Rendering

tmavis wrote on 2/3/2004, 10:08 PM
I recently filmed my band playing and video was about 50 minutes long. I edited the film to add some into text and credits at the end. I have no video editing specific hardware other then my sony DV camera and my computer.Caputing the video with firewire was as easy as playing back the tape. Editing with Vegas was great. However, rendering has been a nightmare. I'm rendering at SVCD quality. My computer is AMD Athlon XP 1.4 Ghz with 768 MB RAM. The video started rendering rather quickly but now is still rendering 3 days later. It is now at 96% complete. I have not used my computer while video is rendering. Approximately 1 to 2 frames where rendered per second at beginning. Now I estimate 1 frame per 10 to 20 seconds. This is taking forever and completely ruined my conception of this product. Am I doing anyting wrong. I refuse to stop the rendering because it seems so close to being finished and I'm really happy with what the preview looked like.

Comments

Liam_Vegas wrote on 2/3/2004, 11:11 PM
That does seem quite a bit excessive but that all depends on what edits/fades and other effects you may have used throughout the veg. For instance if you have used a lot of blurs or color correction or some other filters on large portions of the timeline it may cause the rendering to become this slow. Impossible for any of us to be able to assess that without knowing more about your project and what you have done to it.

[EDIT]... this next paragraph is FAULTY... and based upon my "forgetting" that tmavis clearly stated the render to SVCD format... but I am leaving it here anyway as a warning to myself to be more careful next time!
Perhaps a silly question but..what format are you rendering to? Are you sure you are rendering to the NTSC DV format (assuming you are in NTSC land) rather than as uncompressed AVI format?

In cases such as this (especially as this is likely your first time rendering it may have been a good idea for you to render a small portion of the timeline to at least verify that it is working to some degree before rendering the whole lot. That does not really help you right now... but oh well.
Grazie wrote on 2/3/2004, 11:52 PM
I always render FIRST to a format that I know renders relatively quickly - straight AVI. Then I use this render to create the "delivery" format. I guess going straight to SVCD each frame, as you are finding, is needing to be made into thta format - yeah? Having this interim AVI file also allows me to "check-out2 if the finally movie is what I want. And here I can go straight back to the t/l and correct it. I think you are learning the "hard" way to do this interim render. The way I've understood this is that VCD, SVCD need a "flavour" of MPEG. What's on your timeline is a "representation" of the underlying captured avi. Now, having done the interim render into an AVI - with all the cuts, dissolves etc etc, as it were DONE - all the MPEG s/w needs to do is create a recoded MPEG single AVI. It doesn't have to all the stuff you've created.

One other test you could do is to stick an unedited piece of freshly captured AVI onto the t/l and then format that as a SVCD . .see how quickly it does that . .you may very well be surprised. Now think how much quicker the interim approach will give you - yeah?

Oh, yes the interim will take up space and maybe this was your resonning in going straight to the SVCD format - understood. But, here you pay the price of render times - yeah?

I aint no DV specialist . .I've learnt this stuff by making loads of mistakes . . and finding out by reading loads and loads . . .

Hey, at the end of the day, if you find doing a straight render to SVCD format from an unaltered freshly captured AVI still gives you humungus render times [ try a 10 second clip, and report back how long it takes to render to SVCD ] then you/we will need to look at something within your system and s/w . . .

I realise Liam has suggested something similar . . but I really wanted to ina sense, reiterate his comments . . he knows much more than I do, when it comes to this stuff . . .

Hope this helps,

Grazie
Liam_Vegas wrote on 2/3/2004, 11:56 PM
oops.. tmavis did say SVCD didn't he. Oh well.

What Grazie said!
theigloo wrote on 2/4/2004, 12:10 AM

Make sure you haven't accidentallly set a track transparency to something less that 100%.

Make sure you don't have any effects that your not using. (check for the little green squares on each event and track and project).

An accidental transparency change or effect will send your render thru the roof. 3 days sounds nuts. How fast is your machine?
Grazie wrote on 2/4/2004, 12:19 AM
Yeah, Liam, seems like our friend is going straight to SVCD from his edit . . h m m m . . what's the physics going on here? Maybe a short "course" in understand the rigours of creating an MPEG flavour from an underlying AVI is needed . . the real problem [? ] here is that Vegas WILL allow us to do all these things . . however, it's only when we try these "options" out that the wheels come off. . .I wouldn't have Vegas behave any other way. Along with this great flexibility, it should come with some Government Health Warnings - yeah? It's not a fault of the s/w . .in a sense it's not an User error either . .it's a type of "Well, why the Hell Not! - It allows me to do it . then why does it take so long??" - issue . . .

However, our friend may still have some issues . . clogged hd? Does she/he have a separate video drive? Defrag? Empty Temp folder? - Yah know the deal here - yeah?

. . anyway, it's overcast here in London . .it's messy old nasty weather . . seems like it's in for the duration of Feb, at least . . .

. .now back to Boris-Graf and digging a workflow that works for me . . .

Grazie
tmavis wrote on 2/4/2004, 7:47 AM
Thanks for input Liam_Vegas and Grazie. Rendering fiirst to AVI sounds like a good idea. I'm going to try this approach...
Grazie wrote on 2/4/2004, 8:04 AM
Please, please don't take our word for it! Just do a small piece and render the interim . . Go on and convince yourself . .just a small 5 or 10 second complicated piece - yeah? Now check this against - you may even know by now anyway - with the same approach via SVCD . .

Grazie
Liam_Vegas wrote on 2/4/2004, 8:31 AM
. . anyway, it's overcast here in London . .it's messy old nasty weather . . seems like it's in for the duration of Feb, at least .

ahhh... brings it all back..

How I do not miss the weather!

Liam
originally.. Cambridge UK
now... California, USA
Grazie wrote on 2/4/2004, 8:42 AM
Yeeeahh ?!? Hallooo ?. .But we've got warm beer - yeah? Teh ! . .Calif, with all that sunshine? . . Yer dont know yer born!!

( . . oooh , BTW, that's Brit Irony . . )

Grazie