Vegas sees your HT processor as two CPUs, so if there's not too much complicated Audio rendering to do, it's just using both Units alternately, showing as 50%. With a P4 2.4 (533Mhz FSB) without HT I have 97% CPU usage for Vegas. Rest of the System doesn't crash but is a bit reluctant to respond.

With a P4 and a 1133 FSB (due to overclocking) and 1 GB RAM ,Vegas only uses about 47% of available CPU cycles. That's good... not bad as some people may think.

Your system is sluggish because at a relatively slow FSB frequency the CPU is straining to keep up. At higher frequencies... possible with faster CPU's set at ultra high FSB frequencies Windows is moving data between the memory and CPU much faster... resulting in having plenty of horsepower left over to do other processes.

That's why the future looks good for software based rendering. Fast forward to a couple years from now should be approaching 5 GHz CPU speeds with super fast FSB. That should push rendering times to close to real time. I routinely beat "real time" now in converting a AVI to MPEG-2. A 40 minute file typically takes on the order of just 37 minutes to render IF you start a new project with the file "rendered" off the timeline as a completed DV AVI using it as the "source" the render the MPEG. As I've said other times, if you do multiple file type renderes, ALWAYS start a new project with the file just rendered if you're needed a render to a different file type. Otherwise you force Vegas to grind through all the caculations it already did in the first render you just completed which will take much longer... all wasted effort.

O..Ok...got it now.

Thanks.

Vegas doesn't really make much use of double CPUs, and it obviously doesn't use HT Processors the way it could. Even with a 1133 FSB, it would render still faster if it could use more of your overclocked cpu. It just shows that the bottleneck lies somewhere else, not in the CPU. I usually render with vegas priority set to low, so the system is still responsive for other tasks and vegas takes all the CPU it can get when otherwise idle, that's up to 99%.

Hi, new to using VV4, have read reviews about cards such as Matrox RT100x, and Pinnacle ProOne RTDV, would adding one of this card help to speed up the rendering work of VV4??

Thks..

KW Wong

I have an AMD 1800 XP, and Vegas sometime renders using 99% CPU, and others only about 80%. I'm not doing anything else at the same time: the Ssytem Idel proces is using the extra %. I've found that wierd. But, nomatter what it says, i've never had a problem running other programs at the same time (another copy of Vegas, Acid, Quake 3.. :) ) Vegas seems to give the CPU up relatively easly. I've even set the priority to real time and vegas STILL only uses 80% some of the time. Wierd.

Those real time cards won't help Vegas a bit. They are usually for Premiere or their own custom NLE. I've found that Vegas is better then the RT cards. I prefer to use Vegas over the Premiere with Matrox rt2500 at work any day. :)

Thks for the reply.....

I'll be more specific.

I've just completed a 5min video clip. and for experimentation sake, I've added a a track border FX and numerous clip FXs along the way, mostly borders, some lens flare, pan-zooming of some clips.

When I render the completed work it to a .avi file, it took a full 2hrs, I need the .avi file to do some fx in other NLE package. Although a render to a standard NTSC template fps29.9, 720x480 mpeg1 would be much faster at about 30min.

Question1: would the Matrox card you've mentioned help to reduce the 2hours .avi rendering time or not at all ?!

Question2: would frequent pre-rendering of the partly completed work help to reduce the final rendering time to .avi?

Question3: I've tried to used several mpeg1 encoding, including VV4's own internal engin, TMPGEn and Aare AVI to VCD/SVCD/DVD convertor 3.0, the latter was extremely efficient, the conversion ratio was almost like 1.2:1, much more efficient than VV4 and TMPGEn's 5:1. The output quality for Aare's software is quite good too. Any comments.

p.s: my PC specs are Celeron 1G, 512M, 40G+80G (7200rpm) HDD, an entry level EZDV IEEE1394 video capture card.

Rgds

KW Wong

#1 NOT AT ALL. Rending is CPU intensive. How much RAM you have or the type of video card or how much RAM it has are all negligible.

#2 Nope. At some point you got to render. Prerending isn't going to save even a second. The only practical advantge is you'll see a "rendered" portion sooner.

#3 TMPGEnc IS better at rendering MPEG-1. Why? Because from the beginning Vegas was designed to do MPEG-2. So while it can do MPEG-1, the rendering of same isn't that great.

thanks...

Billy Boy...just a quick point. Prerendering does allow you to see the rendered version "as you go", which can be helpful (if you have the time)- but it does speed up the final "render as" since it is pointed to the pre-render folder. Rendering to a finished file with all pre-rendered files will fly! True, you spent the time earlier, so the net result is null- I just wanted to make that point for others who may have not understood...
Thanks Billy Boy- we all appreciate your input in this forum! Your kinda like "The Big Brother"!!! Hope you don't mind the tag :)
Mike