Long rendering

Bucoholic wrote on 9/25/2002, 10:12 AM
I have a P4 1.6A 400mhz with 256 megs of 333mhz ram with a 60 gig 7200 rpm HD running VV 3.0c.

I am trying to render a 1.5 hour video Mpeg-1 file to Mpeg-2 and it takes 10 hours. Do I need more ram? If so how much would make a difference? Do I need a larger processor? What can I do and about how much time can I save?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Comments

kdk2002 wrote on 9/25/2002, 10:54 AM
That does seem long. Do you have a lot of complex transitions and effects? More CPU will always help. If you have the means, I would recommend the new 2.8GHZ Pentium processor systems (Dell makes a good one). With 1GIG of RDRAM and the 533MHZ bus speed, you should reduce your rendering times in half. Also, close all of your programs currently running in the background and defragment your hard drive right before rendering.
Bucoholic wrote on 9/25/2002, 12:21 PM
I don't have any other programs running on my system. I also don't have any Transitions or effects. It's just straight video. I was thinking of just getting a new CPU 2.4 533mhz is only $186. If I knew I would cut it in half I would spend the money but if I only save an hour or 2 it's not worth the investment right now.

Any other help would be great.
jetdv wrote on 9/25/2002, 12:51 PM
You're going from MPEG 1 to MPEG 2? First of all, the quality will not improve above what you already have with MPEG 1. Secondly, you are making the computer do double work - Decode from MPEG 1 and then Encode to MPEG2. I can understand it taking a longer amount of time.
kdk2002 wrote on 9/25/2002, 1:44 PM
Yes, I agree. I only have an Athlon XP 1600 with 512K of memory and a 120GIG 133ATA hard drive. It takes me about 1:15 minutes to encode a 30 minute DV/AVI file which I've just edited to MPEG2. I have a fair amount of transitions, titles and effects also.

A beefier CPU would help (maybe not by 1/2 though), but it looks like your problems might lie elsewhere.
Bucoholic wrote on 9/26/2002, 2:10 PM
Hey JetDv, thanks for the heads up. I am very new to this so forgive my ignorants. How will I decode it from MPEG 1? What would I decode it to?

Here is what I am doing. I am recording via ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 32meg football games. Since ATI's Mpeg 2 ext is not supported I capture in Mpeg 1 at 720X480 high quality. I then import the file into Vegas and edit all the commercials out. I then render into MPEG 2 so it's ready to burn to DVD.

I just ordered a P4 2.4 533mhz CPU, WD Special Edition 120 gig HD and 512 333mhz ram. Should be here Friday or Monday.
jetdv wrote on 9/26/2002, 2:28 PM
Your better option would be to use a firewire card and an analog to digital converter. Then, capture throught the converter and firewire card as DV. It will give you better quality. Then, you can edit the captured .avi files and render to whatever format you want.
HeeHee wrote on 9/26/2002, 3:43 PM
This will not work if he is capturing live programs without a VCR attached to the A-D converter. This is how I do it now because my ATI AIW 128 Pro sucks for video sync.

If you have to use the AIW, then the best way to do it for quality is to caputre to uncompressed AVI (Not sure if ATI has a DV ATI codec, yet). Unfortunately, you will need a lot of disk space for this (about 1 GB/min), so this probably isn't an option for you either.

FYI - I recommend the Canopus ADVC-100 analog to digital converter (Aprox $300USD shipped) if you decide to go that route. If you have a DV camcorder, you may be able to use the analog passthrough to capture from the VCR.
Bucoholic wrote on 9/26/2002, 6:03 PM
Yes, I do have a DV camera with Analog to Digital Passthrough. SO you think I should capture with that instead? I do have Premiere also and I can capture DV AVI with that.

So your saying it's better to capture in DV AVI, then edit, then render to MPEG 2?

Does that take less of time when rendering?

So to sum up it's best to capture in AVI and then render to whatever you need to for your out put.
HeeHee wrote on 9/26/2002, 7:12 PM
Exactly! Do you not have VV3??? If you do, then use the VidCap utility that comes with it. It will bring the capture from the 1394 in using the SF DV AVI codec. When you edit the DV AVI in Vegas, then only rendering required is for any transitions or effects. Keep in mind that VV automatically applies some audio filters to the audio track, so if you want a quick render, remove those filters. I do this this same thing for TV programs I want to archive on VCD.

FYI - The DV AVI file will be 1/5th the size of an uncompressed AVI, so that 4 hour Football game will take up about 48GB on your hard drive instead of 240GB.