I'm doing a print-to-tape of an eleven minute video - my manual says when doing print to tape, by default, an avi file is created before sending it to the DV recorder. Are there faster encoding schemes that can be used then convert them to AVI. Print-to-tape says it must always use an AVI file.

Unfortunately, there are MANY things you could have done that causes the render time to increase. How about posting the VEG file and lettings some of us have a look at it? We might find some unnecessary things that are causing the render time to increase.

1> Make sure your PTT template is set for a DV pre-set *AND* the preset is the same as your project's media. (IE: If you have media that is set for 'upper frame' but a PTT template set for 'lower frame' or 'none' the media will render to conform to the output template)

2> Any audio will always render out to *.w64 format for PTT no matter what.

3> In general things such as re-sizing video will take longer to render than simple effects and/or cuts only. Also you may have media set to "always resample" and that will take longer to render even if there are not any filters or effects.

4> Just as a side note VV does take a longer time to render/re-render compared to, say, Premiere. There is a review of VV 4 in the new "emedia" (overall a really, really positive review mind you) and they have a little side bar of a test they did. A 20 second clip with blue screen took 45 seconds to render in Premiere and 1:58 in VV 4. A spining logo took 1:08 in Premiere and 2:50 in VV 4. Using the above effects and and also one image pan they did a PTT of 1 minute project - Premiere took 2:30 to do it and VV took 3:58. So as you seem to have more tracks and a bit more complex effect going on it could just be the render time is normal.

Or you can just do what probably all the rest of us do, just let the thing render overnight while you are sleeping and then you won't have as much "wasted time" when you could be using your computer for other things.

Thanks - I do recall, the time differential to render increased once I resized the video.

One other tip: I have a 15 second long intro clip that typically takes about 1 hour to render (it's loaded with high-resolution stills, track motion, effects, etc...). I recently added motion blur and supersampling (which I knew would significantly increase the rendering time), set it up to render overnight, and 13 hours later...39% done! I have an average system (P4 1.6, 1GB RAM), but was a little shocked to say the least.

However, the problem was mine - I have an Alias-Wavefront liquid effects screen saver set up to come on at 90 minutes; I tested it afterwards - it hogs >90% of my computer's CPU power! Ooops! So from then on, no screen saver (I turn off my monitor while rendering to prevent burn-in).

Cheers,
Kevin.

Dang, that must be some screensaver!!

Resizing Video adds quite a bit to the rendering time. Right now I am doing a 4 minute video with 4 layers of video showing simultaneously on 4 mini-screens. In the middle is a rotating text GIF made with XARA3D and the background is a Motionback AVI file. That's 6 complex objects plus several of the video tracks have adjusted velocities.

My rendering time on a 2.53Ghz P4 is 6 hours! Hee hee. 6 hours for 4 minutes of video! Of course, I am rendering at "BEST" quality because of the resized frames.

Out of interest could the shorter times for Premier be due to a possible inferior algorithm resulting in a slightly inferior result? Never longer used Premier.

Got to be the most asked question.

Things that slow down rendering in no particular order and to varying degrees:

1. under powered CPU
2. not rebooting first (especially important for long projects...can cut off 10% rendering time or more).
3. resizing the source frame size
4. having one or more CPU cycle hog application running in the background
5. Windows being Windows like Windows Explorer starting up and hogging 90% CPU due a yet unfixed bug
6. Too many tracks, too many transitions, too many fancy effects
7. some FX filters are very slow. Like Median and unsharpen.
8. rendering at Best as opposed to Good. Probably adds at least 40-50% overhead without any real gain in quality

In additon to what Maverick said, don't forget to include TOTAL PROJECT time, not just rendering. If you use To Premier, it may render faster, but if you factor in the hangs, the stalls, the clumbiness of the interface, all the time fighting with it TOTAL times are pretty close.

Last night I did a final render for a client. A 6 1/2 minute video took 14.5 hours to render (P4, 2.4ghz, 1gig RAM, XP). Of course, it had 19 tracks of video, almost all resized, 4 tracks of text, all flying and zooming and blurring. And this was all over another video track that I pre-rendered last week that consisted of 5 video tracks sliding across the screen, another video track spinning with the the 3-D plugin, and another at half opacity and a cookie cutter in the middle. Good thing I pre-rendered that backplate, or it would still be rendering until tomorrow.

It might take a long time, but the final project looks excellent, and the client LOVED it, to the tune of a mid 5-figure price tag for two weeks of intense editing.

More than paid for Vegas......thousands of times over.

I just rendered a 15 minute video and it took 2 hours. I had a lot of filters, text, ect. Normally, it takes about double the time of the project to render. If it is 15 minutes, it normally takes 30 to render if there isn't alot of filters, ect. So to take 12 hours, there's something wrong there:(

Because there are so many variables, nobody can say doing project "X" will take "N" minutes to render. As I've said many times in other threads... Who gives a $#%## how long it takes to render? The point is Vegas brings a wealth of tools which makes it possible to do everything from simple editing to adding some very complex effects. Obviously the more you ask of Vegas the longer it is going to take to do the job. While everyone would like faster renders, I'm not about to give up any of the features to get it. I know other editing applications can do faster renders, but then again they're no Vegas.

I still don't understand why people put down what kind of monitor they have when they complain about render times. Like a 19" monitor should make your project render faster than a 15" monitor.

Maybe for the same reason people list their video card or specifics about Windows that has no relivance to the question. Probably because they don't know and are simply giving as much info as THEY think is helpful.

I think we should require past users of "P" to say so in their post since they REALLY need to unlearn bad habits they picked up before asking what some of us may consider "dumb" questions especially rants that begin like "P" does such and such this way, why doesen'tVegas.

Just kidding...

If you've already kicked the "P" habit, you already saw the light. It does take a little time to get up to speed using a superior editor.

I'd second that, BillyBoy!

I found Vegas very confusing at first but the learning curve - although a little steep - was a joy for two reasons really;

Firstly, whatever I did didn't seem to crash either the app or even W2K.

Secondly, everything I played with, eventually, after the help of this forum, did what I wanted it to do.

Maybe we should have a FAQ - or does one already exist?

There are several mini FAQ's (above under Support/knowledgebase) on the SoFo site for their various products. I had a FAQ on the web for HTML Authoring I wrote some years back, it was popular, but it got to be a pain to keep it current. I was toying with the idea of doing one for Vegas, but haven't. Maybe now that Sony bought SoFo with a major cash infusion they will expand their web site to include a lot more.

Hi, sorry not much help, I understood that it should take approx twice the lenghth of the project to render, I have just rendered a reasonably complex instruction video 58 Mins in length and the render time was 2 hrs 10 mins, so about right.