I'll try that, I hope thats the case because I love the look and feel of the new Vegas

Don't set Dynamic RAM preview value to zero- renders will typically be a lot slower. In general the default # is going to give you best render-time results.

CTRL+shift+restart Vegas to restore all settings to their default values. Dynamic RAM value default sniffs your machine and sets up a value based on available RAM.

So the question is, I have it set up with Default settings. Surely there is another fix here, I cant live with full day or two renders

What avi codecs are you using?

I thought one of the features of V7 was fast rendering. I have just upgraded to V7 and did render a short item and was surprised at how long it took.

Just standard NTSC DV, But I get the same render times when I render to the Mainconcept MPG2.

I was just getting ready to post a question concerning render times.

I have a P4 Hyperthreaded 3.0 processor with 1 GB SDRAM. I'm using the default settings in Vegas 6 and 7.

I have a 27 minute video to which I added 1 level of color correction and a Sony Sharpening filter. I then rendered to an mpg file using the MC DVDA spec mpeg 2 renderer.

The render took over 3 hours.

I used the same file in Canopus Edius, applied the equivalent color correction and sharpening filters, and the render using Procoder Express took 28 minutes!

To my eye and to a waveform monitor, there is no difference in the 2 final renders. This is something that I've noticed ongoing in Vegas vs the Canopus software. I'm wondering why such a dramatic difference and how I might improve render times in Vegas. I've tried experimenting with different settings in Vegas with no appreciable difference in render performance, yet I've seen posts from others on this forum who talk about very quick renders. I love Vegas from a creative standpoint, but these render times are really bothersome. I don't know if I've been missing something obvious for the last several years, or if there is something I need to address in the computer, but I do need to find an answer to this.

I have found absolutely no difference in render times betwen V6 and V7 in any scenario so far.

Any words of wisdom would be appreciated. I've tried many suggestions from other posts on this forum, but perhaps I've missed something obvious. The original file was captured using a Canopus Storm card and the Canopus DV CODEC. I have tried using the trick mentioned by others to change the DV wrapper info to make the file appear to Vegas as a Vegas CODEC file. This changes the preview in Vegas to really smoke with no frame recompression, but does nothing for render times. Is the problem possibly related to the original file due to the Canopus CODEC? My next step is to try capturing some DV video with Vegas and trying the same render, but the Storm card does such a great job of capturing either analog or DV video that I'm hoping to resolve the issue (if there is a resolution) to the slow renders in Vegas.

TIA

Tom

I've never tried Canopus Edius, but it sure seems to have a great reputation, rendering-wise. I'm guessing the Canopus codec is does have an advantage for rendering on your system.

Before getting Vegas 7 and a new Core 2 Duo computer, I was using Vegas 5 and a 3 year old AMD processor/HP setup. The newer setup smokes the previous one, as you might expect. But the combo of V7/C2D is quite impressive. I imagine it still doesn't come close the the Edius render times, but for me it's a big improvement.

plasma,

"have found absolutely no difference in render times betwen V6 and V7 in any scenario so far."

I have no measurable difference in render speeds in V7 either. V7 however has greatly improved preview speed, that is it's strength.

Render times have so many factors involved from one machine and one timeline to the next. I have best render speed with 0 Dynamic RAM, Forum Admin says to never set it to that value. Other people have the fastest renders when Dynamic RAM is set to 64, where I find that is my worst setting. Add in multiple disk drives, RAID/non-RAID, HDV/DV, 512K RAM/4GB RAM, IDE/SATA, favorite obscure effect settings, Best/Good, and you end up with no guidelines. I think you have to experiment to find what's best for your unique project, your workflow, and your tolerance for quality.

I had a 1 minute timeline that took 32 hours to render. Was I mad? No. But I researched what I had done to fine more efficient results the next time.

Dave, for regular DV I see no difference in Preview either (between 6 and 7). With the 2 filters applied in either 6 or 7, the preview drops to around 6 fps at full quality. The ratio of 29.97 to 6 fps in preview is about the same as the 3 hour render vs 30 minute (source file time) render of DV file to mpg2 (with filters), so it looks like if I can find something that makes a difference in the preview performance I might see an equivalent difference in render times. Just an extrapolated guess, but worth noting for something further to play with.

I concede that there may be a quality difference between how Vegas and Edius apply effects to a file. In some DVE type effects, there is a difference in the anti-aliasing and edge smoothing between the two, with Vegas noticably better, but I do not see the difference in standard video, and color correction or sharpen are not in the DVE realm.

Perhaps for this example, the implementation of the "Sharpen" filter is different in Vegas and Edius, but I've noticed somewhat equally divergent preview and render times for other filters.

I'm going to really investigate this as time permits.

Could someone else try a basic CC filter and Sharpen on a short clip and see what the preview and render performance is like?

EDIT: On a file that has no effects, a 30 second DV file captured in Vegas renders to MPG2 in about 50 seconds in Vegas. In Edius, the render is realtime or better at 27 seconds, so there is a diference even before filters are applied.

I just rendered a 1:00 video clip with a CC filter (Color Curves/Warm Colors) and Light Sharpen: took 1 minute, 36 seconds

The same clip with Glow/White Highlights (always the longest render times for me) and Light Sharpen: took 4:33

Using V7 - C2D

edited to add that these times are the same for renders to avi and mpg2 (within 5 seconds)

Hmm - that one minute clip will take about 6 minutes on my system based on my earlier tests on my P4 3 G processor. That's a LOT longer than your times, so I wonder what the difference might be.

I'm guessing the Core 2 Duo is the difference, although it should only be about 30% faster, according to what I've read. I have 2 GB's of RAM

OK - last test before nighty-nite.

Capture :30 clip in Vegas. No filters or effects. Render as mpg2 OR DV. Use same file for tests in all programs:

Vegas 6 or 7 1 minute plus.

Edius 30 seconds

Premiere Elements 30 seconds
Premiere 6.5 30 seconds

All times approx, but Vegas takes twice as long with no mods to the video file! - even to merely re-render as DV.

All times approx, but Vegas takes twice as long with no mods to the video file! - even to merely re-render as DV.

If you're going from DV-AVI to DV-AVI with NO changes, there should be NO rendering at all - it simply COPIES the file which is much faster than real time. Can you reset Vegas and try again? (CTRL-Shift while starting Vegas)

Make sure you have the project properties set to the same format as your project. If you had the project properties set to one of the HD profiles, you would extend your render times orders of magnitude.

An easy way to tell if Vegas is smartrendering is to watch the preivew window. It only shows the parts that are rendered. If you are smartrendering to DV clips with a fade in, a crossfade and a fadeout, what you'll see in the preview window is the fade in, nothing, the crossfade, nothing, then the fade out. If you are watching the whole video, either you have some process applied or you are doing something wrong.

Ed,

That's what has me puzzled, and it's acting the same on both 6 and 7 on this computer. I have looked for "hidden" envelopes or effects but can find nothing. It should just copy DV/DV at realtime or better, but it acts as if it's rendering. The mpg encoding is painfully slow as well.

I think I'm going to install 7 on another virtually identical (hardware-wise) computer tomorrow and see if it behaves the same way. That computer has no capture device other than firewire. Even if there were some kind of hardware conflicts, you would think that going from the timeline to a straight DV file would not be affected, especially since it is not happening in other programs. I'm saving to an external SATA G-Raid, but that's what I use for all of my video with the other programs.

Laurence, thanks for the suggestions. I'll carefully check everything.

It'll be something obvious I missed once I find it, I'm sure.

Also, make sure no effx are applied to the VIDEO OUTPUT FX button. The on next to the video preview screen.

Dave T2

When you go to mpeg it always encodes everything. What smart-rendering helps with is DV to DV or Cineform to Cineform (as long as you check the 'smartrendering' tab when capturing or converting the Cineform).