I would like to pass along, both to users and to Sony, my findings and suggestions from using the Network Render feature of V5.
Render Time Results
Click here to see the results of a render test performed on Vegas 4.0d, then Vegas 5.0a without network rendering, and then with various network rendering options:
Network Render Test
Bugs
1. After you do a network render, the Vegas MRU (most recently used) list in the file menu is populated with some of the intermediate render files. This is just an annoyance, but obviously should be fixed at some point.
2. You cannot put your VEG or render file in the root directory of your local computer drive. If you do, the file that the render creates will have the first letter of the file name truncated and, more importantly, the resulting render will be entirely black.
Helpful hints for other users
1. You (unfortunately) need to specify "mappings" between the local drive/folder paths and the network name that other computers use to access these same locations. This needs to be done for drives where your media assets reside, and the location for your VEG file, and the location where you are going to create the rendered file. You only need to do it for your local computer. You do it in the Network Render Service dialog.
Thus, if your media files (AVI, pictures, sound, etc.) are in the
D:\Media
directory; and if your local computer is called "Donald;" and if you have shared the D:\Media directory as BIN3, then you will need to create a file mapping in the local computer's Render Service dialog that looks like this:
[Edit] Read Sony's response below. The last paragraph is not quite correct.
If you are unsure of the names for your local computer mapping, click on Start -> Run, and type: compmgmt.msc and press Enter. Click on Shared Folders, then Shares. You will get a listing of your shared folder names and how they map to paths.
2. You must specify, in the local computer's Render Service dialog, each of the remote computer renderers that you want to use. If the remote computer is named "Mickey," then start the Network Render Service on that remote machine, walk back down the hall to your local computer, and on the Renderers tab of the Render Service dialog, enter Mickey in the Host column and press Enter. You should immediately see Ready appear in the Status column
3. You do not need to specify anything at all in the Render Service dialog for the remote computer(s). This means you don't need to specify file mapping, nor do you need to specify any renderers.
Suggestions to Sony
1. As I listed in the link above, stitching the results back together takes quite a bit of time. Sony could significantly improve these times if it let the stitching take place from one physical drive to another instead of all on the same physical drive. Things really slow down any time you have to both read and write intensively on the same drive. The ideal workflow would be:
a. Media files: Drive D:
b. Render segment files: Drive E
c. Target for stitched files: Drive D
Basically, you want to be able to "bounce back and forth" between two physically different drives. The improvements from doing this are not at all subtle: They can be substantial.
2. Get rid of the mapping requirement. The information on how a drive maps to a given network is available through a Windows call. I am sure that this is one of those things that the engineers didn't have time to get to. There is no reason the user should have to enter this information, and Sony is going to have to field a lot of phone calls from people that commit typos when entering this info and then wonder why the render doesn't work.
3. Get rid of the need to specify the renderers, or at least populate the list automatically and let me disable the ones I don't want to use. Obviously you can design the renderer so that it announces itself on the network, or responds to some sort of a poll. There is absolutely no reason a user should have to know the name of the computer on which a remote client is running and have to type that (correctly, or else ...) into a box. Basically, in a future release, all a user should have to do is launch the renderer on each remote computer, and then specify at the start of the rendering that the render should be assisted by other computers.
4. Create better documentation. I have read and re-read the help file and the PDF manual (surprisingly, no mention whatsoever is made of Network Rendering in the Learn To Use New Features PDF document) and it isn't very clear on many of the points I have brought up in this post.
I hope this helps someone. I don't know much about video editing compared to most people on this forum, but I know more than a little about computers. Network rendering is unnecessarily daunting in this first release. Hopefully Sony will smooth the rough edges. To those for whom shorter rendering times are important, this is a vitally important new feature.
Render Time Results
Click here to see the results of a render test performed on Vegas 4.0d, then Vegas 5.0a without network rendering, and then with various network rendering options:
Network Render Test
Bugs
1. After you do a network render, the Vegas MRU (most recently used) list in the file menu is populated with some of the intermediate render files. This is just an annoyance, but obviously should be fixed at some point.
2. You cannot put your VEG or render file in the root directory of your local computer drive. If you do, the file that the render creates will have the first letter of the file name truncated and, more importantly, the resulting render will be entirely black.
Helpful hints for other users
1. You (unfortunately) need to specify "mappings" between the local drive/folder paths and the network name that other computers use to access these same locations. This needs to be done for drives where your media assets reside, and the location for your VEG file, and the location where you are going to create the rendered file. You only need to do it for your local computer. You do it in the Network Render Service dialog.
Thus, if your media files (AVI, pictures, sound, etc.) are in the
D:\Media
directory; and if your local computer is called "Donald;" and if you have shared the D:\Media directory as BIN3, then you will need to create a file mapping in the local computer's Render Service dialog that looks like this:
Local UniversalYou need to do this, apparently, for every folder (i.e., directory) that contains media used in the project. I thought you could just specify the root directory (assuming the drive is shared at the root level, with all subdirectories shared as well), but apparently you need to provide explicit mapping of each directory. Ugly.
D:\Media \\Donald\BIN3
[Edit] Read Sony's response below. The last paragraph is not quite correct.
If you are unsure of the names for your local computer mapping, click on Start -> Run, and type: compmgmt.msc and press Enter. Click on Shared Folders, then Shares. You will get a listing of your shared folder names and how they map to paths.
2. You must specify, in the local computer's Render Service dialog, each of the remote computer renderers that you want to use. If the remote computer is named "Mickey," then start the Network Render Service on that remote machine, walk back down the hall to your local computer, and on the Renderers tab of the Render Service dialog, enter Mickey in the Host column and press Enter. You should immediately see Ready appear in the Status column
3. You do not need to specify anything at all in the Render Service dialog for the remote computer(s). This means you don't need to specify file mapping, nor do you need to specify any renderers.
Suggestions to Sony
1. As I listed in the link above, stitching the results back together takes quite a bit of time. Sony could significantly improve these times if it let the stitching take place from one physical drive to another instead of all on the same physical drive. Things really slow down any time you have to both read and write intensively on the same drive. The ideal workflow would be:
a. Media files: Drive D:
b. Render segment files: Drive E
c. Target for stitched files: Drive D
Basically, you want to be able to "bounce back and forth" between two physically different drives. The improvements from doing this are not at all subtle: They can be substantial.
2. Get rid of the mapping requirement. The information on how a drive maps to a given network is available through a Windows call. I am sure that this is one of those things that the engineers didn't have time to get to. There is no reason the user should have to enter this information, and Sony is going to have to field a lot of phone calls from people that commit typos when entering this info and then wonder why the render doesn't work.
3. Get rid of the need to specify the renderers, or at least populate the list automatically and let me disable the ones I don't want to use. Obviously you can design the renderer so that it announces itself on the network, or responds to some sort of a poll. There is absolutely no reason a user should have to know the name of the computer on which a remote client is running and have to type that (correctly, or else ...) into a box. Basically, in a future release, all a user should have to do is launch the renderer on each remote computer, and then specify at the start of the rendering that the render should be assisted by other computers.
4. Create better documentation. I have read and re-read the help file and the PDF manual (surprisingly, no mention whatsoever is made of Network Rendering in the Learn To Use New Features PDF document) and it isn't very clear on many of the points I have brought up in this post.
I hope this helps someone. I don't know much about video editing compared to most people on this forum, but I know more than a little about computers. Network rendering is unnecessarily daunting in this first release. Hopefully Sony will smooth the rough edges. To those for whom shorter rendering times are important, this is a vitally important new feature.