AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but here goes. Last night, I 'rendered' and burned to a DVD 3.5 hours of AVCHD (H.264) raw video, a 6.18GB file. The whole process took 1hr 39m. The actual video and audio 'rendering' took 1hr 20m, the remaining time was used by the system to prepare the DVD. I had done minimal, rudimentary editing a few fades, etc., and I let the machine use the default settings to burn the disc.

My question is, does this seem like a reasonable amount of time to elapse to 'render' a file that size. To me, it seemed pretty good for a home-built video/graphics platform.

Regards,

J.

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

That is really quick. How did your videos turn out?

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

What software did you use? I use Edius which will render in about half realtime on a Z68, i7 2600K QuickSync PC. So render times are about similar.

Ron Evans

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

Mike & Ron...thank you, I thought the performance was pretty good for a stand-alone work station. I use a home-built computer with Vegas Pro 11.0 (also VP 10.0) as my NLE. The components were listed on VideoGuys DIY 7 'Hot Rod'. If you want the complete list it on their website. A partial list of components used is:

Intel CORE i7 - 970, 3.2Ghz, Hex CORE CPU.
ASUS P6X58D-E MOBO.
Corsair matched 12GB RAM
VelociRaptor 600 GB, 10K rpm, boot disc.
nVidia Quadro 4000 GPU
G-RAID 2TB external storage

This is my set-up.

Regards,

J.

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

What settings did you use for Vegas 11 as on my machine Vegas 11 takes about 50% longer than realtime to render an AVCHD file.

My PC is Z68 Gigabyte board with i7 2600K, 8G RAM, GTX560, Win 7 64 bit Home Premium. 500G boot and temp drives, a RAID 0 of 2 T and 2 x 2T storage drives .

Ron Evans

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

Ron...I hate to be 'dense', but I used the 'default' settings, >Tools>Burn Disc>DVD, then let it run. It seems to have worked well.

J.

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

I think I misunderstood. I thought you were rendering AVCHD. Instead you made an SD DVD from AVCHD. In Vegas 11 on my PC that would be about 1.5 times realtime. So you are fast. Edius does the same file in about 25% of realtime. So for a 55 min file in Vegas11 it tells me 1 hour and 22 min and Edius tells me 17 mins. Both rendering the same format MPEG2 for SD DVD wide screen.

Ron Evans

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

Ron...I appreciate the feedback and I apologize for the confusion. I try to be precise with my descriptions, but this whole world is new to me.

"Instead you made an SD DVD from AVCHD."

Yes, I believe that's exactly what I did.

Regards,

J.

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

This encoding is very confusing and quality difference are real for different approaches. Have fun.

Ron Evans

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

Ron...I admit, it is confusing. I don't exactly know why I'm doing certain things, but the 'learning cure' is fun.

Thanks,

J.

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

My computer geek son just built me a new computer:

ASUS P8H67-V motherboard
Intel Core i7-2700 3.5 GHZ 4 core
8 GB DDR3 RAM
Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit
GeForce 220 video card
LG DVD RW 24x and LG DVD RW 22x burners
two hard drives-2TB Seagate and a 1.5 TB Seagate.

I currently have Pinnacle 12 on my computer and am looking forward to see how it performs with AVCHD source material/final product on my next project.

Mike

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

Not being a 'Computer Science' expert, however, while I was 'rendering' the 3.5-hrs of raw AVCHD video I kept an eye on my 'usage meters' gadget on my desktop. These are rudimentary 'speedometer' dials that represent CPU and RAM usage. Now, what was interesting is the CPU dial hardly even moved, but the 'RAM' dial moved to around 34% of total capacity and remained there during the entire 'render' process. I speculate that the amount of available RAM is a key factor in 'render' speed. Maybe someone with more computer knowledge could verify my 'projective surmise'. I'm considering increasing my total RAM to 24GB, I currently have 12GB of matched RAM. I also have a nVidia Quadro 4000 GPU which is a good professional-grade (albeit, low-end) video editing card. When I was doing my research for my computer build, I kept running into people who had used 'Gaming' GPUs and weren't getting the video editing performance they expected. When I asked a very knowledgeable person about this, he explained to me that the 'math' is different between a 'Gaming' GPU and a real professional video editing GPU. Simply put, the 'video editing GPU' is purpose-built for raw video that hasn't been processed (rendered) previously, whereas, a 'Gaming GPU' is made to display previously 'rendered' video, like a video Game. It sounded plausible to me, but what do I know. Heh, heh!

Regards,

J.

Re: AVCHD - rendering 3.5 hours of video
 

James (and anyone interested),

I use PowerDirector 10 ( a less expensive editor ) without using the GPU (it is available in PD10, but GPU rendering is not as good as that of a PC) on a slower PC than yours. PD10 renders a 1 hour clip from MOV (HD) or m2TS (HD) into AVCHD (M2TS, 1920x1080, 24 mbps) in 1.3 hours. If I forgo the quality aspect and enable the GPU the render time is reduced by 10-30% depending on content.