Time to render PAL DV - please comment

sqblz wrote on 3/4/2002, 6:11 AM
Yesterday I finished a render to PAL DV of a 57-min VV3 project. The render last for 12 hours 3 minutes.
I would like you to comment this and share your own experiences. What can be done to minimize this render time ?
My Hardware specs:
- Duron 800 o'clocked at 1000. Mboard ASUS A7V. 512 MB RAM 133 MHz.
- Operating System Windows 98-SE in one disk (ATA-66, 7200rpm, 17GB) disk. VV3 and Swap File (variable 6GB) in a second disk (ATA-66, 7200rpm, 30GB). Captured video, working files and VV3 job in a third disk (ATA-100 10000rpm, 30GB). Output in a forth disk (ATA-100 10000rpm, 40GB). All disks DMA-enabled. All partitions defragmented. - No background jobs (applied EndItAll), no wallpaper. System reports 81% resources free before job start (using RamBooster). All the other performance tweaks that I know are applied.
- all other things maybe irrelevant (TNT2 Ultra, SB Live, ...)
My project specs (all approximate):
- Length 57 min. Size of .veg file 900k.
- PAL DV and stereo sound.
- Source from PAL DV stereo, captured with Vegas Capture 3. About 350 avi files of different sizes (depending on content). Source and output same specs.
- One major video track plus 2 video overlay tracks (for titles, etc.)
- One audio track and one music track.
- Transitions are: ~100 cuts, ~150 fades/crossfades, ~70 simple transitions (wipe, iris, pixelan, ...) ~15 complicated transitions (border effects, spiral, ...).
- 100 virtual files (titles, backgrounds, captions).
- 2 scrolling titles.
- 10 pan & scan effects, 10 track-motion effects.
- 10 video FX's applied to events, simple (brightness, color curves, ...). One or two complicated (chromakey).
- 20 events with velocity envelopes, resampled and with interlace filter.
- Zero composite effects (I'm still learning).
- Zero track FX's.
- No effects applied to audio tracks, besides the 3 standard effects and a global volume envelope. All equalizing, cut/paste, etc. applied externally (Cool Edit 2000) and re-imported as second take.
- No sound busses.
- All sound files have fades or crossfades applied.
- I have confirmed that all the weight is due to video processes, the audio doesn't put almost any influence in the render time.

Comments

SonyEPM wrote on 3/4/2002, 8:59 AM
It is really hard to say whether or not this is an abnormally long render time- from the sound of it, you are doing close to an hour long show with some kind of fx processing on every frame. Those fx can really make the render time pile up.

Rendering time is about 2 secs per frame if my math is right (anybody care to double check?). That doesn't sound too terrible when you break it down to a small time increment like secs/frame, but obviously 12 hours is a long time to wait.

If you are doing this kind of work regularly, a faster machine might be in order.
sqblz wrote on 3/4/2002, 9:35 AM
Thanks.
It's true that a faster machine could be in order.
But then again, if I had a faster machine (2GHz) it would render in 7 hours instead of 12. And that would mean the same to me: OVERNIGHT.
Now, I put VV3 to work and go to bed. Next day at lunchtime is ready. And what REALLY matters is that VV3 doesn't hang the machine :-) So far it has been rock solid !
PeterMac wrote on 3/4/2002, 9:43 AM
If you really want to learn first-hand what Einstein meant by time dilation and relativity, try doing the same rendering using Tmpgenc with all the quality options turned up to loud.
The next time you see your program will be when someone contacts you over a ouija board.

-Pete
sqblz wrote on 3/5/2002, 3:24 AM
I can reply to that.
What I do in VV3 I can't do in TMPGenc, because I am using VV3 to build my project. The problem is that I must output it somehow, PAL DV seems to me the "lightest" approach (doesn't compress much) and I export it to DV tape. But it takes 12 hours.
After that, I go for the MPEG (videoCD). And that, I don't rely to VV3 (I really, really, don't amaze with MainConcept so far). If I would use VV3 it would take me, say, 12+6 hours ... for a so-so result.
So, *for that*, I go to TMPGenc. You wanna know ? The whole thing (57min PAL DV avi, about 18GB) takes 4 hours to encode. Crisp clear !!!
As another user said in another post, SoFo should licence and include the TMPGenc codec inside VV.
Or, as *I* said "TMPGenc is nice, but what I really want to learn is making VV3 MPEG work flawlessly. It cost extra money, so it better be good."

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Oh yeah, just a small question: VV3 makes 4 avi files as output of my project (3 files of 4GB plus the remainder). And TMPGenc makes one MPEG of each AVI, and later it can merge all the 4 MPEGs together into one 57-min MPEG. But it has a small problem: a small sound glitch in the beginning (end?) of each file, that annoys me in the final output. And it doesn't go away if I chop one frame from each file - and then, my video jumps :-(.
Does anybody know how can I overcome this (without leaving TMPGenc ?)
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