Render-free ?

mrmike wrote on 12/27/2003, 8:04 AM

I'm looking to speed up the process. I see where Canopus has cards which claim to be render-free. Does that mean the rendering process is skipped?

Thanks.

Comments

pb wrote on 12/27/2003, 8:07 AM

So does Matrox. However, you are stuck with Premiere (which is getting a bit better now that they relaeased Premiere Pro). You can edit via Vegas but you will still have to render.

netkoala wrote on 12/27/2003, 7:25 PM

Think the distinction is viewing effects.
It use to be that to see the effect you would render first to see it.

It appears to be all real time now and CPU based preview is all that is needed and there is no need for a dedicated card to do this.

Idea is that multiple CPU's and newer CPU's will make a dedicated card obsolete anyway

Do not know if this theory has missed anything but that is how i see it.

farss wrote on 12/28/2003, 12:26 AM

There is no such thing as render free!
All FXs and transitions must be rendered. All that hardware accelerators do is render fast enough so that it happens in real time. As CPUs hav ebcome faster there's less and less of a need fo this assistance. Also only the FXs that the external hardware supports can be accelerated. Also as you ad more tracks and FXs at a guven point in the timeline the accelerator hardware runs out of steam.
From what I know with a lot of NLEs when this happens all you get are black frames period. At least with the way VV does it you can step through the section frame by frame to see how it's going to look. You can also use RAM or prerender to give you a better idea of how it's going to look.
Later techniques involve using the GPU via openGL to take some of the render load from the CPU. This makes a lot of sense in my opinion. Graphics cards are pretty cheap for the amount of horsepower on them as huge numbers are built for the gaming market. Also the interface is pretty well ironed out via an open standard.