I tried out Vegas 5 and 7 and loved the interface but was blown away when I added one filter to a 10 minute clip...that it took almost one hour to process. I have Canopus DVSTorm 2 and am spoiled by putting 3 filters on a clip and playing in real time and ready to output...What does it take to make Vegas render free..and I mean no render all night long for a half hour show. This is totally unproductive..fun software but not practical. Computer requirements? Money requirements?

Please tell me what you have that makes this software scream...

Thanks,

Ralph Bowman

Hardware processing is all but gone...the Storm was a great system.
Rendering is required with the Storm for certain filters, but you already know that.
To speed render time:
1. Have a fast system.
2. System must be configured properly.
3. Use Network-based rendering
4. For fast renders, avoid certain types of filters that require spatial and temporal shifting of frame content.
5. Output same media format as source media.
6. Be sure project settings are optimized.

There are more tricks, but these are the biggies. A LOT falls under #2.
Having a dual/dual core for example, really speeds things up. Having a SATA RAID really speeds things up. You should be sure that no background apps are stealing resources, particularly antivirus (should never be on an editing station, IMO), and be sure that drives are properly allocated for storage, rendering, and OS.

Did you apply Magic Bullet filters? The render times on those are inSANE, especially if you applied more than one.

I just switched from 6-year-old Canopus Storm/Adobe Premiere 6.5 installed on a P4 3GHz system to Vega 7 on a Dual 2 Core system three weeks ago. I haven't tried out all the plug-ins, but all the video transition effects and color correction are in real time. I think a fast system does help a lot. I am using E6400 (2.1GHz) overclocked to 3.3GHz, 2GB RAM, and 10000 RPM Raptor drive.

John

2. System must be configured properly.

4. For fast renders, avoid certain types of filters that require spatial and temporal shifting of frame content.
.

Douglas, could you expalin these in more detail? Not sure I understand what #4 means.

Also, does a 2nd computer for networked rendering provide a 50% boost or maybe just 20%?

Funny, but I just posted a similar question and discovered I put it on the wrong forum.

Thanks

So, it's actually a little harder than merely spatial filters being rough. What matters is the underlying algorithm.

For instance, the median filter is somewhat expensive to do. It's an expensive algorithm in almost all implementations (other editors, etc). The median in Vegas does some things that nobody else does, though, so I don't expect apples-to-apples comparisons. For those who don't remember, a median finds the middle of a list of values. This requires ordering those values and picking the middle (or something numerically equivalent). This is pretty time-consuming.

The gaussian blur could, in the simple case, be as slow as the convoluton kernel at certain sizes, and one might expect it to get massively more expensive as it gets larger. It doesn't. Why this is the case is left as an exercise for the reader (I have a paper on this somewhere).


Other filters are slower for different reasons. Any filter that shows up as yellow instead of green in the filter list requires state-data from frame to frame to produce consistent output. This means that it is not suitable for multi-threaded rendering. In portions of your project where filters like these are used, Vegas uses only one thread for rendering. I believe that this is covered in the help, actually.



You'll learn which filters are slow with experience. It's safe to say that filters that feel slow in playback generally feel slow in rendering, as well.



As far as network rendering goes, performance increases depend on the complexity of the project, the intermediate format used, network speed, processor speed, etc. It's tough to say what the performance benefit may be. If you have a really slow network and a straight-to-render project, say from HDV to DVD, you might end up taking longer to render over the network than otherwise.

Great thread. Just need a little more depth in a couple of areas if that's OK?

In an attempt to improve my render times and the quality of playback while previewing I have just bought the components for a decent spec system. This is detailed in another thread but basically it's a Quad Core QX6700 (4 x 2.66GHz cores) with pretty decent kit around it including 2Gb fast memory, a 10,000RPM WD Raptor 150Gb system drive and a fast data drive. Yeehar!

So, looking at Spot's list I believe I have number 1 checked off. It's number 2 that interests me now. That and the comment about not running antivirus software. All makes sense, and it's something I have been thinking about for a while.

For the first time ever I am going to absolutely not allow this new system access to the internet. Period. Not going to happen. But I DO want it to be on the LAN to let me enjoy network rendering and access to the several terabytes of multimedia data sitting on other machines.

How do I do that? Is this a firewall thing?

If I turn off A/V software to improve CPU usage in Vegas's favour am I putting my new PC at risk by keeping it on the LAN? The other PC's on the LAN will continue to have access to the internet (albeit behind firewalls and with A/V software running).

Numbers 3 and 4 I'm comfortable with.

Number 5 - output same format as source. Does this mean if I am editing DV I should output using the AVI 'uncompressed' preset or the (in my case) PAL presets? Should I then be doing format conversions in something else, eg Squeeze? I agree that would take the conversion overhead out of the initial render but I guess that requiring a further render (in or outside of Vegas) kind of adds that overhead back in! Li'l clarification, please?

Number 6. Optimised in what way? Are you thinking from an 'audit' point of view (eg, making sure there aren't any unwanted crossfades, composite level envelope issues etc etc) or are your thoughts somewhere else?

Further clarification welcomed (from all) and thanks in advance.

Ian . . .

Why shouldn't antivirus be on? That would force me to disconnect the computer from the internet entirely. I would love to get rid of it but nowadays, you are forced to have antivirus and spyware software. I do believe that there is a big difference if you use Norton (system heavy) or AVG which I am using.

Your machine will run faster without antivirus, period.
It'll wear your system out faster as well.
But...if you don't have a dedicated machine and don't pay attention to what you're doing, then you definitely need antivirus.
I've never run antivirus except in testing render speeds and impact on video editing, but I'm also exceptionally careful about where I go.
Put differently, I don't walk the dark areas of Central Park at night (potentially dangerous websites), but if I did, I'd likely wear body armor and perhaps carry a gun (Antivirus).

Using Norton Antivirus is like carrying a loaded gun always pointed at your crotch, even when horse-back riding. It makes you move more slowly, and sometimes it ruins your day for no reason whatsoever.

Be careful where you go. Don't execute random code. Use Firefox or IE7. Virus scan regularly.

That last one can be done with NAV. Just don't leave the "agent" on, or whatever it's called these days. The flood of reports of this causing problems with all sorts of software just never stops.

It's worth noting that I haven't kept virus software installed on my computer for a few years. Trend Micro has a solid online scanner (java-based). We use their enterprise products at work, and they are fairly well-behaved.

The gaussian blur could, in the simple case, be as slow as the convoluton kernel at certain sizes, and one might expect it to get massively more expensive as it gets larger. It doesn't. Why this is the case is left as an exercise for the reader (I have a paper on this somewhere).
Would you happen to have a link for this?

You could have a PC/server that is your intenet-gateway. That PC/Server would have two NIC:s - one for connecting to the internet and one for connecting to the LAN/switch. On that machine you can run AV / IDS and other stuff to keep the LAN clean. Just make sure that you unpack all files on that machine.

Good luck ...and I'm VERY jealous of your QX6700 - I'm looking at the QX6600, the 6700 is so expensive here in Sweden that I'll have to sell my daughter to get one :-) I'll try to keep my wallet closed until the Penryn Quad core hits the market in July...

// Lazze

You folks might be interested in the Results of render times for ALL Vegas fXk (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/showmessage.asp?forumid=4&messageid=401776) thread on the Sony forum. Even though it's now a few years old, it's still a good reference chart.
Many thanks to John Meyer for doing it.

IF you want real speed in DV then go with Edius. IT truelly is realtime for almost everything, staight out to tape from the timeline. However if you want to do fine control with keyframes, lots of multichannel audio etc then Vegas is much, much better but it is painfully slow to render to the point I almost never use it for video!!!! Like Ralph I have a Canopus DVRaptor RT2 starting with Premiere then started to use Edius ( I have Vegas from audio days). So I use the Premiere 1.5.1, Vegas 7.0e and Edius 3.62 for what are useful and the least frustating to me( Being retired seems to have reduced my tolerance level !!!). Edius as main program for its speed, Vegas for audio and some keyframe controlled needs and Premiere for titles and any rework as it has the fastest Smart render!!!
To the computer question. I have a router on my cable modem, dedicated computer for mail and internet searching with AVast and Zone Alarm and the other computers for editing have no virus checking of any sort but all are on the LAN connected through the router so can access the internet for updates etc and each other for file transfers. The editing computers have most unnessary services turned off to optimize speed. I also check with Trendmicro online check every so often. Other than program updates all other downloads come through the internet computer are checked and then transfered to any of the others as needed. Access is one way, ie the editing computers get the files from the internet computer no file sharing on them only on the shared directory on the Internet computer.

Ron Evans

I am not a video professional but I am a computer professional with several years in continuity planning, security and network administration,

I think that the absolutely worst option is to run a system that is connected to the Internet without running anti-malware software (antivirus, antispyware). If you feel comfortable using the Internet without antivirus installed, more power to you; I consider it very poor advice to suggest that other people do the same.

The options really seem to be:

1) Use a dedicated editing system that is NOT connected to the Internet.

-OR-

2) Use your common system for editing BUT disconnect from the Internet and disable antivirus *temporarily* (products such as Symantec Antivirus allow you to disable until the next reboot --- that removes the burden of remembering to enable it).

-OR-

3) Use a dual-boot system and disconnect form the Internet when using the editing system (which should be configured to run minimal processes).

Re-read my post. I'm suggesting a stand alone system.
*I* don't use antivirus, nor does any system in our offices (18 systems) excepting one or two used by assistants that come and go. None of our laptops use antivirus either (38 systems).
I do recommend people use antivirus if they're browsing the web without care. Firewalls are always recommended.

Antivirus is anathemic to video editing. This is one tremendous argument alone, for having a system that can either be easily disconnected, having a standalone that is connected to an internal network, or having multiple profiles, one of which is that the machine is not internet-capable in a profile, but can connect to a SAN.

You may be a computer professional. Given that we've easily built, operated, and continually experiment with well over 300-400 computers (not including machines assembled for portable training at events such as NAB, etc, all connected to the web) I'd submit we're no slouches ourselves.

If someone is not very conscious about where they operate and browse, then indeed, having antivirus is an important bandaid.

Aside from that, it cannot be repeated enough; Antivirus is anathemic to video editing.
Ironically, this thread mentions John Meyer. Well known entrepeneur, code warrior, and developer of famous software who uses Sony Vegas. He is a strong advocate as well, of not using anti-virus.
You may feel it's the worst option, but those of us that edit video for our daily bread would submit the worst option is running a system *with* antivirus. And, we must be connected to the web in most instances; certainly, we must be connected to our internal networks.
I think you'll likely find that most professional editors with more than a few years in this industry are also computer professionals with years of configuration and build experience.

To bring the thread back to point, antivirus and other background applications will significantly slow render times in virtually all instances.

It is not my intention to fuel a debate here.

I read your post and I understand your point.

I do not dispute that antivirus and other background applications will slow a system and in the ideal world a person will have a dedicated editing system.

But I contend that many, many people who frequent this forum use their regular home computer for everything (and their wives, girlfriends, children and friends use that computer at times as well).

My point is this: You, your coworkers and many industry professionals may be exceptionally careful and avoid any problems but many people will not be so fortunate even with the best of intentions (I have supported a lot of users who have had the best of intentions). Judging by some posts I read on this site, there are a lot of people who are definitely not as technically savvy as you are and many stretch their budgets to afford one PC. So, consider my post a caution to *those* users.

John I am not sure whether your comments were to me or Douglas. My recommendation is to have one machine with NOTHING important on it to browse the WEB and get mail( which you leave on the ISP server so that if you have to totally rebuild your machine you can get all your mail back). In my system this is the oldest machine, the newest is the video editor and the next oldest is the audio editor. As I get permission from the other half to upgrade they all ripple down and the oldest gets turfed!!! Use a combined hardware router and firewall set up so that you are invisible to the internet, don't ever connect your PC directly to the internet, especially a high speed link like DSL or cable modem. On this internet machine have antivirus, antimalware and Zone Alarm that locks the machine when in screen saver and has a lock on all outgoing programs. In my case this machine screens all incoming data from the internet as I explained in my post. The other two machines used for editing have no protection at all and run with minimum processes needed to edit only. They only access the internet for program updates ( Windows and editing programs. I take the risk that Microsoft, Adobe, Sony and Canopus will be virus free). I have been using basically this approach for almost 10years with no problem at all. NOW the internet connected machine gets lots of hits from mail that gets through the ISP's Norton antivirus but gets stopped by AVAST.
So my advice buy a router, use a dedicated editing PC and use an old PC for internet browsing and mail.
In my mind if someone has bought a video camera, bought editing software then they can find the money for a cheap PC for internet use for the family. IF they don't optimize the editing machine they will not be too happy with the whole experience and a DVD camcorder or HDD camcorder with in camera editing would be a better option.

Ron Evans

Anti-virus software can be shut down while editing. It's mostly useless, but having it scan and do it's update a few times a week isn't a bad idea. If you actually get malware, you will probably need to take specific steps for each type of attack. They all have different ways of working and I haven't found a virus scanner that detects the sneaky ones. I've only had a few pieces of malware and I browse all over the web. Of course, I don't ever say "okay" to anything that wants to install something on my system. Ever since I stopped using Microsoft products (except Windows), my problems almost completely went away. MS Word and Outlook have been notorious for allowing malware to run because of the Activex controls and macro scripting. Only use Firefox and Opera when browsing is my recommendation.

I've also learned to use Spybot, AdAware, Killbox.exe, and hijackthis.exe to find and remove malicious processes.

Another thing that may prove to be very helpful is prio.exe from:

http://www.prnwatch.com/prio.html

It is a program that allows you to set and maintain the priority of applications and processes through the task manager. It enables a "save priority" setting under the menue at Task Manager/Processes/rightclick. You can select the priority and save it once prio.exe is installed. I haven't given is a full run-through yet, but preliminary tests show it to at least not interfere if I set Vegas to "High" priority. I don't think it's a good idea to set anything to "Realtime" as that seems like it may let a process hold onto the system and not let go.

I always never recommend a software - but ESET NOD32 AV I do recommend. Almost no CPU usage, even when it fetches updates. You can easily tell NOD32 wich applications NOT to scan, as Vegas/Photoshop etc etc

IMHO - the worst cpu thieves are:

1. Norton - All products(some love Norton products, I did love the Norton DOS commander... )
2. Mcaffee AV/Shield
3. F-Secure - kills your computer while running updates

NOD32 works 100% under Vista as well.

//Lz

I am not a video professional but I am a computer professional with several years in continuity planning, security and network administration,

I think that the absolutely worst option is to run a system that is connected to the Internet without running anti-malware software (antivirus, antispyware). If you feel comfortable using the Internet without antivirus installed, more power to you; I consider it very poor advice to suggest that other people do the same.

The options really seem to be:

1) Use a dedicated editing system that is NOT connected to the Internet.

-OR-

2) Use your common system for editing BUT disconnect from the Internet and disable antivirus *temporarily* (products such as Symantec Antivirus allow you to disable until the next reboot --- that removes the burden of remembering to enable it).

-OR-

3) Use a dual-boot system and disconnect form the Internet when using the editing system (which should be configured to run minimal processes).

That's great advice!

I scan and then turn OFF anti-virus.

Regards
JohnG

I have not run anti-virus software in over ten years. I always run with firewall. I watch where I go on the internet.

On occasion, just prior to zero-ing out my hard drive and reinstalling my software, which I do every six months or so, I have run anti-virus software and have never been found to be infected. I have sometime run two different programs, (uninstall one, then install a second one and run it for a complete scan of my drives) and never have I had a virus.

Once I did get hit with the sasser thingy, but that was easily dealt with.

I do like the idea of using a dual boot configuration to keep things speedy though...but I believe still uncesessary.

Back to the render times...

I tend to use Vegas and Render As WMV in some size/quality or another, but it there a better more efficient format? Quicktime? In quick experimentation with a 3 minute file, I couldnt really draw any conclusions.

Is there a better way to render video out of Vegas? Third party? Or is RENDER AS the only option you have and are stuck with?

Whats the best format as far as eventually pushing to burn to DVD with DVD Architect. I honestly havent made many DVDs and push most of my video to the web, but Im about to work on some larger projects with 30 minutes of video, and I can see a render time in Vegas approaching 12-14hrs for something like this. Thats if the PC doesnt crash and granny doesnt run over the power cord with the vacuum.

The file sizes are huge too. I know DVD Architect can render to the size of the DVD, but what are some best practices here to get the best compression for not only the web but DVD? Render time is measured in hours at my house and I have a 3ghz 2gb system with mirrored drives.

I dont think Im being as efficient as I should. Can Quicktime Pro or Sorenson be used outside of Vegas to render Vegas projects?

OK smart ones, 'dump some nawlidge' on me. :)

Back to the render times...

I tend to use Vegas and Render As WMV in some size/quality or another, but it there a better more efficient format?

It depends on what you want to do with it.
If I'm doing a print to tape, I'll render to DV-AVI.
If it's for DVD, then it's MPEG-2 and AC3.

...what are some best practices here to get the best compression for not only the web but DVD?

Apples and oranges here. I don't do stuff for the web so I won't try to offer suggestions.

For DVD creation, I use a bitrate calculator (google it, there's lots around) to get the most I can out of Vegas. Most times I end up having to modify the basic DVD template to get the best quality I can.
I then feed that to DVDA and the authoring time is minimal as I've already done the calculations ahead of time.

...I'm about to work on some larger projects with 30 minutes of video, and I can see a render time in Vegas approaching 12-14hrs...

Unless you use a LOT of FX, I see no reason for your system to take that long to render.
Is your system optimized properly?
For example:
Do you render to a different drive than your OS?
Are most background services turned off (esp. anti-virus)?
When was the last time you took your computer apart and blew the dust out?
The list goes on but you get the idea.

[quote]Unless you use a LOT of FX, I see no reason for your system to take that long to render.
Is your system optimized properly?
For example:
Do you render to a different drive than your OS?

Yes. Data drives are also mirrored and use a SCSI raid controller

Are most background services turned off (esp. anti-virus)?

Yes.

When was the last time you took your computer apart and blew the dust out?

Year ago. System doesnt lag behind in anything. 3ghz, 2gb ram, 240GB raid disks. I do tend to use my share of FX, but thats the nature of my genre'. Little choice. When I can I avoid them and use something out of Digital Juice.

It would take 35-40 minutes to render a high res WMV (3-5MB) thats only 2min in duration.

If I had 30min of video and sent it to MPEG2 for future burning in DVDA, what kind of "normal acceptable" render time in Vegas should I be expecting?

Do the number of tracks have anything to do with it? I try to keep them to a minimum, but 7-9 tracks is not abnormal. Each has different opacities and overlays.

It would take 35-40 minutes to render a high res WMV (3-5MB) thats only 2min in duration.


IMO, WMV renders are the absolute worst in Vegas. For whatever reason, my exerience is that they stress the system more than any other format.


If I had 30min of video and sent it to MPEG2 for future burning in DVDA, what kind of "normal acceptable" render time in Vegas should I be expecting?


Unfortunately there's no way of giving a precise answer as it's dependent on several variables with CPU speed being the most important.
As an example, last summer I completed a 10 min. video that was very heavy of chroma key and other FX. My work machine (3.4 GHz HT with 1.5 GB of RAM took 3 hr. to do an MPEG-2 render.
My new quad core did it in 27 min!!


Do the number of tracks have anything to do with it? I try to keep them to a minimum, but 7-9 tracks is not abnormal. Each has different opacities and overlays.

Any time you add FX to a project, it'll slow things down.
About 2 years ago, John Meyer did an excellent job of assembling a chart showing the effect of all Vegas FX on render times and posted his results on the Sony Vegas forum (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=457224).
You can download a zipped file with a veg and the results (an Excel spreadsheet) at the Vegas Users site (http://www.vegasusers.com/testbench/files/john_meyer-vegas_6.0d_fx_render_results.zip).
Makes for interesting reading.

It would take 35-40 minutes to render a high res WMV (3-5MB) thats only 2min in duration.

Here's a suggestion on doing this a different way.
Render the project to DV-AVI first.
Now render that AVI to WMV format.
Since it doesn't have to do any FX processing, it'll go much faster.
I didn't believe it when I first read about it but experience has taught me that it works.

Interesting!

So once I render to DV-AVI, just create a new project and import the completed DV-AVI clip then re-rip to WMV or QT or whatever?

Backdoor approach for sure but if it works and cuts time, probably worth a shot.

Chris,
At this point in time, you have nothing to lose (except render time, that is!!) so give it a try. Let us know how it works out for you.

Unless you use a LOT of FX, I see no reason for your system to take that long to render.
Is your system optimized properly?
For example:
Do you render to a different drive than your OS?
Are most background services turned off (esp. anti-virus)?
When was the last time you took your computer apart and blew the dust out?
The list goes on but you get the idea.

I just did a short 4-minute HDV project (Sony HVR-A1U) that used zero effects, just cutting up the raw footage. It took me nearly 48 hours to render this project out to .wmv 1440x1080 1.3333 PAR at the best quality. In the end, it wasn't even a successful render as it got to around 75% done, when my computer just stopped working. So now I have a 75% rendered file that took almost 48 hours to render that won't play properly on my computer. WTF. Note, I was working on a crappy laptop with antivirus running, but even then, it shouldn't have taken THAT long to render (and not even render fully and successfully) right? What can I do? Btw, it also turned out to be 750mb .wmv file (would have been around 1gb if it had actually finished rendering). That seems way too big for a 4-minute project with no effects.

Other things I know affected the render time, but I don't feel it should have taken THAT long still.
-rendering to external Western Digital 320gb hard drive (7200 rpm, via USB2.0, 9ms seek time, 8mb cache)
-this was rendered on Sony Vegas 7.0a
-used a laptop (Pentium M 1.6ghz, 756mb RAM, Intel integrated video card, 80gb hdd at 5400rpm), in other words, super slow

What are the settings you guys use to render your HDV 1440x1080 projects in the best quality possible without spending ridiculous amounts of time for rendering?

Alex, you're going to hate me but I just tried this with a short HDV clip (downloaded from the net).
I repeated it until the timeline was 4 min. long and rendered it out with your settings.
It took 30 min. and was 243 MB. in size.
BTW, I'm one of those lucky folks with a new quad core :-)

Weird! Something must be wrong with my settings, because my file was getting to be around 1gb. What went wrong? I think 200mb or so sounds much more reasonable for 4 minutes of HDV footage. Btw, I'm not sure if this affected anything, but I had cuts (edits) on average maybe every 2-3 seconds, and around 10 audio tracks, though many were very simple ones (just one sound effect).

What exact settings did you use to render?

I just used the default WMV settings:

8 Mbps HD 1080-30p Video

Audio: 192 Kbps, 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, WMA9.
Video: 29.97 fps, 1440x1080, PAR=1.3333, WMV V9 CBR Compression, Smoothness 90.

Having a dual/dual core for example, really speeds things up. Having a SATA RAID really speeds things up.

How does having a SATA RAID help speed things up if one has only one RAID setup.

For instance, if I use two drives as a raid 0 drive and all other drives are of the normal types wouldn't rendering from the raid drive to the normal types be slowed down because the normal drives aren't as fast?

Would I get the benefits of the raid drive if I render a file from and to the same raid drive say from one folder to another?

Sorry about so many questions but I am not real sure about all this because I haven't setup raid before.

I just built a new system that has an E6420 Conroe at 2.13 ghz with 4 meg shared L2 cache and it is a whole lot faster than what I had which has a Pentium 4 HT at 2.8 ghz.

What took an hour and 43 minutes to render now takes 37 minutes. Still, I can see how my not so fast hard drives can be limiting how fast the renders are.

To sum it all up, what I would like to know is how I should set-up the raid 0 that will work best for Vegas. Does it take two raid 0 drives to really make a difference?

I have a new Western digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM and plan on getting a second one for the raid 0. Because I have a very limited budget especially since I built a new system I don't want to invest in another drive if it won't really help me.

Thanks in Advance,
Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

I run seven hard drives on my editing station, two are configured in a Raid 0 setup...I do not see any speed differences in rendering times when rendering to a faster or slower hard drives. The processor is where the bottlenecks seem to be, not the hard drives.

I have tried so many different ways of rendering, and nothing seems to speed anything up but a faster processor. That is my experience.

Just a little reminder that if any of your tracks are set to 3d alpha, render times are just horrendous. Sometimes a person will have a track set up in 3d alpha for a tiny bit of overlay rendering then leave it on. If you do this you get just unbelievably bad render times. Maybe it isn't this, but I'd check just to make sure.

I run seven hard drives on my editing station, two are configured in a Raid 0 setup...I do not see any speed differences in rendering times when rendering to a faster or slower hard drives. The processor is where the bottlenecks seem to be, not the hard drives.

I have tried so many different ways of rendering, and nothing seems to speed anything up but a faster processor. That is my experience.

Then why would DSE say that a RAID does help a lot?

My new system with the E6420 does speed things up considerably. My past experince is that dual channel ram helps a lot as well.

With my old system it looks like the hard drives were waiting on the processor. With the new system it looks like the processor is waiting on the hard drive.

So a bottleneck is a bottleneck whatever the cause.

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

Look to the controller (wow, that sounds like a line from the Matrix or something). :-)

A clean throughput to a SATA RAID makes a huge difference when dealing with both uncompressed and compressed files. But... it might be sharing resources when it comes to discussing the controller.
Kinda like USB. Works great on some systems, poorly on others, simply because of CPU resource allocation. Your controller might not be alone.

I am a poor judge, because my mobo has two separate integrated SATA raid controllers, and each of my two main hard drive arrays run independently (one OS and one work drive -both RAID 0). So truth be told I do not have any slow drives other than the externals which are for storage only.

I have rendered to the slow external drives on a few rare occasions, and I just didn't see any difference. I would still never run less than 10k drives to run my OS and work drives just on general principals.

You could invest in a 75 or 150GB 10K Raptor for very little and I would suspect you wouldn't really need the RAID configruation. When you get the money, buy a second Raptor then do raid. If your SATA controller is not integrated into your mother board, however, I am not sure I would spend my money on an add-on controller.

1st step have the correct MOBO with built in RAID (if you don't already have it) then buy your hard drives. If your doing video, it should just be without saying that you should have the fastest you can afford.

Thanks much for the info and all.

I just spent the last several hours trying to see if I can create a raid-0 with the drives I have. They are not identical drives but I should be able to create a raid-0 with them.

I am using a cheap AsRock motherboard and the instructions on creating a raid leaves one begging to know what to do. Part one of the manual is easy but part two starts giving instructions on a software that works under windows xp that doesn't seem to exist. The manual doesn't tell me where the heck to get it. Not even on the CD that came with it nor on the manufacturers web page. Oh well...

Since this motherboard is a temporary and not permanent solution then I won't go any farther and/or waste anymore time with it.

Later on, probably this fall I will get a real motherboard with built in hard ware raid and dump the current crap that I am now using.

Still a whole lot better than what I had though. Afterall, going from an hour and 43 minutes to 37 minutes in render time is better than nothing I guess.

This AsRock only cost me $60.00 so that is not too bad for a temp motherboard and still be able to use my other junk from the other system.

No doubt that a faster system is better. For people like me on a limited budget and in this case limited patience it takes a while to build up to what one wants. And by that time it is obsolete and I end up starting all over again. LOL!!!

Thanks again,
Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

I understand about budget! Good luck!

Danny, as I understand it, you're on the right track.

Hardware SATA RAID 0 MOBO support means that Windows and processor cycles are not used, the processor and OS see the RAID as a single drive.

What your MOBO manufacturer may be referring to is the software RAID controller built into XP, which can be accessed via Control Panel | Computer Management | Disk Managemet. Search the related help file for "Create a Striped Volume".

An XP managed RAID 0 uses many more system resources than a hardware controller does... which can impact render time negatively. So would a RAID managed by any add-in software.

However, though the main topic of this thread is render time, which will be reduced with faster drive throughput (eg. RAID 0), the main benefit I see from using RAID is better preview performance of more simultaneous streams while editing.

Danny, as I understand it, you're on the right track.

Hardware SATA RAID 0 MOBO support means that Windows and processor cycles are not used, the processor and OS see the RAID as a single drive.

What your MOBO manufacturer may be referring to is the software RAID controller built into XP, which can be accessed via Control Panel | Computer Management | Disk Managemet. Search the related help file for "Create a Striped Volume".

An XP managed RAID 0 uses many more system resources than a hardware controller does... which can impact render time negatively. So would a RAID managed by any add-in softward.

However, though the main topic of this thread is render time, which will be reduced with faster drive throughput (eg. RAID 0), the main benefit I see from using RAID is better preview performance of more simultaneous streams while editing.


The information I have found says that one can only create a raid 0 from Windows XP if they have Windows XP Professional. It will not work with Windows XP Home.

So unless there is a utility that will do the job, I am stuck. :(

If a software raid eats up resources for rendering it might not be worth the effort anyway?

If nothing else, this has been a learning experience for me.

Thanks,
Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs

There is thread in the HDV section on Raid where I posted this:-
The CPU does the rendering using RAM. It reads it from the source disc, renders in RAM( and swap disc if there isn't enough RAM) and then writes to the disc specified for the rendered output. Hence for the lowest disc load one should have seperate discs for each source file, rendered file and swap file. If one only has one disc for OS ( including the OS swap file), source video files and the rendered file then the data is being writen back and forth to the same disc many times..... not good for efficiency or performance!!!!!! Having seperate discs for OS, temp files/rendered files and source files, limits the tasks on any hard drive to one video stream at a time. This is a trivial task for most modern hard drives. Hard drives are cheap. My set up uses OS drive, Temp drive( which also has the backup image for the boot/OS drive) and 3 video drives.
Most new drive can achieve over 50MBS but DV only needs about 3MBS. More than 10 times the needs of DV. Read performance is a combination of seek times and drive throughput. The seek times have not improved much but throughput has so limiting seek operation is very important to performance. Files need to be contiguous( all together not spread out over the drive) do this by having a defraged drive when capturing. Capturing to a drive with lots of files on it that hasn't been defraged will lead to the video file being spread all over the drive reaquiring the read to come from many places. . You can see that it is possible to have a RAID 0 be slower than two seperate drives reading two tracks that have contiguous files as the files on the RAID are interleaved between the two drives and if this requires many more seek operations it will be slower, especially if the read operation is for very short times(ie seek time could be longer than read time likely if this RAID has all video files and also the temp files on it). IF this RAID is a software RAID it will also rob CPU cycles too!!!! In a PC with OS drive, temp drive and storage drives the drive most likely to get fragmented is the temp file drive or the drive with the OS swap file on it. This is the drive that needs to be defraged( and the greatest need for RAID or Raptor 10K speed which improves seek time over slower drives) most as it will be the one that has small files writen to it many times and will be the bottleneck due to seek times. IF you want to spend money find the drive with the fastest seek times for this drive and keep it defraged.
Using uncompressed files is of course different but the issues of seek times and throughput remain and but will now be even more critical.
Needless to say I edit DV and some HDV and do not have any RAID on my system.

Ron Evans

Great thread. Thanks everybody!

Question 1: If you can have one Raid 0 setup, which function do you assign it to for best rendering Vegas? Where do you find these settings?

Question 2: Am I correct that MPEG rendering for making DVDs does not benefit from a distributed render farm?

So after all this discussion of ram and raid should Vegas offer a render board
like the Matrox or Grass Valley? Or is this too limiting?

Ralph Bowman

Specifically-designed hardware acceleration cards will make little sense on the low and mid-end now that GPU acceleration is available. GPU acceleration runs on commodity video cards (you don't even need the workstation cards) and is flexible (whereas hardware cards can only do a limited # of effects or whatever is programmed into them).

The downside to hardware acceleration right now is that ATI and Nvidia cards operate differently. Code that works on one card may not work properly on the other. Also, not everyone has a good graphics card. So only a small portion of an editing software's users will have GPU acceleration work for them. To support both CPU rendering and GPU rendering can get tricky.

Current cards also report features and accuracy that they don't meet.
Tough game.


As far as what you should task your RAID with, this is almost always reading. Think about it like this:

- 4 HDV clips going into a semi-fancy composite, 100 mbit in.
- Let's say you have sufficient RAM (please try to avoid swapping), 0 mbit through.
- Let's be generous and say that you're going to HDV, 25 mbit out.

This is not uncommon. Even if you have only two pieces of media cross-fading, you're better off reading from the RAID. It's also nicer for playback. If you get swap-file usage during rendering, turn down the Video RAM preview pref. Swapping is insanely slow.

Tomshardware ( http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/05/15/the_spring_hard_drive_guide/ )
has this report on some of the latest hard drives that may be of interest to this thread. All the drives have performance for multiple streams of video. Access time for WD Raptor is twice as fast as the slowest drive but throughputs have negligible difference. Simplistically the WD Raptor would be the best for lots of small file accesses in a project, OS swap file, rendered and temp files, but would have negligible difference to the cheapest drive for continuous read of the longer captured files. So if the project is a short video with lots of short clip use and graphics, like a commerial, then the Raptor would make a difference( access time more important then continuous read). If the project is a long form multicamera shoot with, essentially switching cameras in post then the cheapest drive will probably be just fine.

Ron Evans

Ok, before leaving anymore replies I decided to do some tests.

My hard drives are as follows:

C: = Western Digital WDC WD400 2mb 40 gig cache PATA
S: = Western Digital WDC WD1200 8 mb 120 gig cache SATA
T: = Hitachi Deskstar HDS722516VLAT80 160 gig 7.8mb cache PATA
V: = Western Digital WDC WD2500KS 16MB cache 250 gig SATA

According to SiSoft Sandra tests that I have made, the speed of the drives from slowest to fastest are:

C:
T:
S:
V:

The V: drive is suppose to be somewhat faster than the C: drive.

I did a render test using a 5 minute region from a recent Church service. Before I did this test, I did tests with the project having the Sony filter for limiting the IRE level so that it doesn't exceed 100% IRE and the processor was not overclocked. The render time was somewhat slower with the filter and the CPU not being overclocked. I don't have the specific times on those tests. Most of the speed difference was in the filter. The overclock is very mild so it doesn't affect render time very much. The render times after all filters were removed and after the processor was overclocked are as follows:

C: = 2:02
T: = 2:11
S: = 2:05
V: = 2:11 as Source 2:13 Not as Source

The C: drive rendered the fastest even though it is the slowest, oldest and a PATA drive. The V: drive is the fastest drive and yet it was slower than the C: drive. Note: When testing Drives c:, T: and S: drive V: has the source files. I did a test to it to see how it does when redering to the source drive. I moved the source files to the s: drive and did another test render to drive V: and the time was a little bit slower.

I think the differences are mostly due to what part of the drive(s) are being written to. The SiSoft Sandra tests show the rated speed of the drives to be different depending on what part of the drives the data is written to.

No matter the drive type or interface, the render times are very close on all drives.

With this in mind, if one can make changes to the system and/or project to reduce render time then wouldn't it be safe to assume that the hard drives are not really a factor in render times because they apparently are not the bottleneck?

Seems that if the drives are indeed the bottleneck then doing other things such as removing all filters and overclocking the processor wouldn't make any difference in render speed because the drives would then be limiting the render speed? And if the drives are not the bottleneck then would creating a raid-0 be a waste of time in trying to reduce render times?

So when DSE says, "Having a SATA RAID really speeds things up." How is this so? I assume from my tests that this would not the case even though I didn't use SATA RAID. Am I correct or do I need to go sit in a corner somewhere? LOL! No offense intended DSE.

Anyway, that is the best I can come-up with for the moment. All comments are welcome.

Danny Fye
www.dannyfye.com
www.vidmus.com/scolvs