rendering speed

maries wrote on 12/28/2002, 11:37 PM

I am in the process of rendering a 1 hour 54 minute video (transitions, titles, music). The final output will be a DVD to be burned through DVDit! I used the default setting MPEG-2 in VV and it is now 13 hours into this project with another 17 hours to go!

I have a P4, 200 gig (120 gig dedicated to video editing) 756MB RAM, 64MB Video running WIN XP. I have shutdown all background processes so that the machine is dedicated to only rendering this video.

Would the rendering time be quicker if I would render it .AVI and let DVDit! complete the rendering? Should I use another format? (.MOV, .AVI, etc.) What can I do to speed up the process?

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Comments

vonhosen wrote on 12/29/2002, 3:12 AM

You won't get quality as good from DVDit. I don't know how long it would take you but as you suggest that would be increased by having to go to .avi first.

You could invest in dedicated transcoding software. I use Canopus Procoder & it gives excellent results with reasonable speed. I use a P4 2.53Ghz & if I render a two hour .avi to "mastering quality" (it warns that this may take 10-20 times longer than other settings) with closed GOPs , 10bit , 2 pass VBR ,it takes just about 8 hours. (got to add a render to .avi , but that is 2 pass VBR)

It will batch encode to multiple different formats , or different bitrates of one format in one go.

mitteg wrote on 12/29/2002, 8:35 AM

You can render to AVI and then use TMPGENC to make a MPEG2 video.

Lawrence wrote on 12/29/2002, 12:36 PM

Recommend workflow.

Render to a single file DV avi.
Put this on a new VV3 track and render to DVD mpeg2.

Much faster processing and also can archive back to DV.

snicholshms wrote on 12/29/2002, 1:45 PM

Lawrence has a good idea. Rendering your completed project from the timeline to an .avi file first will result in a better quality DV master. You will also get a higher quality MPEG 1 or 2 file from the high quality .avi master. I get fewer artifacts this way than when I render directly to the lower quality MPEG1 or 2 format. That's a lot of compression in one render, especially if you have several layers with F/X, Titles, Track Motion, etc. The .avi compression will render out cleaner than doing an MPEG1 or 2 render first.
Steve

videoguy wrote on 12/29/2002, 2:34 PM

so are you suggesting that one render a project out to avi format first if you have a lot of transitions and titles first then put it back into vegas or another program and render it into mpeg II format. I have rendered right out of the time line into dvd mpegII file format and things look good to me, but if you are saying that they can look better i am willing to give your suggestion a try. Thanks

maries wrote on 12/30/2002, 9:16 AM

Thanks for all your suggestions! I am in the process now of rendering it as an .avi file. Hopefully, it will only take a few hours! :-)

BillyBoy wrote on 12/30/2002, 9:50 AM

Hmmm... I've being using similar methods. I finish all the editing, then render to DV AVI, (back to my digital camera through firewire) for archive purposes. Then I open the rendered file AS A NEW PROJECT. Be sure you DON'T have any previous VEG files opened. Then I make my MPEG-2 which I'll use later to burn DVD's. It zips right along and is roughly three to five times faster than making a second render from the original project. There may be a slight improvement in quality, which is mostly subjective, but for sure it is much faster in my experience. I would assume the reason is all the time consuming application of FX filters, any frame resizing, resamping, etc., is already completed.

Can SoFo confirm this is a good idea IF you are going to make multiple renderes using different file formats?

maries wrote on 12/30/2002, 2:58 PM

BillyBoy
What do you mean regarding not having any previous VEG files open. The only open VEG file would be the one that is rendering. Right now it is going to take this file 19 hours to render in AVI! What is the time it takes for your videos?
Mine is 1 hour 53 minutes with FX, transitions, titles etc?

HPV wrote on 12/30/2002, 9:23 PM

The time estimations for rendering aren't accurate. Use one sec time region renders on differnt areas to get an idea of rendering speed. Preview framerate will also show you're slow areas.
Long renders can be caused by track fx. Use of more tracks can help here as track fx take a render hit even when keyframed to a zero setting.
You might have a track level slider sitting at less than 100%.
You might have gone nuts with color correction filters, tracks, pan/crop, ect. That's nuts in a good way. I've had my P4 1.3 cook for 14 hrs on a one hour project rendered out to DV AVI.

Craig H.

kirkdickinson wrote on 12/31/2002, 12:24 AM

Maries,

You said
"I have a P4, 200 gig (120 gig dedicated to video editing)"

Do you mean that you have a 200 Gig Hard drive? There aren't any 200 Gig CPU's yet. If there were, your project would render in 5 minutes or less.

What is your CPU speed?

My render times for a 66 minute video takes 6-7 hours render time on my computer Dual P-III 1Ghz, 512 MB DDR Ram.

Kirk

maries wrote on 12/31/2002, 8:10 AM

Yes, 200 gig hard drive. My cpu is 1.9GHz, I don't have dual cpu's. I have 768 Dram, and 64mb video. It took 7:18:00 to render a 29 minute portion of video! (to .avi) I'm looking into ProCoder by Canopus. It seems the only drawback is that I would have to use Premier for editing and I really find VV easy to use.