SVCD render times?

newbie123 wrote on 5/17/2003, 12:38 PM
please forgive me if this has been asked a million times already, but i did a search for svcd render time, and didn't come up with much.

my question, as per the subject name, is what is considered a normal render time for a two hour video. i have an old vhs tape of a family movie that is just under 2hrs. put it into vv cleaned it up and now want to render it out to svcd. i did not add any transitions or anything like that, just cut some scenes out at the beginning and the end.

if anyone can give me their experience with close to 2hr clip.

specifically type of systems you have with your render times. i am going to buy a new system shortly and would like to see where those economies of scale tapper off.

i am using a celeron 433, on a 66mhz fsb with 160? 128+32, megs of ram. The clock is running at 66mhz because of the celeron. my render time is in the realm of 36hrs!

i have a second system, that's why i can write this post so i am not too bothered, but crap, that's a long time.

any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks

dgg in ottawa

Comments

BillyBoy wrote on 5/17/2003, 12:51 PM
For rendering, regardless what format, the biggest impovement comes from increasing the power of your CPU. While it isn't linear, a CPU running at 2 Ghz should render in rougly half the time as as CPU running at 1 Ghz. The less you change your project, the more likely it is to render faster. So what you do with your project effects rendering, sometime dramatically. For example adding a second or third audio track, doesn't increase render times that much. Neither does adding most FX filters, with the exception of a few, which can really slow things down, like an unsharpen filter which really has to do a lot of work. What I'm trying to say is there is no real formula to say if you have such and such PC and do X, Y, Z it will take N minutes to render. Each project is different. While file format you render to, how high the birtrate, if or not you change frame size, use good or best rendering options etc., etc. all factor into it as does transcoding from say AVI to MPEG.
way2slo wrote on 5/17/2003, 1:00 PM
i have a P4 2.0, it took me around 2- 2 1/2 hrs to render 1 hour avi>svcd with a little transition and edit.
i wont be suprised if it takes 36 hrs to render 2hr avi>svcd with your celeron 433.
celeron 433 = P2 200 approximately, you can easily calculate the rendering time using a celeron 433.


newbie123 wrote on 5/17/2003, 1:11 PM
thanks for the replies. i was mostly concerned that something wasn't being done right and the time was way off. but your posts do help a lot. i haven't decided on the new system yet but it will be at least a 2.4 or 2.6 with the new 800fsb. hopefully i won't have to go wait two days for the renders at that point.

thanks for the quick answers.

back to the beautiful outdoors here in ottawa.

dgg
way2slo wrote on 5/17/2003, 2:09 PM
Happy Victoria Day
Vancouver here :)

watson wrote on 5/17/2003, 2:30 PM
I think you are better off rendering in 20min sections on the T.L or separate the projects and re-combine after renders.
Why?
Because if something needs to be fixed your going to be a little annoyed at a wholsale re-rendering of such a long project.
my two pennies,
W
kameronj wrote on 5/17/2003, 4:24 PM
I agree that breaking the job up to smaller renders is the way to go. The advice from Watson was very elementary.

(Sorry...couldn't resist that one).

Although I have done 1 hr plus renders (am doing one now for the 5th time)...it is a pain in the arse to have it take 3 hours to render something - only to find a mistake and have to do the whole thing over again.

If it is two hours - I would render to 4 1/2 bits. Then either just have multiple files run on the VCD disk or combine the jobs when you are done into one project.

newbie123 wrote on 5/17/2003, 8:25 PM
thanks for the ideas, breaking the render up is a great idea, but how / what do i need in order to put the rendered files together? can i just put them in vv and burn? is that possible? or is there some software i need to get. i have heard and seen software called tmpeg (sp?) will that do the trick?

given the choice i would rather not burn the rendered files as seperate files. if there is any way to put them together seamlesly after i render them, i am all ears.

(back from the great outdoors with a sunburn but a great day nonetheless. only 11hrs lest on the render.)

dgg in ottawa
filmy wrote on 5/17/2003, 9:06 PM
TMPEnc does not burn but it will stitch your files together for into one file. You can also try a program called MPEG-VCR (put out by Womble Multimedia, Inc.) that does some nice stream altering without re-encoding. Before VV4.0b I had to use MPEG-VCR to convert a HD Mpg stream to a "dvd" Mpg stream so I could import it for edit. MPEG-VCR can also edit files together.

As for the actual burning - obviously VV + DVD can do it. Also Nero burns DVD's and alows for mutiple file import (Just don't use it to encode the results always seem to suck) and you could also try Sonic Solutions DVDIt!. But as you already have VV I would say try out at least DVD Architect first.

And I agree with the multi file render because 'one size does not fit all' will apply. A fast action scene will/should have slightly different settings than a slow walk in the park. Talking heads for sure need something different than a whip pan and zoom down a feeway. The basic settings in almost every program are just that - basic settings.
kameronj wrote on 5/17/2003, 9:36 PM
Well, what I did for my X-Men Movie is made each scence it's own VV instance. Then Rendered that scene. And moved on to scence two...then rendered...and so on and so on.

Then when I got it all done - I opened up a new instance of VV and imported the X-amount of clips I rendered (I think like 6) and layed them out in the timeline, put in a few transitions between them and .... whala .... done.

Now I rendered this one to one file. But then found out that I had a problem in the second scene. No problem...just went back to the original file that I made the scene...made changes and re-rendered using the same name as before. SInce it over wrote the previous file...I didn't hae to do anything in the final project except re-render that one again.

Then, of course, I wasn't happy with scence 5...so I was at it again. This keeps going until I get dragged away from my 'puter cause without me realizing it I had been there for 5 days straight - not eating, just drinking coffie, and every now and then I say something like "I'll be done in a minute."

I'm sure that is a lot better way to render final final final final so as to not have to go through 12 re-rendering cycles...but finding that out is half the fun.