I'm running a 2.6GHz Celeron at the moment and straight DV->MPEG2 single pass encoding is close to real time. I think it takes me about 70 minutes to encode 60 minutes of video. As Douglas points out though, adding any effects, crossfades, titles, compositing, etc, and the process slows down dramatically.

Athlon 64 bit chip + 2 Gigs of ram gives me realtime rendering to MPEG-2 sometimes even a little faster than that.

AMD dual core 4800+ with 2 gigs = 49 minutes of cuts only project in 45 minutes of render video stream. Add audio it's 1:1. Darryl

Don'cha just LOVE those AMD X2s? :-)

Thanks everyone...I will invest in a monster pc then...as for fx...where should I invest more muscle to speed up the rendering process? RAM or CPU? Realtime previews are not as important to me as the render to MPEG2...thanks again!

CPU. If you have enough RAM for Vegas to launch then you've got about as much as you'll ever need. More RAM won't speed up rendering.

Except ... if you use lots of large still image files. Then more RAM helps a lot.

AMD dual core 4800+ with 2 gigs = 49 minutes of cuts only project in 45 minutes of render video stream.

I must be missing something in what metric is being measured. My three-year-old 2.8GHz P4 (no hyperthreading) can encode MPEG-2 using the Default DVD template (the template used can make a big difference) in very close to real time. I would expect a dual core system to blow this away. I would have expected something close to 1/2 real time, or about 25 minutes.

How can I achieve the fastest possible results with MPEG2 export then (ie beyond real time)? I am in the event videography business, and the faster I can turn around an edited video the better...I always consider going to Premiere for the hardware options, but the DVStorm has been phased out and the rtx1000 is an old solution to realtime editing. I want to continue using vegas, but I really would like faster turnarounds for my MPEG2 exports...Any special hard disk configurations I should consider, for instance? Continued thanks!

Straight cuts and things fly right along.

Add ANY effects - especially layering or cropping or reframing, zooming etc and rendering is a slow process regardless of your box.

johnmeyer - "I would have expected something close to 1/2 real time, or about 25 minutes." Of course you're right. I need to be specific.

49:35:13 minute project (89,173 frames SD NTSC).
File-Render As-Default MainConcept mpeg2 = 30.01 minutes.
Batch Render straight to DVDA NTSC stream = real time.

Darryl

Darryl, are you using two-pass rendering? That might account for the difference.

Chienworks: you know, I'm not sure how to check the settings using the batch render script. Remembering that with batch render I go straight to the DVDA video streams.

Using the File-Render As-MainConcept MPEG-2 and selecting Custom-Video tab shows I'm using variable bit rate with conventional settings without Two-pass checked. I'd always assumed my default setting using the render engine determined the setting accessed via batch rendering.

Darryl

How can I achieve the fastest possible results with MPEG2 export

In addition to using a fast computer, you should also consider using an external MPEG-2 encoder. The MainConcept encoder in Vegas provides excellent quality, especially with 2-pass (although 2-pass doesn't buy too much until you get below 6,000,000 bps average encoding rate). However, their external encoder is considerably faster. You can frameserve directly to it (using Satish's framesevrver).

Others can chime in here about Canopus and the other external encoders regarding their speed, but most of the externals are quite a bit faster. Certainly worth the money to get faster turnaround.

I just tested my PC again, and got interesting results with a 1 minute clip, no effects at Good setting (P4 3.2, single core, HT-enabled, not a real screamer compared to the new machines)

NTSC DV avi to MPEG2 NTSC Wide:
1 minute 32 seconds
HDV Cineform v2.1 intermediate to MPEG2 NTSC Wide (resize during render):
1 minute 7 seconds

The decoding and downsizing of Cineform was faster than decoding of the NTSC DV! I ran both again, and got 1:28 and 1:08 respectively, so they are confirmed on my machine.

I'm running a P4 3.2GHz HT, 1GB RAM system, and can render slightly faster than realtime.

Drive speed is also an issue I've found - render your MPEG2 file to a different drive, than your source material... it'll shave a few seconds off here and there.

I just rendered a 1 min, 21 s file in 1 min 4 seconds.

My P4 2.4GHz Laptop renders at just slightly slower than realtime. That same file, would probably take 1 min and 40 to render.

Mike.