make render speed faster?!

mikeey wrote on 12/28/2003, 2:08 AM
Hi
I'm working with MPEG-2 files that are directly recorded with my DVD-CAM
I use vegas to cut and paste, some transitions maby and put in a little bit of music (mp3)...

Why is the render soooo slow? Can I affect this iin anyway?
One hour of MPEG-2 rendered to MPEG-2 (no new encoding) takes about
2-2½hour..

I'm running XP pro, P4 2.6Ghz, GeForceFX5600 128MB, 768 MB DDR, 140GB HD....

Is there any way to speed this thing up? maby buffer settings or something, i can't find anything...

Thank you!
/mikeey

Comments

farss wrote on 12/28/2003, 3:56 AM
Problem is Vegas is no genious at editing mpeg-2. If you make the slightest change, even join two clips without triming them it'll decode and encode everything on the timeline. Only wayto make it go faster is a faster is a faster PC and you're not going to get anything appreciably faster than what you've got.

I really hate saying this but if footage from that camera is all you're going to edit and you're not planning on doing anything fancy with it you could try looking at a more suitable program.

If you are really sold on Vegas and you do want to do something advanced with your footage then you maybe better off rendering all the clips to DV first, I'm stabbing in the dark on this one, others may have some better ideas. Advantage I see with that approach is Vegas is a DV editor natively, getting all your footage into something it can easily deal with to start with makes the whole process that much easier. The final encode time back to mpeg-2 will still be (around realtime) but everything else will improve.
craftech wrote on 12/28/2003, 5:46 AM
Only wayto make it go faster is a faster is a faster PC and you're not going to get anything appreciably faster than what you've got.
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It should be obvious by now that it won't go faster with a faster PC. That's why when a person who has let's say a PIII 1000 is complaining that rendering speed is too slow I have to take pause at recommendations here that they should upgrade their PC. All that does is get them to spend money unneccessarily with only a slight improvement in rendering speed.
Read reviews of Vegas and slow rendering speed is usually noted. Add some fancy transitions and Fx and rendering time is increased. Either way, Mpeg 2 renders in Vegas are slow. The results are good, but relatively slow rendering has to be accepted if you want to use Vegas. I think that while you are well intentioned, many of you who recommend to people that they upgrade their PC to cure slow rendering speed are doing them a disservice.
John
rebel44 wrote on 12/28/2003, 7:39 AM
I capture in avi edit and render in avi. I do everything in small chunks then join in timeline and final render. The rendering time is slow, but you get good quality. If you need final in MPEG- try program called "honest mpeg encoder".
It will convert from avi to mpeg with a very good quality and speed.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/28/2003, 7:39 AM
> Can I affect this iin anyway?

Please don’t take this the wrong way, but selling the DVD-CAM and get a DV camera is probably your best choice. Seriously, if you plan on editing all your videos, you bought the wrong camera. DVD cameras are aimed at people who just want to shoot and watch. MPEG-2 is a final rendering format that is highly compressed and not really suitable for editing. (you can edit it in a pinch, but I wouldn’t do this as a standard practice). DV is only compressed 5:1 and holds up very well after editing and re-encoding with the Vegas DV codec. You’ll find your editing goes faster with DV also.

What you should probably do is convert the MPEG2 footage to DV AVI. Then do all of your editing in DV format and then finally render to MPEG2 for output. As I said, you really want to use a DV camera if you’re planning to edit all your footage. I know this is not what you want to hear (sorry). :(

~jr