Improving Vegas Rendering Performance

Xander wrote on 5/30/2007, 5:32 AM
I did a fair amount of rendering over the past weekend of old projects to HDV (Used Vegas HDV templates). Thought I would share some of my experiences with you'll. I don't have stats or scientific evidence to back my observations, buy anyway...

System Specs:
Pentium 840D (Dual Core 3.2GHz)
2GB RAM
2 X 750GB HDD
2 X 250GB HDD
Win XP Pro SP2
Vegas 7e

16-bit images:
Using 16-bit images can cause rendering to stop working or crash. Using 8-bit images prevents this.

TIF vs PNG images:
Vegas renders quicker using PNG images versus TIF images - seems to use less RAM.

Dynamic RAM preview setting (4 threads);
This is an interesting one. There have many many discussions on it in the past, what below is what I noticed.
Dynamic RAM preview set to 0MB - Rendering only used one core, i.e. 50-52% CPU utilisation.
Dynamic RAM preview set to 128MB - Rendering used both cores, i.e. 99-100% CPU utilisation. However, project said it would take 10hours to render.
Dynamic RAM preview set to 256MB - Rendering used both cores, i.e. 99-100% CPU ultilsation. However, above mentioned project said it would take 4hours to render - which it did.
Dynamic RAM preivew set at 512MB - Didn't notice anything different from 256MB setting. Now using this as my default.

3D Compositing:
A couple of projects used this and they definitely took longer to render.

Pan/Scan:
Smoothness setting should by 0. Some of my older projects had it set to 100 and newer ones set to 0. Not sure if a default was changed somewhere between Vegas 4 and Vegas 7e. Anyway changed them all to 0 and resultant renders where definitey less jerky.

I also use the following settings:
De-interlace: Blend [In project properties]
Reduce Interlace Flicker: Enabled [In track properties]
MPEG-2 Quality: 31 [In MainConcept render properties]

Anyway, onced all the projects what been tweaked, I had no rendering issues and the output looks fantastic.

Comments

blink3times wrote on 5/30/2007, 6:19 AM
This is one of my big gripes with Vegas.....render times..... they're pretty slow compared to other programs. I have Avid Liquid and whatever vegas can render, Liquid will do in 1/2 the time.

There is no smart render system in Vegas for HD so EVERYTHING gets rendered.... even the parts that don't require it. I can render a 40 minute HD timeline (with a few disolves and effects) in about 20 minutes to an hour.... that same timeline in Vegas would take twice as long. With a smartrender system there is also less quality loss involved since only the parts that need rendering gets done.... the rest is simply passed through. Liquid also has the ability to use the memory in your video card to take care of some of the render chores. Even Pinnacle studio (which now contains the Liquid render engine) can render twice as fast as Vegas.

I enjoy Vegas... I think the interface is pretty slick and fast as compared to liquid.... but they really HAVE to do something to update and upgrade the Vegas render engine.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/30/2007, 10:50 AM
Using 16-bit images can cause rendering to stop working or crash. Using 8-bit images prevents this.

Larger = slower. True whether due to bit depth or size. If possible, use batch editing capability of your photo editor to down-res images to Vegas project resolution multiplied (upward) by the expect zoom factor. So, if you want to zoom in by 2x (to use 1/4 of the image) and your project settings are 720x480, then you need images of 1440x960. Anything much more than that will needlessly slow down both the timeline and the render.

Vegas renders quicker using PNG images versus TIF images ...

Definitely. PNG appears to be Vegas' "native" format.

3D Compositing:

Used to be a bug that forced 3D on the entire project even if only one section of one track used it. Don't know if that has been fixed, but you should definitely set a keyframe at the location immediately after the 3D is finished, and force the track back to default settings.

Pan/Scan:

It was changed in Vegas 7 in response to overwhelming demand for that change.

One other thing that can improve render times is to render to a separate physical disk from the one which holds your raw media. This will improve render times by the time it takes to write the total amount of media you are creating. The reason is that a computer cannot simultaneously read and write from the same physical disk, but it CAN do this between two physically separate disk drives. For MPEG, where you are usually creating less than 4GBytes, this improvement is modest. For Cineform or uncompressed, the improvement can be substantial.
Chienworks wrote on 5/30/2007, 3:30 PM
Vegas renders quicker using PNG images versus TIF images ...

Actually it's not even "native" that matters, since Vegas converts everything to uncompressed RGB while rendering. So it's not that PNG works better, but the real problem is that TIF is handled with Quicktime which slows down the process quite a bit. PNG, JPG, and BMP all render substantially faster than TIF.
johnmeyer wrote on 5/30/2007, 4:51 PM
Kelly, you're definitely correct about Quicktime and TIFF, although I just found an old post about how, if you have Quicktime authoring installed, it takes over handling of BMP and you can have problems there as well.

As for PNG being the "native" format of Vegas, I have read this many times before on this forum, as for instance, here:

What's the best picture format for Vegas?

or here:

TIF & Vegas

Not trying to say that you are wrong, but just that it is a statement that's been made a lot, and I was just repeating what I had read.

Chienworks wrote on 5/30/2007, 6:40 PM
Oh, i wasn't trying to say that PNG isn't Vegas' native format. For that matter, i'm not trying to say it is either. It's just that (in my humble opinion of how Vegas works) it doesn't matter. The image will be uncompressed to RGB during rendering so i don't see how PNG being native or not makes much difference.

And while i'm on the topic of PNG, at risk of hijacking (*gasp*) i just want to comment on the claims that PNG is lossless. It's not. It's a lossy format actually somewhat akin to GIF, the major difference being a 24 bit palette instead of 8 bits. It's just that it doesn't lose much, so it retains quite a bit of the original image information. This is why PNG versions of images tend to be much larger files than other compressed versions. JPEG isn't always lossy either. Lossless compression is part of the JPEG spec and it can be done. However, this is rarely done as the file size of a lossless JPEG isn't much smaller than the uncompressed version.

Most photo editors let you choose the JPEG compression ratio when saving. If you choose the minimum compression you get files that are effectively as good as PNG and don't suffer any of the color shift problems that have been mentioned in relation to PNG.

So why does PNG exist? Consider what the acronym stands for: Portable Network Graphic. PNG was introduced as an open standard that any software under any OS could make use of freely. JPEG is somewhat tightly controlled by the Joint Photographic Experts Group and there are occasional issues and incompatabilities when porting the standard to other systems.
GlennChan wrote on 5/31/2007, 12:01 AM
Er... would you have a link for that? PNG-24 seems lossless to me (whereas PNG-8 isn't).
John_Cline wrote on 5/31/2007, 12:35 AM
PNG-24 is lossless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_network_graphics
PeterWright wrote on 5/31/2007, 2:46 AM
b3t - can you qualify this ... I know what smart rendering is, and it used to be relevant when printing DV to tape, but with HDV, most projects finish up being rendered to MPEG2, and then everything needs rendering regardless.

So when does smart rendering make such a big difference for you?
blink3times wrote on 5/31/2007, 3:01 AM
"b3t - can you qualify this ... I know what smart rendering is, and it used to be relevant when printing DV to tape, but with HDV, most projects finish up being rendered to MPEG2, and then everything needs rendering regardless.

So when does smart rendering make such a big difference for you?"

==========================================================

Both Avid Liquid and Pinnacle studio capture HD as a m2v/wav (which is mpeg with the audio separated). They also have the ability to smartrender mpeg. In these programs, a 50 minute HD timeline with no changes (no transitions, effects, etc added), render time over to mpeg in about 15 minutes. In other words, almost none of it is actually being rendered.

Smart render is not simply restricted to DV.
PeterWright wrote on 5/31/2007, 4:52 AM
I see, thanks - so if it's being "copied" rather than rendered - are you capturing at DVD resolution in the first place?
blink3times wrote on 5/31/2007, 5:18 AM
It works at dvd resolution as well as HD resolution. I simply use Vegas because I enjoy the interface much more... it's a very efficient interface. But Liquid rendering is MUCH, MUCH more efficient.

But if you change something the smart render system is knocked out for that change. In other words if you place a transition in then that part of the video gets rendered. If you make a major change that effects the entire track like a track color correction, then the entire track of course will get rendered. Smart render only works on parts of the track that have not been altered.

The big advantages to this of course are faster renders, but more to the point, the loss in quality is not nearly as much.... you're not rendering and re-rendering unecessarily.
Earl_J wrote on 5/31/2007, 9:04 PM
Hello Vegas better-rendering seekers,
I also believe if your motherboard can handle another controller, having the raw data rendered to a hard drive on another controller completely would also speed things up. . .
* * *
Has anyone used the network rendering possible in Vegas? I'm on the verge of trying it in a week or so. . . anyone have any hints/tips. . . hooking two Dell dual-processor machines to see if anything speeds up...
thanks for any assists. . .

Until that time. . . Earl J.
jabloomf1230 wrote on 6/5/2007, 11:50 AM
Unless I'm misinterpreting the EULA, you can't simultaneously use the same copy of Vegas 7 on multiple computers. The online activation will allow you to install it on multiple computers, but technically, one person using multiple computers to network render is a violation of the license, since you are only allowed to use a copy of Vegas on one computer at a time. Maybe someone from Sony could comment on this.

But to answer your question, Vegas network render works by rendering the file in pieces and stitching it together. With two or more fast machines and a fast network, it does work and it does improve rendering times .
DavidMcKnight wrote on 6/5/2007, 12:28 PM
I haven't tried network rendering since V6, but I wouldn't think the license has changed. As I remember it, you can install the network render client on two additional pc's and render with them at the same time as your one editing pc. So, full copy of Vegas on one pc, and render clients on up to two additional pc's.
jbolley wrote on 6/5/2007, 12:58 PM
I haven't seen how to install the network rendering. Where is the app to install?
Thanks,
Jesse
blink3times wrote on 6/5/2007, 6:56 PM
"Unless I'm misinterpreting the EULA, you can't simultaneously use the same copy of Vegas 7 on multiple computers. "

Although you are not allowed to use the same copy on 2 different computers for editing, I do remember it stating somewhere in the manual that you are allowed to use the same copy strictly for network rendering purposes.


ADDED:
Yes... on page 291 of the manual it states that you can use the same copy and install on 2 additional computers as a "render only client"
rs170a wrote on 6/5/2007, 8:15 PM
I haven't seen how to install the network rendering. Where is the app to install?

There's nothing to install as it's already built into Vegas.
Check the Vegas help file and/or the manual for the necessary steps.

Mike
Xander wrote on 6/5/2007, 9:32 PM
Network rendering is only recommended for the AVI codecs - DV / Cineform and not the temporal compression algoritions. In addition, the Vegas MPEG-2 license is only for one PC, so you can't do an HDV / DVD MPEG-2 network render.
jabloomf1230 wrote on 6/11/2007, 7:57 PM
One other thing about network rendering. I've noticed that if you use the "distribute rendering" option, the local (host) PC doesn't make its CPU(s) work at anywhere near 100%, which is what you see when you do not network render and use only the local PC. Is it just me?