Rendering time...again..

Spielberg wrote on 10/9/2003, 8:52 AM
Afraid of beeing lost in the other rendering thread, I post a new one.

Yesterday I was going to render my first film (.avi) but I had to cancel since it indicated that my 27 minute film would need 24 hours to render!
I use a 1.3 Ghz AMD Duron. However, I also use the same disk for both source and target, but I suspect that something else is wrong.

Does anyone got any idea of what could be wrong? Can it really be the "one-disk-for-both-source-and-target" problem, or just the fact that 1.3 Ghz CPU is way too weak. Or perhaps some setting I have missed?

I rendered my film as wmv format instead, and that took over 6 hours....
/S

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/9/2003, 8:59 AM
Were you rendering as uncompressed AVI, or as a highly compressed AVI (divx or something)? Normaly DV AVI's don't take long to render.

Rendering to a different HD will help, but you will also want to pop an Athlon or XP chip in your MB if you can.
Spielberg wrote on 10/9/2003, 9:12 AM
As uncompressed AVI (I guess?!) I chose "Render As.." -> Save as Type=AVI, Template= PAL DV.
The project also contains crossfades between more or less every clip. Does that add to my problems?

Unfortunately I have already boost my old poor Compaq to its limits.
Jsnkc wrote on 10/9/2003, 9:37 AM
At 1.3 GHZ, I would assume that you're really at the best speed you're going to get. Just do like most of us do and let it render overnight. I know I have had a few 16-18 hour renders, I haven't broken the 20 hour mark though.
JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/9/2003, 10:42 AM
Did you add a Video FX to an entire track? Is the source PAL DV? It sounds like Vegas is processing every single frame when all it should be doing is copying the AVI parts that are unchanged and rendering only the transitions and overlays. If you have a lot of overlays or added track motion, pan, zoom, etc. it will take a lot of time to render.

~jr
TheHappyFriar wrote on 10/9/2003, 10:58 AM
Spielberg, you can render for say, 10 hours, then cancel your render. Then, next time you want to render, place the AVI you rendered before on another track above your edited stuff. Then start your render where you left off (the end of the other AVI). Then, when you're done, you can plop all the rendered AVI's into 1 timeline and then render as one big file.
JoaoRanhel wrote on 10/9/2003, 1:07 PM
I posted a message about this problem yesterday.
I've captured a clip, drag it from media pool to timeline, ask for rendering and it takes almost a second per frame in a Pentium IV 2.4 256MRam XP DX9 and 2 drives (the working drive is a cheetah 72G).
Vegas render each frame even when I only drop the clip on the timeline.
Does anyone knows what is the matter?
JoaoRanhel wrote on 10/9/2003, 1:21 PM
>Did you add a Video FX to an entire track?

A question based on JR's post:
Is there any button in preferences (maybe checked or unchecked) that could apply FX to the entire track and I can't see?
JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/9/2003, 8:52 PM
Sorry, I guess that’s a Vegas only feature. (my mistake... I’m easily confused. ;-) ) Still applying a Video FX to every event would cause the same problem.

~jr
filmy wrote on 10/9/2003, 9:37 PM
Check to opacity of the tracks - are they all set to 100%?

Video aside - what about audio? Do you have a lot of audio effects going on?

Is all source media the same? (I.E - is it all PAL AVI/DV?)

Do your project settings match your media settings and do they match your output settings? (i.e - is your media upper field/frame? Lower field/frame? none/progressive? Do the setting in your project match your media? And when you output do those setting match as well? It may sound too easy but if you have a "upper field/frame" setting on a project and the media is set at "lower field/frame" your render time will shoot up. )

And do you have any overall effects such as motion blur or supersample turned on? Supersample for sure will add lots of time you your render.
Spielberg wrote on 10/10/2003, 5:40 AM
Goodmorning again and thanks for all your tips.

My project is not very complicated (in my sence) and it contains basically one track with the "main film", one track with overlay text (only on the first clip though) and one track with 2 minutes of film at the end. I.e. 3 video tracks with no overall effects.
The only effects in the project is zooming in of the text in the beginning and then I have crossfades between all clips.

I also have 2 audio tracks where one of them includes 2 or 3 songs imported from CD. No effects on the audio tracks.

As JohnnyRoy mention, it seems like every frame is being processed and that seems to be the problem for Ranhel too.

To answer the questions from Filmy; Opacity is set to 100%, no audio effects, all PAL/AVI DV format and I think the settings for the project and output are the same (however I will double check).
What is meant with upper field/fram vs lower field/frame?

Thanks!

//S
JohnnyRoy wrote on 10/10/2003, 6:35 AM
> What is meant with upper field/fram vs lower field/frame?

Field order has to do with how the source is interlaced. If the source is interlaced upper field first and the project is set to interlace lower field first, then every frame would need to be processed to flip the filed order. This usually happens with analog capture cards. Some of them capture upper field first and DV is always lower field first so mixing analog source in a DV project will sometimes cause this.

The way to check is to go into your project settings and make sure you’re using the PAL DV template, which should already have a Field order of Lower field first. Then right-click on your clip and select Properties. From the Properties dialog, in the General tab, push the Media Properties button. From this dialog check the Field order entry and make sure it matches the project settings which should be Lower field first for PAL DV.

We’re just looking for things that might cause every frame to be processed. This should not normally be the case. Even if you use Pan/Crop and select a different aspect ratio that would cause every frame to be processed to crop it.

~jr
JoaoRanhel wrote on 10/10/2003, 8:08 AM
THE RADICAL SOLUTION:
Guys, today I removed Vegas completely and then I installed it again.
The problem with rendering time has gone. But those clips I’ve captured in the “old Vegas” (building 205 too) still continue showing a poor preview performance.
What did I do? I opened another project, dropped clip by clip into the timeline and rendered them to another files with the same name of the original clips. Then I substituted the new rendered and the program now is working fine.
It makes me believe in two possibilities:
1 – Some information was recorded in the old clips by the “old” program that causes such poor performance (in preview and rendering);
2 – Such information cannot be cleaned by changing the parameters inside Vegas, because I’ve lost lot of time changing one by one lot of preferences and parameters.
That’s it! I hope it can help you.
John_Cline wrote on 10/10/2003, 8:18 AM
Spielberg,

It really isn't going to take 24 hours to render despite what Vegas is telling you. Since you have a text overlay on the first clip, it is going to have to render every frame of this clip. When Vegas starts to render, the remaining time is calculated based on the current render rate. Since Vegas is rendering each frame at the beginning of your project, it assumes that it will take this long to process each frame in the entire project. However, once Vegas renders the first clip, it will get to the uneffected footage and will will blaze through that because it won't actually have to render anything, it will just be copying data to the new file and that happens very quickly. Just start the render when you go to sleep and it will probably be finished long before you wake up.

John
Laurence wrote on 10/10/2003, 8:42 AM
A reinstall of Vegas would redo all the default templates. If the settings were off, it could really slow down renders. It makes sense that a reinstall would set things back to normal.

One thing I've noticed lately is that if your hardisc is getting close to full, rendering time slows way down. This came to my attention when I noticed that my new P4 laptop was rendering in a couple of hours what would take 16 hours plus on my desktop. After I freed up a whole lot of extra space on my desktop hard drive, rendering time sped up substancially. I don't know if it's a virtual memory thing, or if Vegas generates some large temp files, but whatever it is, Vegas needs lots of room to work quickly.

Laurence Kingston
Spielberg wrote on 10/10/2003, 9:06 AM
I'm gonna take all your input, lock me in during the weekend with Vegas and on monday I'll let you know if my old Compaq is for sale or not ;-)

//S
Spielberg wrote on 10/13/2003, 3:41 AM
Yiehaaa!!
My 27 minute film now renders in 57 minutes!!!

For some reason, two of the audio tracks had effects added to them. Of course I should have checked this from start, but am 100% sure that I have not added any effect to the audio tracks. The only thing I have done is copy-paste from media pool. The strange this there seemed to be several effects added on the same track. Don't know how it happened.

Two new questions though.
1: When I rendered the project (finally!), two avi-files were created. Is there any setting to define the size of the rendered project? Or, is it possible to consolidate several files when importing them to DVD architect?

2: I rendered as PAL (not widescreen), and when running the DVD some of the added text is lost, i.e. the size does not fit the TV screen. What is wrong?
//S
filmy wrote on 10/13/2003, 9:27 AM
>>>When I rendered the project (finally!), two avi-files were created. Is there any setting to define the size of the rendered project?<<<

IF you render to FAT32 drives there is a size limit of about 4 gigs. If you render to a NTFS drive you do not have that limitation. The other thing is to check your settings - see if "Type1 AVI" or "Type2 AVI" is selected.

>>>is it possible to consolidate several files when importing them to DVD architect<<<

You can just encode your project to MPEG from the VV timeline, that way you end up with one file to bring into your DVD authopring program. Just use the DVD MPEG setting in the VV "render as" drop down.

>>>I rendered as PAL (not widescreen), and when running the DVD some of the added text is lost, i.e. the size does not fit the TV screen. What is wrong?<<<

In VV when you created your project did you have the overlays for TV safe turned on? If you did and all the text was within the safe areas I am not sure what is goin on. If not you might want to go back and them on and re-check all your text.