Expected Render Times and Speeding them up with Hardware

kirkdickinson wrote on 12/16/2002, 1:09 PM
I rendered 63 minutes from Captured video to MPEG-1 with the VCD settings. The Render took about 6 hours. Is this normal?

I have a P-III 1ghz (dual) with 512DDR Ram.

The CPU usage is about 48% on one processor and 55% on the other. I wonder why VV doesn't use the processors more heavily for faster render times?

Are the render times mostly a result of processor power?

I am thinking about building a new machine:

Supermicro X5DA8 Dual XEON 533/FSB SCSI
INTEL XEON (533MHz FSB) 2.4GHz 512K
DDR Dimm 512MB 64x72 PC2100 ECC Registered Low Profile, Corsair (x2)
IBM Ultrastar 73LZX 73.4GB SCSI 68-Pin Hard Drive, 10,000 RPM - 4.9ms Average Seek Time (x4)

Would that decrease my render times? By how much?

Thanks,

Kirk

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 12/16/2002, 1:47 PM
"Are the render times mostly a result of processor power?"

Yes, assuming all other factors are equal. Other things that affect render times are resizing, filters, motion, transitions, and the codec's own capabilities. Background processes running can also make a difference.

I don't know if VV takes full advantage of dual processor capabilities, but I bet one of the gurus here can tell you.

I did find a 60-80% reduction in rendering times on the same projects when I went from 500MHz to a 1.7GHz system.
bjtap wrote on 12/16/2002, 2:26 PM
musicvid,
You wrote "I did find a 60-80% reduction in rendering times on the same projects when I went from 500MHz to a 1.7GHz system." That is terrific! By next March or so I will have enough money to get a new computer and I am looking at 2.0 to 2.5GHZ minimum. I do look forward to the speed increase because my ONLY complaint about VV3 (this is actually just to let SoFo know again) is the extremely slow rendering times compared to other video programs. (Premiere and MSP)
Barry
wcoxe1 wrote on 12/16/2002, 4:30 PM
Its really great, now that I have my quad 96GHz machine with dual 48.4 Terrabyte Drives. Things automatically background render so fast that I REALLY have real time output of those 78GB HD files by the time I am finished with a project.

I just love my new 62" OLED 1/16" thick "Color Accurate" PC Monitor with included "Internal-External" monitor in true TV color that coils up into the ceiling when not in use. When I show my finished project on the 129" rolled down ceiling mounted OLED, it REALLY looks great. Not a scan line visible, now that they have perfected 1080 double interpolated progressive.

However, with all the new things in VV 9.5, I am using more and more effects, Internal KeyFramable Noise Reduction and Sound Enhancement, and the frame rate in preview is slowing down a bit.

I dropped the preview quality level to Good, the other day, and things went almost at full speed, until I added a few more of those 7-dimension transitions. It slowed down, again. Still, in Preview mode it is fantastic.

Compared to the Brand-x Thunder Video Processing "real time" Card, at only $4,564.00 (Academic pricing), including Premier 7.89. it is a super bargain, and the INTERFACE, is SO much better that I can't believe anyone would use anything BUT Vegas.

Still, I am designing another new editing computer. Can't wait for the new 156GHz Pentium VII chips next year. Quad mounted, with Super-Hyper-Over- and-Under Threading, they should REALLY be great. Yep, I am really looking forward to 2010.

Merry Christmas, and keep dreaming.
pb wrote on 12/16/2002, 4:30 PM
After rendering the project to an AVI file...I typically get a 2:1 ratio going from the timeline to Main Concept MPEG1 VideoCD, this is with a 1.7 ghz P4, 512 meg RAM and a Raedon card (though I suspect that has no bearing on the processing time). Drives are 7200 SCSI.
Peter
PeterWright wrote on 12/17/2002, 8:33 AM
Another approach. I try and manage things so that render speed is irrelevant. I am usually working on three or four jobs at any time, so when I get one to a stage where rendering is necessary, I simply let it render whilst I am getting on with something else.

The great strength of Vegas is that Editing is realtime - the time when I need to be there making decisions, it plays whatever I do immediately so I can decide to change or move on.

Peter
riredale wrote on 12/17/2002, 10:25 AM
With 512MB of RAM, I can open up three separate instances of VV3. Using a freeware program like Multitask Monitor, I can set the priority of two of those instances to "Idle." I can then start them rendering chunks of my complete project (or other projects)while I edit, with full attention from the PC, in the third instance of VV3. Works great, and you'd be amazed how much rendering work gets done quietly in the background while you go about your regular business. If you try the same thing with 256MB of RAM, you might discover that your system is wasting much of the time in disk transfers. In my case, my CPU was being used only about 60% of the time, but with more memory the figure rose to 95%.

It would be great to have a new menu item on the next version of Vegas that allows the user to set the priority easily.
AlexB wrote on 12/17/2002, 10:57 AM
You can simply start vegas using a batch file vegasstart.bat with:
start /LOW /B c:\progra~1\sonicf~1\vegas3~.0\vegas30.exe
(check in cmd window with dir /x for the correct short names)
Another way is to go to the task manager (ctrl-alt-del) find the vegas instance in the process list, right mouse click, Priority-> low.
Alex