If the partition was already pretty full, defragging could save some time as Vegas searches for empty sectors to write to.

That being said, 60GB is a very small space for video storage, and even on a 320GB drive that runs 50%-70% full, there is no difference whatsoever in rendering to a fragmented vs. defragmented partition.

"Also, keeping source video files and rendered file on two physically different drives will increase rendering time, especially on older systems."

What??

I'm sure Ivan meant decrease not increase. He must be left handed like me and the left hand just took over when typing the first two letters of the word.

I actually have two left hands... it was a typo. I meand decrease, of course.

Musicvid said:

If the partition was already pretty full, defragging could save some time as Vegas searches for empty sectors to write to.

That being said, 60GB is a very small space for video storage, and even on a 320GB drive that runs 50%-70% full, there is no difference whatsoever in rendering to a fragmented vs. defragmented partition.

(BTW, is there a way to reply to a message and have the original message automatically show up in the reply window, or do you have to cut/paste like I did here?)

The partition was only about half full, maybe a little less. I know 60GB is small for video, but my projects are small, so that's really all I need. I'm running it on a dual-core laptop because I don't do enough editing to feel the need to upgrade to anything faster.

Regarding your 'no difference whatsover' comment, I'm just reporting what I found, and it would suggest there was in fact a significant difference. All other settings were identical before/after the defrag, its the only thing that changed. It was a very short clip rendered to MPEG-2, perhaps the differences would be less significant on a longer render, I don't know. As I said before I've never noticed much difference after defragging when running other applications, so I was surprised to see this much difference.
If I had a bigger partition to write to it may not have had as much of an effect. I have a couple external USB drives I could render to, and a 4G stick, I'll try those tonight. It makes sense that reading from one drive and writing to another would be more efficient, but I've never tried it before, thanks for the suggestion.

(BTW, is there a way to reply to a message and have the original message automatically show up in the reply window, or do you have to cut/paste like I did here?)

You have to copy/paste. To help it stand out, as I did by making it bold, read the second sticky thread at the top of the forum index. Or click HERE to go directly to it.

Yes, reading/writing to separate drives is more efficient, but depending on the USB Stick, its transfer rate may be much slower than a HD so it may not help. But if you don't do much editing, you should be fine with your one HD. An external USB HD could come in handy down the road if you find that you start doing more editing or that they become more complex.

It turns out the defrag probably didn't have anything to do with my improved rendering times after all. It was the full frame rendering quality setting that was the culprit I believe.

I had grown accustomed to ignoring that setting because I always rendered DV format to DVD MPEG-2, which are very similar formats. Changing the quality setting for those renders seemed to have very little effect if any, so I got used to ignoring that setting.

Now I'm also rendering .MOV format to DVD, which requires much more processing during the rendering phase because of the dissimilar formats, so now the quality setting has a very significant effect. I must have changed it between renders and didn't realize I had done so.

Now I need to go back and make a trial DVD with all 4 quality settings for DV and .MOV and see which setting I prefer for each application. I feel kinda stupid that I didn't experiment with this earlier.

""Also, keeping source video files and rendered file on two physically different drives will increase rendering time, especially on older systems."

What??" (meaning the above should say decrease not increase)

Crumbs! Please let me clarify this as it goes against everything I've read!

So I keep my source files on my E drive (external), create the vid in the software on C - feeding in the vids from E and then render to C???

I've always read that source files should be on the same drive as where the software is creating the video. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this because if I could just leave the source files on E it would be great - I can never get more than 9gb spare on C as it's only a 40gb hard drive, E is 1tb so if I could free up another 5gb or so by not putting the source files on C, my rendering might go a tad faster - it would seem ..........?

Decrease. You'll see that he corrected himself.

I've always read that source files should be on the same drive as where the software is creating the video.

Hmm.... I've never read that. Just keep it on your external drive. I've managed to fill up my other drives (and no time to properly clean it up) and just render to the same external drive that the source video is on. Modern drives should be fast enough to keep up with the read/write I/Os that you prolly won't notice much difference. Just don't render from or to the C drive and you'll be fine. Besides, what's a tad here or there. You're multitasking by watching TV at the same time so you're not going to notice anyway, at least I don't.

LOL! I'm not multitasking by watching TV - I view my PC on my TV so am often on the net whilst rendering is going on or I leave it running over night.

Well it seems good news anyway as I have always copied files from E to C and now that'll be one less task and even if it doesn't make the rendering faster, I'll still have an extra 5gb free space. :-)