Your processor power may be a factor. This 1.2 AMD renders at about real time, whereas the 2.8 P4 does it at about 4X or 5X (never really paid much attention to it though).

Peter

dont forget interlacing. if you are deinterlacing then it will add time to your conversion as well.

They claim to be the same (including interlacing)

This source material was originally 8mm converted through a Canon ZR at capture - it was captured using Pinnacle Studio - (I have not found a way to make Vegas capture pass-through from my cam. The camera requires that there is no tape when doing pass-through, and Vegas requires there to be a tape before it will attempt to capture)

Computer is Athlon XP 2000+, running 5 internal disks - all drives have throughput of at least 29MB/Sec and the drive the render material is stored on has 48MB/Sec.

I expected to see performance at the same level you identifed - I must be missing something fairly fundamental.

BTW - What should I be using to determine if they are the same?
I just looked at the properties of the source, and the destination within Vegas.

Thanks.

You should be able to capture successfully in Vegas if you go to Options / General in VidCap and UNcheck "Enable DV Device Control".

There is some anecdotal evidence that DV files captured in Pinnacle Studio are not entirely compatible with Vegas' codec. Vegas may think that it has to decompress and recompress the footage while rendering. As a test of this theory, you could try rendering a short section, then bring that newly rendered file into a new Vegas project and doing a straight DV -> DV render with it. If this second render goes faster than the first then you'll know that Vegas is having troubles with the Pinnacle files.

Something else to check for AVI renders:

I have found it faster to go to/render to a drive with ample space available; not just "enough," but "really a whole lot enough;" an empty drive is ideal, but not usually practical.

Also, disk fragmentation levels can affect render times.

And last, but not least, I have found it helpful to render to a drive that I know is on a different, phisical drive cable. This make a very significant, I have found.

Pinnacle DV captures are full standard, I use them interchangabley with Vegas captures.

Dave T2

Use ScenalyserLive for capture. It is ***so*** much better than any other tools i know of...

I found that if you render to a different disk than your source is on it's much faster.

Any chance your video track opacity is less than 100%?

Gary

Two things that can help immensely:

1. Render to a different physical hard disk. This can make a 2:1 difference (i.e., half the time).

2. Make sure that you don't have any opacity levels accidentally bumped. First, check all the track header levels and make sure they are set to 100%. Second, use my script to look at each individual event and see if it is set to slightly less than 100%. Here's the link to the script:

Audio Event Levels

Video opacity is at 100% all the way through - script reported completed - and check track header levels.
I looked through help to make find out exactly what that meant, as near as I can tell it is the master 'level' on each track - right?
Video is at 100%, but audio is bumped up - would Vegas render it all over if the audio is adjusted?

Everything* else seems to be as has been suggested here. Thanks for the input. (Still fighting it, but I know what I should expect now)

Is there an option that will force the output to be the same as input - Vegas obviously thinks whatever I have as input is not what I'm trying to output.

TIA

Audio changes will NOT affect the video render speed.

I'm going to echo what Liam said above and ask if, when you made your new project in Vegas, if you ensured that your resolution was the same (720x480), .9091 pixel aspect ratio, lower field first field order, 29.970 NTSC frame rate, and no deinterlace. Then check the same in the Render As... Custom dialog.

I also thought that maybe - possibly - you might have captured 4-channel 32kHz audio instead of 2-channel 48kHz audio, and it's grinding through the audio. Use G-spot as a sanity check on your original capture and your rendered file to compare the specs (should be 768kbit/s data rate per audio channel if 48kHz 16-bit). I doubt this only because it shouldn't take that long to resample audio, but at least G-Spot is the tool to use to compare them.

What I don't think it is is a fragmented drive. Assuming your drive is somehow that badly fragmented, your whole system would be extremely slow during disk access.

Yes they are the same.
It is the same performance if I use a partial AVI rendered by Vegas.
Disks are not fragmented, going to another disk actually made it go longer.

If doing this is about real-time on an AMD 1.2 - is 63 minutes to make an AVI from a 93 minute AVI to be expected on an AMD XP 2000+? (that is what it actually took, when I let it run complete to the finish)

The same task, on the same disks takes ~15 minutes using Pinnacle Studio.

The source is one 27GB file - would Vegas like it any better if the source were in several smaller files?

I will keep trying other things to see if I can determine what is causing the re-render, rather than just copying the clips still in the project.

Thanks for your suggestions and help.

What do you have your render quality set to? (Best, Good, Preview, Draft)

Dave T2

actually AVI is a generic "container" of audio and video. the codecs in an AVI can vary so much

Quality is 'good'

I have tried just about every DV possibility available -with and without 'third party DV'

You might try this test. Render a short piece from the same material to the same specs. Then open this piece in Vegas and render again. See how long it takes to render the second time after Vegas has "conformed" to its specs. This might help determine if the original file is at fault or Vegas.

Dave T2

More results/overall information:
Firstly - What was I Smoking?!?

Captured 124 minutes using Pinnacle Studio (created a.avi)
Edited with Vegas, cutting down the 123 minutes to 96 minutes
Rendered to AVI using Vegas - took 63 minutes. (created b.avi)
Opened newly rendered Vegas file (b.avi) in Vegas, and rendered again - took 56 minutes (created c.avi)
Opened the new, newly rendered file (c.avi) in Pinnacle Studio, and rendered to new avi (d.avi) Took 48 minutes to create the new 21GB file. (Pinnacle and Studio each used the same Vegas created AVI file)

All tests were performed using the same drive

While not quite as fast as Pinnacle for the same operation - Vegas certainly is not as lethargic as I was suspecting, and Pinnacle certainly was not as fast as I 'remembered'.
They say the memory is the first thing to go?
Or was it something else - I don't remember!

Thanks for all of your help!