access. I will run the 2 test renders through some test software and visual eye testing to try and determine the quality difference. I am also going to re-render the final avi thru the NTSC_DV "best" and "good" just to see if it will truely render 1:1. I have a feeling that it won’t since it should attempt to recompress the video again. Let’s see what happens. I wish we could post some files on here, so I could post the 1 minute cut that I am testing with to see what you all fair on your machines. Would be a cool bench mark session. What are your thoughts? By the way I read your book...
Myke_Hart wrote on 12/30/2003, 7:53 PM
OK, it looks as if vegas is pretty smart. It knows not to re-render prerendered files. Both qualities took 45 secs to render from a prerendered file. I know this is what you said but I am very untrusting. I always like to see the proof. Sorry.... This may be a solution. Can you save prerenders? To use later. I am not too sure how the prerender functions, I assume it renders to a temp file. Does this temp file remain or get deleted when you close vegas? I am going to go find out now....
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/30/2003, 7:59 PM
Pre-renders will disappear if you;
Move the files involved with the prerenders
Add or delete tracks to the project
insert anything new in that area
or otherwise modify anything in that time selection.

One last thought, be SURE you haven't adjusted opacity by accident.
What happens when you put a file on the timeline, do nothing to it, and render to a new name? It should be zero time at all.
Myke_Hart wrote on 12/30/2003, 8:20 PM
Opacity is at 100 percent on all video tracks in this test. I have added broadcast colors, forgot about that. Looks like I added it to all tracks individualy. I have 4 video tracks and 3 stereo audio tracks. One of those audio tracks is empty. I can delete empty one but I wouldn't think it would affect rendering, would it?
Myke_Hart wrote on 12/30/2003, 8:30 PM
That's it! That is the solution. If I prerender the entire video or just that part. I can close vegas make changes to other parts of the video. When I render in NTSC_DV "BEST" it rendered in 16 seconds because it was already prerendered. Now I just need to find the temporary files for the project to back them up and hold on to them for a few....uh... Years. So that I can make quick changes. This should save me days of rendering anytime he wants changes made. I can deal with 16 seconds!!!! If I had 2 brains I would be twice as dumb!
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/30/2003, 8:45 PM
You shouldn't have broadcast filters on all tracks....
Drop it on the Preview window if you want it to affect everything.
You can also render to New Track, if you are afraid of losing your work when moving things around. That effectively is the same as prerendering, as it still creates a file, except one is in a temp folder and the other is in a folder you specified.
HPV wrote on 12/30/2003, 8:52 PM
Pre-renders will disappear if you;
Move the files involved with the prerenders
Add or delete tracks to the project
insert anything new in that area
or otherwise modify anything in that time selection.
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Spot, did you know that all of the above doesn't apply to audio? You can add and subtract audio tracks, events, filters, levels, ect.. and all pre-renders will hold.
On the video side, if you make a base project with more video tracks than you'll need you can then add media/events on a new track and not blow out your entire timeline of pre-renders.

Craig H.
HPV wrote on 12/30/2003, 9:25 PM
Now I just need to find the temporary files for the project to back them up and hold on to them for a few....uh... Years. So that I can make quick changes.
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Myke, your pre-renders are placed in your folder of choice via the project properties (file menu or ALT + ENTER). If you change anything in project properties you'll blow out all pre-renders on your timeline. So you want to set this up at the start of a project. I'd say your best bet for keeping everything together would be to store your veg. project files and pre-renders in the same folder. When you select Save As for your project you can also select "copy and trim media with project". This lets you save all media, all trimmed media (events) or trimmed media with up to 30 seconds of heads and tails (events plus extra). This will give you everything in one file to hold onto for years. (Ugh) ;- )
BTW, you can change your preview window quality setting between good and best to determine if there is a difference in quality. Only time you should see a difference is when scaling. Also, you can do selective pre-renders (Shift M) with a time region selection at different quality settings as needed. This mean you could do selective pre-renders at best quality and then render the project at the good quality setting. All selective pre-renders at best will hold on the timeline. If you use the print to tape feature, you can stop it at any time and everything rendered up to that point will hold. Pre-renders are used if you decide to render out the project as one file so it will go really fast (4.5x faster than realtime here going from one 7200rpm IDE drive to another). Set up a template for the best setting via the custom option in the pre-render dialog box. Type in a name at the top, set video quality to best and then click on the floppy disk icon.
Cheers,
Craig H.
Myke_Hart wrote on 12/31/2003, 4:02 AM
Thanks guys, I think I have enough information to play around with. I will get rid of those broadcast filters and just add it to the preview window and try some of the techniques you stated above. Time is money! The faster I can finish a project for one customer, the easier it is to bring on the next. Do you guys use any software to keep track of the time spent on a project?
PeterWright wrote on 12/31/2003, 4:50 AM
> "Do you guys use any software to keep track of the time spent on a project?"

I guess a spreadsheet would easily do this, but I use a printed form - basically a time sheet, for each project. In my case it isn't to work out how much to charge, but rather to see if I quoted the right price - most work I do is fixed price, based on the time I think it'll take, plus costs, overheads etc.

By checking how close or far off I am each time makes me more accurate estimating for next time...
farss wrote on 12/31/2003, 5:50 AM
Here's my two bob's worth. All of the above and.
Loose the Broadcast filter, render everything at preview or draft. If the client is forever making changes you're wasting your time making it look good before it's finalised. If the client doesn't like that remind him what he's paying!

When the whole thing is chiselled in stone then render at Good, apply BC filter to bus.
Myke_Hart wrote on 12/31/2003, 6:45 AM
Hey now this is for the kids. The poor helpless high school children, with runny noses. They deserve the chance to get a high dollar education in high quality video, not to mention I have inserted my studio logo all over this thing. I look at it like free advertising. Since they are paying for the tapes, duplication, media, labels, and book printing. Just not my time! If those kids and parents come out with anything from these videos it will be, "That Hart Studio logo zipping around the screen sure is pretty and shiney...maybe I will call them…". Plus I am hoping the board of education will want to do another one, and that's when I plan on...sticking it…uh...well charging a fair price. Anything to keep from doing wedding vids and birthday parties. No offence to anyone that does them.
Spot|DSE wrote on 12/31/2003, 8:53 AM
True indeed. I sometimes get pretty video-focused, don't I? :-)
You can slide audio around, insert new audio, delete, open copy, new audio track, etc without killing the prerendered video file.
As far as time-tracking, we use http://www.neuber.com/timeanalyzer/ tool, for 35$ it's great, and it interfaces with Excel/Access for billing.