rendering time
 

Just out of curiosity and I want to know what others are getting out of their vegas 6c. I had converted m2t files on the time line to the supplied cineform codec. Time ratio I've been getting is 1:3. Is that practical??

Second question is when I am done editing and have replace files to the original m2t will it do another render before printing back to tape?

What are your specs? I am using a P4 dual core 3.2, with 4gb of ram, 10k sata os drives and my rendering time is not as good.

1 min = 3:45

This is a m2t file captured through vegas.

Second test was

Connect HD avi's to avi intermediate = 4 to 1

DSE, if you read this. Will gearshift help to switch out avi's for m2t? When I render avi to m2t it goes to 8 to 1.

Thanks,

Jon

You got a more beefy computer. My specs are P4 2.8 HT 2GB RAM and a 500GB Harddrive.

Wow, twice the processor with twice the ram and yours runs faster? I am going to do a fresh load on my pc with just os and vegas. That will be a true test, considering I have tons of apps on my pc. I will post what happens.

I just printed to tape for the first time last night, works perfectly.

Jon

halo, i don't quite know what you're asking about but here are my spex&times:

spex:
-dual mp2800
-3gb ram
-558gb raid0
-etc.

using gearshift i converted 6.5 hrs of m2t's to DV proxy overnight (somewhere around 10 hrs).

after editing i swap back the DV proxies for m2t files and render to DVD or HD output. a 20min DVD takes about 3 hours. i'm currently rendering a 3.5 hour DVD from m2t's and that's taking about 16 hours so far and it's still got 3 hours to go.

thus, rendering times.

Yi Fong Yu,

Would you test your avi proxies with a one minute section, render it to m2t and see how long it takes. I am experiencing 1 minute takes 4 minutes to render. This doesn't change if I render it has an m2t or avi intermidate.

Thanks,

Jon

I’ve had the results of my tests posted to my web site for while now. 3x to 4x is about right for rendering m2t to CineForm on a single core P4 3.0Ghz. It drops down to 2.5x for my AMD Athlon64 X2 4600+ dual core with 2GB of memory.

~jr

Thanks! I need to run a test with it at 720p versus 1080i and see what happens.

Jon

I think is gonna be longer. Fx1/z1 are shot in 1080 so now your computer need to recalculate to 720p.

But yes I am getting a 1:3 ratio when I render m2t to the supplied cineform codec in vegas 6 again my specs are:
P4 2.8 HT
2GB of RAM
and a dedicated HD of 500gb using firewire400

I must be doinging something wrong then. Considering my specs are much higher than your own.

p4 3.2ghz Dual core, 4gb of ram, 10k sata OS drive and more internal sata drives, no external drives(ie firewire).

I think it's time for a reload, with just windows xp pro, hd link and vegas, nothing else.

Jon

I just realized there are a few unanswered questions here:

Yes, it will do another render which is why you should NOT replace the CineForm AVI files with the original M2T files. There is no point in it. Vegas will re-render either way and some say you will get a better re-render from the CineForm files. At a minimum it is guaranteed not to be worse so why bother swapping. (you gain nothing)

No it will not for the same reason as given above. There should be no need to swap out the CineForm files. They are the same quality as the original M2T files. I just did a 1 minute test render from M2T to M2T and from CineForm to M2T and both took about 2:20.

And to address Jon’s new question:

You are getting about the same time with your P4 3.2 dual core as my P4 3.0 single core. Fred was not as accurate. He simply said 1:3 and he has a P4 2.8. I don’t think you will see much of a difference between 2.8 and 3.0 P4 so I assume his actual times are closer to mine and yours. Until he posts a more accurate timing you can’t be sure that his computer is really faster.

Also, I hate to say this, but the P4 dual cores are a lot slower than the AMD dual cores and some have even reported that they are slower than the P4 single cores! Your PC seems to bear that out. So it might not be anything you are doing.

~jr

When I render out DV it is so much faster than my P4 3.2ghz. It's definately much faster. I just can't bring myself to buy AMD. I am going to do a fresh reload, since I have a million things loaded on the pc.

Thanks,

Jon

I understand how you feel cuz’ I gotta tell ya’. I have never owned an AMD before. I only bought Intel and when I started building PC’s I only built Intel. My thinking was, “why buy a wanna-be when you can have the real thing”. But when I was researching parts for this latest PC that I built and the facts were as plane as day. AMD trounced Intel by a wide margin in every performance test. If it was a small amount I would have stayed loyal to Intel but it was no contest. The AMD dual cores were significantly faster and reports said that Intel wasn’t going to catch up until 2008.

As I started to research more, I found out that Hyper Threading was not a new breakthrough to improve performance. It was a patch to fix a design flaw in the Intel architecture. Apparently the Intel pipeline is so long that when they get a cache miss it takes a lot of cycles to recover. By using two threads, any cache miss would switch to the next thread which would already have instructions in the pipeline ready to go. The reason AMD didn’t implement HT is because they have a short pipeline and don't need this "insurance". (i.e., they don’t have this design problem).

I also found out that AMD chips process more instructions per clock cycle than Intel which is why their chips can run at a slower clock speed yet get just as much work done as an Intel at a higher clock speed. That’s why they went to the naming convention instead of reporting their clock speed. (so that customers could compare “relative” speeds). That say’s that the AMD X2 4800+ is as fast as an Intel dual core 4.8Ghz (if such a chip could be built)

Slower clock speeds also mean a cooler running chip. My AMD dual core doesn’t get anywhere near as hot as my old Intel P4 on long renders. In fact, it never goes above 55 Centigrade even after hours of rendering.

After reading all this, there was no denying that Intel may have been first, but AMD had a superior architecture which got more work done and ran cooler. These are exactly the attributes needed for video work and especially rendering (as you are finding out) so… I jumped ship and got an AMD. I am so impressed with my AMD dual core, I don’t think I would ever buy Intel again.

I’m not trying to convert you or anything, but I’m just laying out the facts as I found them to give you an idea of why this long-time Intel user finally bought an AMD. You might want to rethink your strategy and get the best hardware for the job. Today, that would be AMD X2.

~jr

Don't need to swap back to m2t when I am printing back to hdv? Isn't there be a loss in quality?

No, there is no loss in quality if you are using the CineForm codec. The intermediary is not a proxy. It’s a high-quality render-ready copy of the original m2t file. You can read about the quality on CineForm’s web site here.

The reason is because the mpeg transport stream (m2t) is extremely lossy. It only records one full frame of information for every 15 frames. The other 14 frames are predictive and delta information. The CineForm codec is totally full frames. Think of it this way, you are encoding a high compression stream (m2t) with a low compression codec (CineForm). There is no loss because the lower compression codec is totally capably of accurately representing the highly compressed stream and then some!

Just to summarize, if you use a CineForm intermediary or Sony YUV intermediary, you can throw the m2t file away. It is no longer needed and you should just render from the intermediary file.

When I capture with Connect HD, I capture direct to a CineForm AVI and there isn’t even an m2t file on my hard drive. (no need for ‘em)

~jr