Network Rendering and Encoding???
 

How does that work and what do you need to get it going?
Do you need 2 computers? or can you have more?

For After Effects (which can take for ever to render) there is a new plugin called X-Factor http://www.gridironxfactor.com

basically, the more computers you attach, the faster it renders.

To the best of my knowledge Vegas (5) is the only con/pro-sumer
level editing application that supports network rendering. I'm
not sure if this also supports encoding to mpeg for example.

After Effects supports it as well (only on the production bundle?)
as do most 3D applications like LightWave.

It almost always works the same. On each render node you
install the product and install/run the client which waits for jobs.

Then there is one machine in the network from where you start
a job, add nodes, see status and start/stop the rendering etc.

Keep in mind that some (most?) applications require you buy
licenses (sometimes special rendering ones!) for each node in
your system.

I haven't tried the network rendering myself yet for Vegas so
I can't specifically instruct you how that should work. I'm hoping
to try a pass soon with my Lady X episode which required quite
heavy rendering.

2 computers is the minimum (ofcourse). More are always supported,
some systems might have a maximum. Vegas for example comes
with 2 licenses for render nodes.

I use Canopus Edius 2 , where rendering of effects is not an issue (all realtime if your PC has the necessary higher level performance). In the case of MPEG encoding, Procoder for Edius (comes with the Edius software) has an ability to plonk files into a watchfolder, and then when they are dropped in encoding starts. So you can have a stack of files there and drop them into the watchfolder last thing at night, and in the morning they will be all done without any ongoing intervention required. Also the new Canopus Procoder 2 (just released) allows a networked PC to 'watch' the watchfolder, and then as soon as you add files for encoding, it gets going (Procoder 2 is actually installed on the networked PC in this case). The beauty of this setup is that as the hard work is being done by the networked machine, your main editing PC is free to keep working. Very cool. I haven't got this networked encoding setup yet, but I'm considering it - need to get some regular work going first to justify it.

canopus
 

hi - a couple of questions !. i was told that it is impossible to work without a realtime renderer like canopus - DVStorm2Pro Ultra . The Canopus ADVC-100 Bi-Directional Media Converter seems cheaper - $ 390 approx- is it very different to DVStorm2Pro Ultra. do you know the cheapest product I can buy that will do the job ?
was also having some problems with audio of an avi file while capturing ( the audio keeps breaking up throughout ) do you know what could have caused this and how i can remedy it ? how do i prevent it from reoccuring. thankyou so much !
Ruchika Tekkeveetil

Ruchika: please repost your problem as seperate thread in the
approriate editing forum (Premiere in this case, right?), thanks.

Why have you heart that it would be impossible to work without
a hardware card? I've done a couple of projects without. My
previews where fast enough for me.

Most people here have a plain firewire card and hook their
camera's and decks up to that.

hmmm.... very very interesting