A few bigger question(s) about network rendering:

1) When and how is network rendering useful?

2) Does it take advantage if the network machine has a dual core processor?

3) Should the file share (and of course the source files) be on the main machine (so it has no network bottleneck getting to the files)?

I don't see many posts about network rendering on this forum, so I'm kind of assuming that few if any Vegas users are doing it.

1) When and how is network rendering useful?

It is best for short videos that are extremely render-intensive. For instance, if you have three minutes of video that take two days to render, network rendering is an amazing feature. The results of network rendering must be stitched back together, and this stitching process takes a long time for long videos, and reduces the overall benefits somewhat for longer videos.

2) Does it take advantage if the network machine has a dual core processor?

Yes.

3) Should the file share (and of course the source files) be on the main machine (so it has no network bottleneck getting to the files)?

Definitely. The files must be sent to each render computer and then back again.

I hadn't used network render for awhile, because I have a mix of Vegas 5 and Vegas 6 computers. A few days ago I created a render-intensive 45 second clip that was taking three hours to render. I went ahead and set up a render farm and was able to render my final version in less than an hour. MAJOR improvement.

For cuts-only, simple projects, don't bother. Also, as I mentioned in the previous post, MPEG-2 encoding cannot be distributed, I guess due to licensing restrictions from MainConcept (who owns the MPEG-2 encoding software). Too bad, because that is a huge bottleneck that almost every Vegas editor faces on almost every project (I assume that just about everyone delivers their work on DVD).

As to how many people use it, I am sure that it is a minority of total users, but I am also certain that the "power" users -- people who make their living doing video editing -- use it all the time. Simple equation: Less time rendering = more projects = more money.

You can't render MPEG-2 using network rendering. This is due to licensing restrictions. Best to render formats than don't require a GOP structure due to file segmentation.

John:
Reading through the Vegas 6 manual uncovers some interesting points and possibilities, and I'm starting to better appreciate your comments.

Apparently you can use what they call non-distributed rendering to simply delegate a rendering job to another computer while you continue to use your main computer for other tasks (i.e. working on edits for another project, doing things in PhotoShop, whatever). This means you don't have to run the full Vegas on both computers. It also means you don't need to mess around with the user interface on the other computer (fire-and-forget, in theory). You can queue up multiple jobs, too.

In contrast, there is the distributed rendering in which two or more computers do the render. The manual says that the job is broken off into segments and in the end, the "stitch" computer assembles the segments into a final product. If your final output is WMV, it says you should do the rendering in an intermediate format (like AVI) and then the "stitching" phase will re-encode the assembled segments into the WMV format. That last part is probably a big hit in time consumed. I guess this is why you are suggesting this isn't a great feature for long videos...

However, if I were to distribute a project in multiple formats (e.g. MPG, WMV, SD, PAL/NTSC, etc.), this might not be a bad thing, especially if there are a lot of processing effects, transitions, etc. (i.e. real rendering to do). The output of the distributed render could be an uncompressed AVI. Then when it comes time to create the multiple output formats, those would be purely encoding jobs (without duplicating the complicated rendering of the effects).

Does this sound sensible?