I wouldn't bother. When your render times are long, the speed of the hard drive is practically immaterial compared to all the other things the computer is doing to produce the output file. When your render times are short, speeding up the render won't make much difference.

In either case, the speed of the hard drive is a very small factor in render time.

I am big fan of SSDs and I have plenty of them in my system. However, they don't improve render times anymore. If you already have a SATA-II or SATA-III HDD then there is no gain in changing it to an SSD. All my project files are on an RAID-0 with SSDs but I do render to a conventional HDD. As long as you render to a dedicated drive, different from you OS and source files, that is sufficient.

If you want better render times, especially when rendering to MC AVC, change your graphic card to a GTX570/580, assuming you are using a GTX670, to take full advantage of the GPU acceleration. You can get that for less then a new SSD.

I have three children, so I'm accustomed to people ignoring what I think, but here is evidence that 1.6 megabytes per second will serve you well for highly compressed codecs.

If you use uncompressed codecs, you might do the same analysis with your system and draw you own conclusions. That's what my children do. Actually, they just ask their friends and do what [I]they[/I] think.

Full Disclosure: All my system disks are SSD.

-John_Dennis

I have children of my own and know how you feel.

I agree with you when it comes to reading from a drive; especially mulitcam projects require reading of multiple files at the same time. That is the reason why I use a RAID0 made of SSDs.
Rendering, writing to the disk isn't so critical for now as the process involves more then just a simple file copy. The whole rendering process is slower then your average disk speed regardless of the codec complexity and bit rate…IMOH. Anything that helps speeding up the render process such as a fully supported GPU will get you better render times.

I regret getting the 120 SSD size. I'm able to fit everything but it's tight. In the future I will go for at least 180gigs (using Windows 7).

Thanks for the info guys.

I have done some render test with a 60 sec clip.
As some of you mentioned It seems that only the uncompressed file is much faster using the SSD.

But I wonder if that will be the same at a long (all night) render .

I have done a 'HD tune software' speed test and it seems that HD's run down their speeds while SSD seem to be constant. Also what about access speed?

View screenshot of my HD vs SSD test:

My drives are:
C: SSD: Samsung SSD 840 PRO - 250 GB (50% data on disc)
D: Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 - 2 TB (80% data on disc)
H: Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 - 3 TB (25 % data on disc)

Render test with V12:

60 sec length panning clip (m2ts 1920x1080-50i source clip on timeline).

AVI - HD 1080-50i YUV - Uncompressed

C: SSD : 44 sec
D: HD : 110 sec
H: HD : 59 sec

-------------------

AVC/MVC - Blu-ray 1920x1080-50i, 10 Mbps video stream

C: SSD : 62 sec
D: HD : 64 sec
H: HD : 64 sec

----------------------
MXF - HD422 1920x1080-50i 50 Mbps

C: SSD : 48 sec
D: HD : 48 sec
H: HD : 48 sec

@ Old Smoke what make/model & memory version of the GTX 570 would you suggest? I can't seem to find one that easily.
Also what about the memory usage that I have mentioned earlier Is that normal?

Would upgrading to 32 Gb instead of 16 make any difference?

I have 2x ASUS GTX570 with 1.5GB memory. I will be changing them to 2x EVGA GTX580 also with 1.5GB each. The Asus card is 3 slots wide due to the huge heat sink but the EVGA is only 2 slots wide and once water-cooled only 1 slot. Currently the two GXT570 cover all other slots in my system.
I haven't found a good source to buy a GTX570 or 580 new and turned to eBay; there are plenty to get. I have no idea if a 3G version would improve render times or not.
As for your system RAM, I also have "only" 16GB but I don't experience any increase in RAM used up by Vegas, editing or rendering.
Do you use any 3rd party plugin that may cause this?

With regard to the brand of SSD, I have been using them for a long time and have experienced some real shockers. If you have a choice and can afford it, my recommendation is to go for the Samsung 840 Pro, every time.
Geoff

Thanks Old Smoke. I will check that out about the 3d party plugin, not sure if Neat Video could be causing it.


GeeBax.
Do you mean real shockers in a good way? Surprised by good faster results in render time etc? :-).

I would be amazed if you would notice any important decrease in rendering times by going to a faster disk drive. To a first approximation, the contribution to render time is the time it would take to simply copy the final rendered file to your target drive. As an example, if you have a 10 GB source file, and after editing and rendering you end up with a 3 GB rendered file, then the disk drive contribution to rendering time is approximately the time it would take to copy a 3 GB file from any drive to your render drive. The source drive is not as important because read times are usually much faster than write speeds.

With modern drives, it probably takes only 1-3 minutes to do that copy operation. However, if you started with a 10 GB file, that means the source is probably 30-60 minutes. Rendering that length video down to an Internet MP4, Blu-Ray, or DVD file is going to take (depending on a million things) at least ten times longer than the 1-3 minutes it takes to actually write the file to the drive.

However, while disk speed is very unimportant for improving rendering speed, it can make a huge difference in playback performance, especially if you use high resolution, high quality intermediates (like Cineform), if you deal with uncompressed video, or if you do multi-cam shoots and store video from more than one camera on the same disk drive.

" My question in short: SSD 450 MB/sec Vs 520 MB/sec would there be a big difference in render time?"


Is that the stated read or write performance?


Never the less, you will only realize those speeds when running the benchmark that was used, and it probably wasn't Vegas...

The 520 spec will definitely not improve your rendering performance in Vegas, so the 80 euros would be better spent somewhere else..

"GeeBax.
Do you mean real shockers in a good way? Surprised by good faster results in render time etc?"

No, I mean SSDs that failed totally. I had about 20 of them fail completely in the early days, and some were the very well known ones, and I am reluctant to name them. An SSD will not appreciably improve your render time, it is not a significant factor. It will make you computer operate faster and boot up quickly though.

"The 520 spec will definitely not improve your rendering performance in Vegas, so the 80 euros would be better spent somewhere else.."

Quite true, but it the 80 Euros is worth it for the peace of mind the Samsung unit will bring.

Geoff

Where I sit the price difference is only about 10 Euro - if you compare the Kingston and the Samsung devices with the mentioned different speeds but with the same capacity (120 GB).

What you get for the extra 80 euros is twice the capacity up to 250 GB.

Redundant capacity on a SSD disk means much, much longer durability.

I have a OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB for Windows and a Samsung 840 Pro 512 GB for current projects.

Definitely overkill if you talk about rendering speed etc - but:

1)Vegas opens in less than 7 seconds first time after boot and in 3 seconds thereafter.

2) Full HD projects open and populate the timeline with thumbnails even faster than SD projects did in the good old days.

Both is well appreciated here because I tend to work with a main project plus several under-projects where all the adding/deleting/fiddling/undo/redo etc. is done and -when finished- added by copy/paste to the main project.
Probably this is without significance today in Vegas 12 B726 - but in elder versions it seemed (to me) that eager fiddling tended to leave behind potential stumbling stones for Vegas.

>>>>Vegas opens in less than 7 seconds first time after boot and in 3 seconds thereafter.<<<

It opens in 7 seconds on my regular spinny 7200rpm drive too ( first time you open it )

SSD sounds like a huge waste of money. Doesn't really open anything faster, doesn't significantly improve boot times and does not help with rendering either. Just has a shorter life span, fails more often and costs a lot more.

Photoshop opens in 3 seconds by the way.

"SSD sounds like a huge waste of money. Doesn't really open anything faster, doesn't significantly improve boot times and does not help with rendering either. Just has a shorter life span, fails more often and costs a lot more."

Ah, yes it does, your computer will boot up significantly faster with an SSD, and they are actually more reliable (now) and have a longer life span than a spinning disk based drive. Does not fail more often if you choose a good quality drive, is less prone to shock damage, and suffers less from erroneous disk writes when you suffer a power outage.

And you *will* find they replace spinning disk drives in a very short space of time.

>>> your computer will boot up significantly faster with an SSD, <<<

My computer boots up in 15-20 seconds. Do I really need to spend hundreds more to save 15 seconds? That is about as far from significan as you can get.

>>>they have a longer life span than a spinning disk<<<<

No they don't. I have spinning drives at least twice as old as the whole SSD technology has existed, so you have no way of telling comparatively how long your SSD will really last. The oldest spinning drive I have and still use is probably 10 years old ( EDigital Raptor ) . Nobody here has a SSD more than 3 years old ( give or take a few months ).


>>>>And you *will* find they replace spinning disk drives in a very short space of time<<<

They probably will one day, but as of today it's still a completely irrelevant technology. They sell them because they want to make money, not because they are better than spinning drives. What do they call it? A solution to a nonexistent problem.

Very interesting feedback from all.

@ deusx.

What is your opinion about this speed test that I have done?
View screenshot of my HD vs SSD test:

That was the first 'proof' for me to start liking my SSD :-). Though I wouldn't use them for backup with full confidence yet.
On the other hand my Nxcam shoots and saves all the data on a flash drive.

The Samsung also has a software called 'Samsung Magician' that constantly monitors the SSD's health, and it gives an estimated lifespan.

One thing I am really happy with is the boot up speed of my OS thanks to the SSD.

@ Stringer, write speed :-), you can view their specs by clicking the link.

@ ritsmer, indeed Samsung is the one to be better trusted.


@ Geebax, I am happy that we are not living in the 'early days' anymore :-).
But just to make sure, I am going to backup the OS from my SSD onto a HD now :).

The things i do that an SSD would significantly speed up, booting and launching software, are things that i do very rarely and only take a few moments anyway. The vast majority of the time i spend on my computer would hardly be affected by an SSD drive at all.

Add to that that i can buy a 2TB "spinny" drive for about 1/2 the price of a 0.25TB SSD, and the whole thing seems quite pointless.

If you have the money I'd say get an Samsung EVO 1TB SSD for your Vegas work drive. It won't make your renders faster because under nearly all circumstances they will be compute limited, not bandwidth. The benefits of and SSD for a Vegas work drive would be zero noise and faster access time (loading the timeline).

As a boot drive the benefits in my experience have been extraordinary. Much faster start-up and more importantly loading of applications. Complete lack of noise, much improved multitasking, and not needing to ever defrag the drive. Personally, I could never go back to a spinning disk. I am sensitive to noise and the spinning disks in my rig are the only noise I hear from it. I can't wait to get rid them and just keep an external spinner as a cheap back up.


As for SSD reliability ...

In the infancy of SSDs there were some teething problems which gave SSDs a bad name in the minds of many. The problems were confined to a few specific drives and have long since been corrected.

In addition, the issue of endurance or "writing out" a drive has also been greatly exaggerated. While smaller process size has decreased the number of writes an SSD can endure it is still a non-issue in any non server environment.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7173/samsung-ssd-840-evo-review-120gb-250gb-500gb-750gb-1tb-models-tested/3

At 50GB written per day the Samsung EVO will last
8 years for the 120GB size
16 years for the 250GB
31.7 years for the 500GB
47.5 years for the 750GB
63.3 years for the 1000GB model

You could write 100GB/day with the 1000GB model and it would still last over 31 years.

But how to spend one's money is a very subjective topic and everyone must make their own decisions. Just make sure you have all of the information.

Finally, regardless of your storage preference make sure you back up your data at least once a week. I also recommend cloning your boot drive every few months. Any drive can fail.

That's all fine on paper. Even if there are no reliability issues I don't see any meaningful real world difference other than paying much more.

They don't even open programs faster than a regular 7200RPM drive.

Like I said above, Vegas opens in 7 seconds with my spinny drive, Photoshop opens in 3 seconds. Even if SSD drives were twice as fast opening these we are talking about saving a few seconds. Who really cares about that?

Thanks Hulk for that valuable info!
Yes indeed the noise factor is a big improvement too.

Cloning the boot drive every few months is a good tip.
Which software do you use for cloning your OS?

@deusx

HDD are ok but not for more complex editing such as multi cam. I usually have 3-5 cameras per event with plenty of audio tracks too and I did have RAID-0 made of spinning disks but nothing compares to a RAID-0 made of SSDs when it comes to multi cam editing.
I do believe that you have drives from earlier days as those where better then current spinning disks. I do have a couple of 7 year old MAXTOR 80GB SATA-II drives that are still running in my NAS 24/7 but I also have 500GB WD drives that failed after 14month. I find that newer higher capacity spinning disks are no longer as reliable as in previous years. You certainly can buy Enterprise level HDD but those are expensive too.
SSDs have come a long way in a short time and will improve even further. This discussion about SSDs is about as good as the Mac vs PC discussion. The only difference is that over time mechanical drives will be gone for the main stream and SSD will be the standard. By the way, I still have my very first SSD, a RIDATA 120GB in my laptop. I bought in 2008 and it is still running fine.