Why did you have to stop it? Let it run and it will eventually finish.

My system is an AMD 3200 with 1,500 MB Ram. I've done much more complicated projects with wuch smaller completion times. It's just a simple photomontage with two video clips, music, and about 150 still photos at 500k each.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Mark

Make sure the opacity on the track level has not been accidentally changed. Also if there is any kind of depth (z plane) that has been used, this will take some time to render.

What format are your pictures?
How long is your project?
When you say video clips what do you mean? Tracks? 2 clips would be two pictures.
If you mean 2 tracks- if one track has pictures what does the other track have?

j razz

Agree, Kelly. Just let it run. Review why later.

There are at least three major, but fixable, reasons why rendering can take so long: Accidental opacity "nudging"; compositing bug (since fixed in latest versions of Vegas 6); slow fX.

You can use my two audit scripts to see if opacity has accidentally been nudged:

Audit Script

In Vegas 5, the version you are using, if you use compositing for any part of the project, it will cause the entire project to be composited. It was a bug that was later fixed, but can cause incredibly long render times. The solution, if you only have a short portion that is composited, is to render that first, bring the results back onto the timeline, and then eliminate the compositing track.

Certain fX can kill rendering time. I did a comparison here:

Results of render times for ALL Vegas fX

I updated this about three weeks ago, but don't have the link to that post in my database.

You can also reduce render time by rendering to a separate physical hard drive. Distributed network rendering is the ultimate solution for render-intensive projects, especially if the actual project length is short. Fifteen minute projects that take twenty-four hours to render are good candidates. Don't use "Best" for rendering quality unless your render resolution is different from your source media (e.g., DO use "Best" if you have high resolution stills, or are rendering to SD, but your source footage is HD; use "Good" for all other renders, including projects where the source footage is SD DV and the render is also SD).

[Edited to add content]

John,

You keep a database of all your posts? I would be interested to know what you use- Excel, Access, something else?

j razz

This sounds like a great tool! How do I run this script?

John,
I think you found the problem! Composting
I did not know that I would slow down rendering by combining two video tracks. I have multiple video pieces, photos, music, and audio tracks and some of which I've moved to make one track. At least I think you found the problem!

Go to Tools/Scripting/Run Script and locate this script whereever you saved it.

You will need to copy and paste the text of the script to a text document and rename the extension to .js

j razz

I've tried copying and pasting from different parts of the script, but I'm not exactely sure where it begins and ends.
Could you help me out? mbolmida@woh.rr.com

John, I hope you don't mind, but I changed SonicFoundry.Vegas to Sony.Vegas so the script would work with anything after version 4.
Mark- just copy everything below this and add it to a blank text file and change the extension to .js

/**
* This script finds all events where the opacity level has been
* set to a level only slightly less than 100%, or the audio level
* set to slightly less than 0dB. This usually is not intentional
* and results from accidentally moving the opacity or volume
* line while moving an event. Without this script, such
* an accident is very difficult to detect, and can result in
* long rendering times.
*
* Written By: John H. Meyer
* Date: November 11, 2003
* Modied November 23, 2003
*
**/
import System;
import System.IO;
import System.Windows.Forms;
import Sony.Vegas;

// Change this line if you want a different threshold
var Opacity = 0.90;
var EventLevel = 0.50;

var OpacityMessage : String;
var TrackUnits : String;

try {

//Go through the list of Tracks
var trackEnum = new Enumerator(Vegas.Project.Tracks);
while (!trackEnum.atEnd()) {
var track : Track = Track(trackEnum.item());


//Go through the list of Events
var eventEnum = new Enumerator(track.Events);

while (!eventEnum.atEnd()) {
var evnt : TrackEvent = TrackEvent(eventEnum.item());
evnt.Selected = false; // De-select events in order to make problem events stand out
// (Problem events WILL be selected)

// If gain is less than 100% (or 0dB), but greater than the threshhold ...
if ( (evnt.FadeIn.Gain > Opacity) && (evnt.FadeIn.Gain < 1) ) {

// Highlight the "suspect" event
Vegas.SelectionStart = evnt.Start;
Vegas.SelectionLength = evnt.Length;
Vegas.Cursor = evnt.Start;
evnt.Selected = true;
Vegas.UpdateUI();

// Create error message to display in message box.
if (track.IsVideo()) {
TrackUnits = "100%";
EventLevel = 100 * evnt.FadeIn.Gain;
OpacityMessage = "This event is set to: " + EventLevel.toPrecision(2);
OpacityMessage = OpacityMessage + "%. Do you want to set to " + TrackUnits + "?";
}
else {
TrackUnits = "0dB";
EventLevel = 20 * Math.log (evnt.FadeIn.Gain);
OpacityMessage = "This event is set to: " + EventLevel.toPrecision(2);
OpacityMessage = OpacityMessage + "dB. Do you want to set to " + TrackUnits + "?";
}


var msgBoxResult = MessageBox.Show(OpacityMessage, "Region Selected", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo);
if (msgBoxResult == DialogResult.Yes) {
evnt.FadeIn.Gain = 1; // Correct the problem
}

}

evnt.Selected = false; // Clear all event selections
eventEnum.moveNext();

} // End While eventEnum

trackEnum.moveNext();

} // End While trackEnum
MessageBox.Show("Don't forget to check all track header levels.","Completed",MessageBoxButtons.OK,MessageBoxIcon.Information);

} catch (e) {
MessageBox.Show(e);
}