Configuration Settings for SVMS+D 6P

Sam00 wrote on 12/26/2005, 1:37 AM
Hi,

Is there a way I can potentially maximise the performance of Vegas MovieStudio 6.0 Platinum for my system by changing configuration settings?

The current settings do not seem to be utilising or stressing my available computer's resources. I edited a 1 hour, 3 track wedding video and it took 41 (forty-one) hours to render, however, my system only used ~400mb of available physical memory, where I had 2gb of RAM free. My Intel 2.8ghz HT CPU was at 100%, and with HT, was able to do the rendering in the background; however, if I set priority to High, there was no performance increase (and this impacted all my other processing).

I have looked through older threads, and someone said this time was not inexplicable - however, if I could allocate more of my resources (such as memory) to the processing, would this aid in reducing the rending time?

Not sure if it does anything - i don't believe I have changed any of the default settings, but Dynamic RAM Preview max (MB) is 128mb; Maximum number of rendering threads: 4. I have looked at the manual, and it's very thin on customising any settings...

Any help in maximising the performance would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Comments

rustier wrote on 12/27/2005, 11:28 AM
You might try turning off all other software such as antivirus antispyware, screensaver,any resident stuff you arent actively using. I disconnect myself from my dsl network as well.I have a Sony Vaio with sata drives. I recently added the second drive and set it up so the raw files and operating program was on one drive and the rendered file was sent to the other drive. After I did this my render times dropped dramatically. A 2 hour render is as fast as 30 minutes. I think when you process and render to the same drive it boggs itself down. You also might want to look at the type of file you import. I know Vegas studio takes and works with different kinds, and I am no grand wizard of Sony Vegas Studio, but I think it "likes" some more than others to put it simply. Try importing it in a different format for both the sound and video.
dibbkd wrote on 12/28/2005, 10:07 AM
What file format were you rendering to?

As rustier eluded to, different formats take more or less time to render.

I believe that MPG-2 renders quicker because it doesn't do much (if any compressing), where as WMV's take longer if you choose a smaller size, because it takes longer to compress them.
IanG wrote on 12/28/2005, 10:13 AM
MPEG2 does a lot of compressing and is very processor intensive. 41 hours seems excessive though!

Ian G.
Sam00 wrote on 12/28/2005, 1:08 PM
Hi,

Thanks for the replies.

My input files were several MPEG2 files - an hour and 20 mins each. Output was to AVI (1 hour 15 minutes). Two of the inputs were PAL, one was NTSC.

As I didn't operate every camera, some of them had to be 'rotated' to correct slight tripod seating malfunction; while all of them had the standard tweaking applied such as saturation, brightness contrast, colour correction/balance, sharpening to ensure that the final output was consistent.

I've looked all over the program and can't find any settings to configure the memory usage settings. It seems it restricts itself to using only ~400mb of memory during rendering; i've not seen it use any more than this (with no other programs running, and over 1.5gb of RAM unutilised.) There are only 3 other factors that may input rendering time: CPU, I/O and Disk, but CPU is maxed at 100%, I/O is fine and there's enough working and target space...

So I might have to conclude that the memory usage/management of Sony Vegas Movie Studio is a limitation... apart from that, everything else has been working great - second Wedding i've done with it, no crashes, easy to use - it's really saved me alot of 'editing' time than my previous programs... too bad about 'rendering' times though, but you can't have it all, huh?
ScottW wrote on 12/28/2005, 3:03 PM
Rendering is not a memory intensive task, it's a CPU and I/O intensive task. If your CPU is pegged at 100%, then that's your current limitation and the only way to get faster results will be to apply fewer effects (which is where you are most likely taking the hardest hit, along with using MPEG-2 as a source, which means a lot more effort was put into decoding the input than if you'd use DV as your source) or increase your horsepower. At some point, your CPU horsepower will no longer be the bottleneck - I/O will be, at which point you start looking at multiple disks (different source and destination drives) or Raid 0.

--Scott
IanG wrote on 12/29/2005, 7:17 AM
I think you've probably got the worst possible case for creating a processor load there! If you can adjust things like colour balance in camera it will save a lot of time.

Ian G.