Exponential Rendering Times

CVM wrote on 3/10/2005, 9:01 PM

I am using a Dell 866MHz PIII with 512 RAM and 32 Meg video card with WinXP to edit. I just created a nine minute video using the following parameters: Moving background video that's been slo-mo'ed and blurred with a lens flare that travels across the screen in 10 seconds, another video stream on top with soft edges and cropped a bit (to eliminate the black edges), and two layers of moving CG. Vegas 5 took 25 hours to render! 25 hours for nine minutes! This is the most I've composited... thank goodness I don't need to do this more often! I would have hated to think what MB would have done to the render time if I used that!

Quesion: To increase speed, what computer upgrade can I buy that will give me the most bang for my buck? New motherboard and CPU? Which one? 1 gig of RAM? I need to be able to get a bit faster, but can't afford a dual-processor monster.

ALSO... why does Vegas need to RERENDER nearly the ENTIRE nine-minute project when I go in and change the length of ONE fade at the end? Just at the end! A quick little tweak on one video element, that's all. And yet, it says it will be rendering nearly all the elements. Don't they still exist in the PreRendered folder? With the prospect of another DAY of rendering, I had to deliver the project with a bad fade!!!

Why won't Vegas just rerender the CHANGED file?

Comments

Yoyodyne wrote on 3/10/2005, 9:08 PM

Dude - I think anything you buy today for like $500 bucks would at least triple the performance of the computer your currently using. Get thee to a Frys!

TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/10/2005, 9:09 PM

Use "Render To new track" instead of pre-render. Much better (if it pre-renders a while section & you change 1 frame of that section, it re-pre-renders).

As for "bang for the buck", according to the V5 benchmark site:
http://www.hyperactivemusic.com/msprofiles/sony%20vegas%205/sony_vegas_5_audio_benchmark.htm

an AMD 64-3400 socket 754 is it. Cheap & great. However, if you want AMD go for eigther an Opteron or a socket 939. Those are the future of the AMD line (socket 754 CPU's aren't being made anymore). A single CPU opteron in a duel MB will cost you ~ the same price as a really good AMD 64 or FX, but it won't be as fast (basicly, it would be a gamble. If V6 was 64-bit & had a great performance boost, then you're in luck).

And don't complain. I rendered for DAYS at a time when I first got into Vegas on my P3-667. That's when I found out if you render to new track you don't need to process FX more then once.

johnmeyer wrote on 3/10/2005, 10:54 PM

CPU speed is by far the biggest performance gain. RAM won't help much during the actual render, although it can be a big help if you use the RAM prerender feature. Hard disk speed doesn't help much, but having two hard disks, so you can render from one to the other (and thereby avoid having to read and write from the same disk) can help quite a bit.

I don't have dual CPU or hyperthreading, so I'm not sure how much they help, but I know they help some, and I would definitely get a hyperthreading CPU if I were to buy a new computer today (because it helps with other apps). So, my advice, spend your money on the highest speed processor you can buy. Don't worry too much about all the exotica (like front side bus) -- most of this is useful mostly for gamers. The only exotic spec you might want to spend money on is the hyperthreading.

BillyBoy wrote on 3/11/2005, 7:44 AM

Sorry, had to LOL when you said "don't worry about exotica like front side bus, that's mostly for gamers". The FSB is the path your CPU uses to talk to your memory. It has EVERYTHING to do with performance boost. If some of you don't think so, go to BIOS and drop the FSB speed down to a fraction of what your system supports. Conversely overclocking your system, even mildly will increase the FSB allowing your CPU to process faster which will help move things along for rendering and everything else.

For a more detailed explinaiton: http://www.gen-x-pc.com/fsb_info.htm

It boils down to the multipler. I run my FSB at a multiplier of 14, thus increasing the FSB speed to 880 which increases the CPU rated speed of 2.800 to 3.080. I could go higher, but this is enough for my purposes on this unit.

You can see how well your system is doing, how fast its really running, what memory type you have and your multiper speed and memory speed with this nifty little free utility: CPU-Z.