Speeding up rendering
 

Well, I am getting to the point of heavy color correction, (Not cause of bad settings, just cause I am crushing blacks, brightening colors... yada yada yada)

I run a custom build machine.

Here is the short list.

Windows XP
Adobe Premiere Pro CS3
4 Gb Ram
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
5000+ Black Edition 2.19 GHz


Windows only shows 3 Gigs of ram, But I can't get a clear answer if it uses that other 1 gig but doesn't show it...

It seems to take a long time to render even if it is an easy to edit file. Like I did a 3 min video to some music, Out put at YouTube's HD standards, (720p) with no color correction, and it took an half hour to render.. That seems a little long.

I have the 48 hour film fest in a week and I need to speed up rendering times. I know I will do tons of color corrections on the video and I want it to render fast.

Any suggestions? I was thinking of upgrading to a Quad core, but if it is something easier... I will take that route.

I am looking to spend around $200 But I would like to keep it cheaper...

Thanks!

Sorry for the snide remark, but did you consider getting a lawn mower. It allows you to cut and razor, the basic ingredients for editing within your budget. If you want to go to HD, your budget just isn't going to cut it. A lawn mower does.

XP (32 BIT) can only use a max 3 GB of RAM and only if the boot switch has been set ....
If you want to address more ram you have to install a 64 bit Opsys.

For $200.00 you may want to buy more disks as the cheapest way to improve performance. A 2 disk set is mandatory to remove drive head contention.
that is if you read and write to the same disk you will be much slower that read from disk A write to Disk B. The next level beyond that is RAID 0 options.

If you need faster than render times, you may want to save up for a Matrox MXo2 MINI break out box ... and take the pressuer off you PC hardware ....

If you are going to go verticle on the hardware, Go i7 intel chip, a M/B chipset optomised for HD playback, a good GDP video card and multiple disks.... & a 64 bit opsys ...
Perhaps try the Windows 7 Beta, a lot of good reports about performance....

Thanks Justin!

I have been thinking about going down the RAID road, but I am not too sure about what I will need...

I will also consider writing to another drive. I just had one dedicated to all video, maybe if I export the final to another drive, that will help.

Thanks alot!

Will your motherboard support a Phenom?

Btw, 2.19GHz doesn't make sense. If I recall correctly, stock speed should be 2.6GHz on your Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE.

If you are rendering at 1/10 real time, it's highly unlikely that hard drive performance is a bottleneck. You need more CPU power.

If I may quote, "Speed costs money. How fast do you want to go?"

What's true for race cars also holds for computers. For rendering, disk is not your bottleneck even if you're dealing with uncompressed video.

IMO, the best overall means to speed rendering is to invest in the fastest processor and system that you can afford. I have a quad core 6600 system that's less than a year old and I'm already eying an i7 system.

Save your money and buy/build a faster system.

If the motherboard will accommodate it, you can get a used Phenom (like a 9650 or whatever - double check CPU wattage rating when checking if motherboard supports it) for under $100 on America's biggest online auction site (be careful there, of course). That's a pretty cheap way to get a significant boost from your current system.

I cut HD using Avid Media Composer on a P4 w/ 2 Gig of RAM, and it works surprisingly well.

Good to hear that.

Of course it all depends on what you are used to.

When I had my first experience with computers on a MITS Altair with 4 KB of RAM, I was impressed. When I progressed to an IBM 5110 using APL, I was even more impressed. Now when I recently exchanged my P4 3.4 for an i7 with 12 GB RAM, over 16 TB of disk space at 3.6 GHz I was even more impressed.

I guess it all depends on where you are coming from and how your expectations are.

But the wisest remark in this thread was that speed costs money and for $ 200 your can't get any speed. Have you considered why Ferrari, Renault and a lot of other F1 teams object so much to the budget limit of $ 45 mio? Speed costs more money than that. Same with PC's.

Well, I figured it out...

I will upgrade the processor, then just build an entire new system. I will try out Windows 7 when it comes out. (Around the same time I get the money for the computer) and then I will just run both of them off a KVM switch and have them all hooked up to the same stuff, thus, saving space!

So, Now if I start from scratch, What would you all reccommend to do for a new system?

I like AMD but I have been told Intel would be better for editing... Yes, No?

And yes Robert, It is a 2.6, but it only shows 2.19GHz on XP?

At a given clock rate, Intel CPUs generally outperform AMD CPUs nowadays. If you look at performance per dollar spent, AMD is very competitive, especially for a budget system.

Phenoms can be quite cost effective, particularly when you take into consideration the motherboard options available for them. You can get motherboards built around an AMD 780G or NVIDIA 8200 chipset for well under $100, which have onboard graphics that are quite adequate for mainstream HD editing.

I'd take a look at your BIOS setup, and make sure that Athlon 64 X2 5000+ BE is actually being run at 2.6GHz. I'm not a fan of overclocking, but that particular chip is reputed to overclock well. Short term, that might be an option for you too. From what I've gathered, overclocking to 3.0GHz is quite reasonable with that chip.

Also, you can get Windows 7 RC1 now from Microsoft's site, and try it out for a few months, at no cost.

How soon do you plan on building a new system? If it's going to be a few months, I'd suggest waiting to see what's available (and prices) when you're ready to build, before really making any decisions.

I'm in Minnesota too. Drop me an email if you'd like. I've got a couple Phenoms that I'm considering selling.

Well at an attempt to get rid of some of my video issues with the on board video (like no dual screen support) I got a new GPU, A Radeon 4870. The person I let install it, who I assumed he knew what he was doing screwed something in windows up and we had to wipe the drive, and re-install windows, So I lost alot of stuff, (good thing I put all my video on a separate drive!)

So, I am going to start over new with this one build it up from the ground...

We also thought about doing a computer system we would call "Lucky 7's" or Lucky num3er S7evin". It would be all about the 7's. A quad core i7, Windows 7 and my favorite... 2 RAID banks of 3 and one OS drive, for a total of, you guessed it, 7 drives...

It would cost a hell of alot of money, but after that I doubt I will have any rendering issues...

That would be my main editing computer/ storage bank...

So, thank you all for your help! I never thought I would see the day I went to intell... :)