Rendering questions from a rooookie.....

Nel. wrote on 5/22/2002, 1:53 PM
I finally reach the crucial point of rendering my project...
Thanks to this forum and your great help I made it so far....
I am not a computer genius neither, far from it... So here are my questions...
1- Do I have to change my cables on my Dazzle DV-Bridge box... from the setting I had when I captured? Grazie, you have Dazzle DV bridge.. how do you handle this?
2- I checked with Clt+Alt+Del... and nothing is listed in the task... Am I safe to say I don't have any programs running in the background?...I am running Windows XP home Editon. I have several icons on the task bar by the clock and more by the start button for quick launch...If I have to remove them how do I put them back before my family puts me in the dog house? I know that Norton checks daily for new downloads every night between 4-5 Am... Should I close this as well.
3- How do I remove the yellow marks above the time line. I don't need them...(I had made some booboos... and somehow these were created).
4- How long does it take to render a 1:20h long project...
Thanks for your input on this...

Comments

Grazie wrote on 5/22/2002, 3:00 PM
I have a Dazzle Hollywood Bridge, it does not have a "setting" as such. You can "force" DV:AV by toggling the micro switch at the rear of the box.

When I am "Capturing" [analogue to DV] I have my analogue plugs on the front face [the input side] and the firewire cable plugged into its rear [the output side] which I run directly into my 4-pin firewire 1394 port. Sooooo when I want to "convert" DV to analogue, I remove the firewire cable from the rear of the Dazzle and plug it into front [input side] and remove the Analogu plugs from the front and plug them into rear [the output side], Yes it is a bit of a bother to do this, but hey that extra bit of physical excercise is good for all of us!

So to recap: Front Side is for Input - Back Side is for output. If you are putting analogue in the front you'll get DV out of the back. And conversely, if you put DV into the front, you'll get Analogue out of the rear. You should see the Red light change to Green and in switch to the correct "conversion position" you are converting - If you've got a green light at the top of the three - you're converting DV to AV [D to A]. If you've got a green light at the bottom of the three lights, you're doing AV to DV [A to D].

Does this answer your question?

Hmmmmmm... I don't run WinXP - still with WinME - so I can't comment on your Cntrl-Alt-Del checking. However, in WinME the minimum requirements for my laptop to work is at least to have "Systray" working - this is essential. Wait for an answer from an XP user. Ditto for rendering times. You could render a bite size bit and do the math for larger chunks.

Tarah

Grazie
Nel. wrote on 5/22/2002, 6:14 PM
Thanks Grazie....
I was 99% sure that I had to change my cables... So, I have to do some contortions around and behind the whole setup....That is the easy part..
I have to wait and read for my other questions to be answered before I can proceed...
I think the system tray is a lingo for the previous versions of Windows. According to my XP bible, it is call the Notification Area...
Thanks again...Grazie...
Chienworks wrote on 5/22/2002, 11:07 PM
2 - it doesn't matter if other tasks are running while you're rendering. The render may take a little longer, but it is otherwise unaffected. I regularly surf the web, play music, and play a video game while rendering.

2b - printing to tape is another matter. This is when you want as little else as possible running.

3 - don't worry about the yellow marks. When you render, make sure that "Render loop region only" is not checked.

4 - this depends on thousands of things, so it's pretty difficult to answer. For 80 minutes of video, expect a render time anywhere from 1 hour up to 2 days. I really can't pin it down any closer than that for you. Once you've started rendering, there will be a remaining time display. This counts up until the render is about 4% complete; after that it starts counting down semi-accurately. If you pay attention to how long it takes to reach 1%, you can multiply that by 100 to get a quick estimate.
Nel. wrote on 5/23/2002, 12:20 AM
Thanks chienworks...
I am a bit horrified by the size of my project....
I just rendered a 3:40mn training movie that created a monster estimated size of 9.08 Gb...(I still have to copy it to tape... and see the surprise....)
Now that I want to render my real project of 1:20mn what size of a hard drive do I need.... I thought I was safe with 40Gb...
I didn't understand that rendering business size wise....
I had install VF and Dazzle DV-Bridge only on that D drive..(actually it is a split drive) and do my editing there as well.... but I am running out of space...
How do I know if all the programs are in background are turn off?
If the PC has to run for "2 days"... I better be sure that they are off... but HOW DO I DO THAT?
I know of the screen saver, and Norton. What else is most likely in the background if I don't see anything in the task screen??? Pleassssssssse.
Thanks.......
Chienworks wrote on 5/23/2002, 8:44 AM
That file seems too large. You should be rendering to DV .avi (either PAL for Europe or NTSC for US). DV files will be about 225MB per minute, so your 3:40 file should have been about 825MB, not 9GB. The 1 hour 20 minute project should end up being about 18GB.

Don't panic about anything running in the background while rendering. It doesn't matter.

If you don't see anything else listed in the task list besides systray and explorer, then you'll probably be ok for printing to tape. Probably the best thing to do is to try it and see what happens. If it doesn't work well, then we'll worry about checking on more things.
Nel. wrote on 5/26/2002, 1:17 AM
Thanks Chienmworks
Ok, this project was rendered = template = NTSC (standard 720x486 29.970fps
So do I select template = NTSC DV (720x 480 29.970 fps
Is this the right format? Will this reduce the file size?
Can I render the same project several times? in different templates?
I render NTSC DV for me in North America... but I want to send my tapes to Europe using PAL. will it be PAL DV?
Can I, and how do I rerender the same project with different properties?
I saw that somebody was "surprised" by the file size of his project as well....
Thanks again....