That is because Vegas is rendering each frame from the raw images you have. Even if they are static (no pan/crop) it still takes a while to create the DV frames for each one. It takes a lot longer if you are using high-res images also.

When you do native DV editing then rendering can be MUCH faster (especially if you are doing a cuts-only type of edit where the original DV frames are simply copied... as there is NO rendering involved).

I usually make them with PNGs, and this one is jpgs, could that be the issue? I have never had this long of renders when using png, even on longer runs

What's your CPU? I've got an Athlon XP 1800 & it takes up to several hours to render a 2-3 minute photo montage. I just render it to DV AVI before I do mpeg. Then the AVI to mpeg takes relatively little time (you are rendering to mpeg, right).

You might say "but that's double rendering!" Yes, it is. BUT.. if a mpeg render gets cancled i;m up the creek w/o a boat. If I render to DV AVI & it gets canceled, then I just plop the renderd part on a track above & render the part that didn't get rendered. When done, I piece them together.

I would try a couple of things:

1) Make sure you are on 5.0b

2) Render the 3D stuff as a separate project. Then create a new project with this 3D section already rendered and add the pictures.

I think this is part of a bug that is occuring with 3D projects, hence my recommendation to render the 3D stuff to a new track, then delete the 3D tracks.

HappyFriar: how do you use the part that's been rendered when the render is cancelled? For me, when a render is cancelled, the output file that has been created up to that point is unusable. Vegas won't open it and i can't play it in MediaPlayer.

Spot, what is the "bug" with 3D projects? I'd really like to know - doing a bit of 3d now and would appreciate the heads up?

Grazie

You sure? I just threw some DV on the timeline, ran an effect (so i ttakes a few seconds to render) then rendered that to a DV AVI file & cancled it 25% in. I then could drag/drop that AVI onto the timeline.

I'm using V4. Maybe it's something with V5?

I am getting into photo montages slowly as an add-on to my wife's standard wedding photography packages. My first montage was completed a few weeks back but yes- the render took over 7 hours for a 10 minute presentation.

Then I picked up a copy of Canopus Imaginate. Holy crap! Just as a test - I took a segment (about a third say 3:00 minutes worth) of raw photo elements from my "Vegas" montage project and dropped them into Imaginate. I used one of theCanopus templates for the motion onscreen and set this segment to render to Microsoft DV format....the whole thing took about 9 minutes tops - and the output was outstanding. I was able to take this segment and just drop it right into the Vegas timeline with no problem. Canopus Imaginate has cut my production time down by hours!

So why does Imaginate just burn through this stuff for it's render (same photos with much better movement then I could ever do manually keyframing in Vegas) while Vegas just grinds away for hours?

Cuzin B

On a PIII 750MHz, mine is more like 2 hours for a 10 minute slideshow. However, this is with NO 3D tracks. but it DOES have every picture moving using Pan/Crop. If the images were static, it shouldn't take over about 10 minutes. I think the 3D stuff is what is causing your speed problems.

Jetdv,

What format are you rendering to? An MPEG2 render of my recent 10 minute montage (For DVDA 2) took about 5 hours and an AVI of same took well over 3 hours. No 3D...no sound (rendered audio separately)...and every photo moving via keyframing using Pan/Crop. My source was 300dpi JPEG for each image. I rendered to a separate drive from my work drive using a P4 3.2 GHZ Intel with 1GB of RAM....

Imaginate did the same render to Microsoft DV format in 20ish minutes on my 2.6 GHZ office machine...same source material...

Do I have something sadly configured wrong or what? Is my graphic format lame..should I use PNG? Any tips would help sinc

Cuzin B

I do quite a few of these (famlymentaries). Most are 30 minutes in length with right at 200 800x600 avg. PNGs with Pan/Crop movement and crossfades on every one and at least a Credit Roll at the end. No color correction, unsharp mask etc., I do all that in Photoshop.

I render to Mpeq 2 (DVDA template) with Vegas 4 on my 550 MHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM machine and it's right at 17 hrs. consistently.

MJ

DV-AVI. The process is MUCH faster on my PIV-2.8GHz laptop.

Upon re-reading the original thread, the time should have been VERY minimal as the images were not moving. For non-moving pictures, I wouldn't be surprised with a render time of under 30 minutes. I'd still like to hear the results without the 3D track and/or with 5.0b.

Cuzin,

You'll love Imaginate. I've been burning through some incredible montages with it. If you don't have the 2.0 upgrade, invest in it. Truly wonderful and fast. I did a 35 photo montage. each photo onscreen for about 8 seconds, with 2D and 3D camera moves (and fades) last night and I think it took about 4 minutes to render. I'll time it again tonight and see if that figure is correct.

You can then take the rendered AVI into another app to add fancy stuff like lens flare, etc.

I also love the uncompressed with alpha AVIs it produces, I just finished a cartoon style opening for a video that used Imaginate to move the cartoon characters around the way I wanted them to move, saved out the uncompressed avi with alpha, and keyed it over the video background in Edius (or Vegas) to complete the effect. It renders incredibly fast!

I don't see the render-time differences, at least with an informal experiment.
I downloaded the Imaginate demo, and did a 25-second video made up of half a dozen jpegs. Interesting effects & all, automatically produced by Imaginate.

Then I constructed more or less the same thing in Vegas, using Pan/Crop and lots of Keyframing, etc.
Vegas and Imaginate took the same amount of time to render the result (about 1-3/4 minutes). I don't quite get the appeal of Imaginate -- unless it's the ability to bring in a whole batch of images at once and let the software time them and apply effects automatically? That would be a time-savings, compared to creating the effects in Vegas "by hand" -- but the render-time (which is the issue of this thread) seems about the same.
Hmmmm...
Ernie

Plasma,

I love it already! And I did pick up V 2.0. It really kicks ass on taking the tedium out of creating these montages vs keyframing each picture in Vegas. But I really couldn't believe the rendering time this program saves.

I will also look into the alpha channel as well...this would be killer for some upcoming projects.

Earthrisers (Ernie),

"I don't see the render-time differences, at least with an informal experiment.
I downloaded the Imaginate demo, and did a 25-second video made up of half a dozen jpegs. Interesting effects & all, automatically produced by Imaginate."

25 second videos is not a real comparison but I can confirm without a doubt that my 10 minute presentation with 115 images takes a good 6 hours in Vegas 5.0....granted - this was my first montage project but I was astounded with the render time this takes. 6 hours is annoying when time is tight. Imaginate does exactly the same thing with images (much better IMHO than individually keyframing each image in Vegas) and cuts the time to assemble by at least 90%. Granted - Imaginate does make certain movement choices to the images that may need to be slightly corrected - but on the whole - this app does a wicked job when time is tight. Then comes the render...sorry but Imaginate simply blows Vegas out the water in speed. I simply couldn't believe it.

"I don't quite get the appeal of Imaginate -- unless it's the ability to bring in a whole batch of images at once and let the software time them and apply effects automatically? That would be a time-savings, compared to creating the effects in Vegas "by hand" -- but the render-time (which is the issue of this thread) seems about the same.

This is exactly what Imaginate does. Grab like 50 or 100 images and let Imaginate do ALL the work laying it out...In my first go-round with Imaginate - in about 6 minutes I had a totally usable montage...another 3-6 minutes to make minor image corrections and then about 15 minutes to render it out...totally ready for playback - total time was like a half hour...

By comparison - my Vegas project montage probably took me 8 hours - NOT counting the rendering...this was my first shot at montage work in Vegas and I will get much faster at it...but manually keyframing each element and constantly making corrections takes a ton of time.

Hey CuzinB & other Imaginate fans...

You've convinced me about the time-savings with Imaginate, for creating photomontages with lots and lots of images.
I tend to do shorter ones (50 or fewer images), and even more frequently I insert a small handful of images between full-motion video clips in a given "movie". Vegas (plus the Neon and Excalibur scripts) does perfectly well for these.
If Imaginate cost about $60, I'd buy it in a minute, but at $170 (at the current Special rate), I'm putting it instead in my category "Keep this in mind if I ever take on a project that needs LOTS of photo-montaging."
Could happen...

Ernie

Regarding Imaginate...

Can you create your own "templates". Sort of like saving keyframes or persets in vegas?

That would be killer to be able to save your own treaments in Imaginate!

Vegas will always be my finishing tool but tools like Bluff, Boris and possibly this are sometimes the right tool for the right job.

-Jason

Ernie,

Glad to help out. I really want to reinforce that Imaginate "in concert" with Vegas 5.0 - makes for a killer toolkit to let me launch photo montages as a new product for my media company.

I would not rely on Imaginate for any audio or any of the hundreds of other cool things that Vegas can do. But for time savings in initial image layout and especially rendering these pieces - Imaginate really shines. And ya know - even just letting the Imaginate templates apply initial movement to my images seems to be smoother and much more professional than I could ever do by spending hours trying to keyframe each image "by hand". Maybe I will get better in time :)

jsteehl,

"Can you create your own "templates". Sort of like saving keyframes or persets in vegas?"

Haven't got that far yet (just started with this app) but it's probably possible. Mind out - there is enough variety for me so far in what's supplied to satisfy all my montage needs....

Cheers,

Cuzin B

CUzinB, are you stating that Imaginate generates a meg2 file in " 15 minutes to render it out...totally ready for playback - total time was like a half hour..." vs vegas5 6 hrs rendering?

AJP

In my first test (on my secondary machine - 2.53GHZ Intel P4 ) - I rendered an 816MB file in Imaginate (using Microsoft DV codec) in just under 7 minutes. This test contained 40 images (300 dpi JPEGs - about a third of the raw material from my original project) complete with a wide variety of movement and dissolves between each image. WAYYYY more movement than I feebly attempted manually with my original Vegas project.

Trust me - I wouldn't be frothing over about this if it was not a huge deal. My complete (10:13) montage project rendered in Vegas 5.0 using the DVDA2 template to MPEG2 containing 120 images with very basic (I am just starting out here!) Pan/Zoom/Keyframing about every third image resulting in a all-nighter 6 hour plus rendering time.

If I do the math on this - I would think I would be able to render my original material in Imaginate in around 20 minutes or so.....but remember that my test of that first third was done with ALL images with pan/zoom/movement...my final Vegas project only had movement on every second or third image. If I replicated this in Imaginate (activate movement on every second or third image), I believe the Imaginate render would be even faster than it already is....

I will definitely load up the entire original Vegas project material in Imaginate tonight and do some accurate timings and report back.

Cheers,

Cuzin B

Cuzin B,

" I rendered an 816MB file in Imaginate (using Microsoft DV codec) in just under 7 minutes...

My complete (10:13) montage project rendered in Vegas 5.0 using the DVDA2 template to MPEG2 containing 120 images with very basic (I am just starting out here!) Pan/Zoom/Keyframing about every third image resulting in a all-nighter 6 hour plus rendering time."

Just to be clear. In your Imaginate test you went to compress AVI. In your V5 test you went to MPG2. That is not an apples to apples. With that said Imaginate does seem to be faster, exactly how much is still fuzzy.

I have played with Imaginate 1.0 and did not see much value back then (plus I'm doing more photo-M's now). I played with 2.0 for a couple hours today and can see a possible workflow that might justify the $180 price tag.

Bring in the photo in to IM. Bring in audio (for reference). Layout timings, p/c, 3d etc to music.

Render out to AVI.

Bring into V5 and finish using V5 tools. For instance. I did a PM that used the White Flash effect going from one pic to the next. Very powerful for this piece. You can do that in IM. Also, stuff with SpiceMaster is also very powerful.

If IM saves me even 2-5 hours in my rendering time (or workflow if the templates are usable to me) then it is well worth the $$.

-Jason