Rendering .avi to mpeg2 with transitions question

arthur-perkins wrote on 11/19/2003, 2:21 PM

Hi all,

I have a question regarding rendering an .avi file to an mpeg2 file. I am recording from my JVC digital camcorder via a Canopus adv-1394 interface into a pentium 3 600mhz pc with 640 megs of ram. The initial recording goes well as well as the rendering to .avi format.

My question regards the rendering to mpeg2 format. I added an opening title screen and several transitions between various sections. When I go to render the .avi file to mpeg2, Vegas 4.0d does between 4 and 5 percent of the file and then seeming does nothing although it is actually running which makes me wonder if it will ever finish as the process is so painfully slow. It seems to stop at the first transition inserted and take a long time to process so my question is as follows: Is the render time for a 1-1/2 hour file with inserted fx longer than the render time without inserted fx? If so, please explain why. Also has anyone come up with a standard process for going from .avi to mpeg2 to dvd(stereo or ac-3 dolby surround)?

thanks,

Arthur

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/19/2003, 3:21 PM

A lot of it depends on the complexity of the transition, and some on the source material too. I've noticed that it takes much longer to render a frame of generated media than to render a frame of DV video. When you have the two combined it will take vastly longer still. Your 600MHz processor isn't helping you much either.

I had a 4 minute project a while back that was mostly DV clips with simple crossfades or wipes. However, the last 10 seconds included a transition to a still credit screen along with a fade to B&W for the video and the clip was slowed down to about half speed. The rendering process up to that point only took about 10 minutes. Then once it hit that last clip it took about an hour to render the next 8 frames. I finally cancelled the render, removed the B&W effect, and then rerendered. Total time for the complete render was then about 35 minutes, with 25 minutes of that time for just the last 10 seconds of the video!

arthur-perkins wrote on 11/19/2003, 3:29 PM

Thanks for the info. I plan on upgrading the motherboard and processor to at least a pentium 4 3.2ghz setup but at least the cpu is the culprit and the process will eventually finish at some point.