Distributed Rendering and Other Performance Improvements?

QueenGeek wrote on 4/23/2005, 7:09 AM
I'm going on 13 hours now on rendering a 40 minute video in 5.0. I'm having to make minor tweaks, and this is killing me. So, I'm looking for all ways to improve. I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck with distributed rendering. What kinds of performance gains do you see? If I pick up a second box, would I be better off getting a really fast CPU or dual-CPUs at a slower rate? Vegas is pegging my 1.2GhZ cpu. How much memory is enough? I've presently got 1GB and Vegas doesn't seem to be taking advantage of that. Lots of virtual memory paged out. Is Vegas 6 any better in using real memory or is this a limitation of Microsoft's crappy O/S memory management scheme? I got a suggestion from another board to split the project up across multiple drives to reduce the head movements on the drives on the I/O operations. I do plan to try that also.

Comments

QueenGeek wrote on 4/23/2005, 7:40 AM
Also, if you do distributed rendering, how many machines do you use? I'm considering getting two compact stackable boxes as render slaves. Thx.
jlafferty wrote on 4/23/2005, 8:29 AM
I'd suggest getting a faster, dual box and ditch the network rendering idea -- it's more trouble than it's worth. 1.2Ghz is a bit long in the tooth -- even the dual 1.66Ghz machine I have is starting to show its age. You should be looking at either a dual MP2800+ setup, or I'd suggest a top-of-the-line socket 939 board (Athlon64) that you can upgrade to dual core somewhere down the line. Do this and your render times will decrease significantly without the money and headaches of trying to chain multiple machines together...

- jim
vicmilt wrote on 4/23/2005, 2:13 PM
With a 40 minute video I would split the pre-renders into a minimum of 8 or more sub-assemblies. That way if you've got a crash, mistake or reivision, you are only working on a small piece of the show.
Further, I do these prerendered sub-assemblies as I go along. If I've got a particularly complex section of even only 20 or 30 seconds, I prerender it.
At the end of the job, when there is NEVER enough time, I am only rendering finished prerendered sections which is very quick (certainly MILES from 13 hours - more like 13 minutes).
Hope this concept helps.
v