Rendering

[Steve Burke]

Hi

Just rendering my latest production......

I notice my PC is running at about 62% CPU Usage, and has approx 512MB memory left. ( Duo-Core 3GHZ, 1GB RAM )

The question is this...... Why doesnt the rendering go faster. I would have thought that at least the CPU should be maxed out. Could understand the CPU been a bit down if no free memory available.

Anyone have any ideas whats causing this?

( PS - CPU 1 averaging 80%, CPU2 averaging 40% )

Thanks.

Steve

[Jason White]

Disk array speed to be the cause. Your disk drives probably can't dishout and put back fast enough to max your chips all the way.

[Steve Burke]

Thanks for your feedback, Jason.

I cannot understand why, as they are bussed at 133MHz, 7200rpm speed and have a 16MB cache......?????? Have I got them configured wrong somehow?

Steve

[Mike Teutsch]

Originally Posted by Steve Burke

Thanks for your feedback, Jason.

I cannot understand why, as they are bussed at 133MHz, 7200rpm speed and have a 16MB cache......?????? Have I got them configured wrong somehow?

Steve

How many do you have and how are they configured?

[Steve Burke]

Hi

I have 2x HDDs and they are configured as separate logical drives - I dont have them RAID 0. They are just hooked up to the PC bus in the normal way...... any ideas what I have wrong?

Thanks

PS PC1 has 2xHDD's and PC2 has 2xHDD's - they are networked, but I dont import or use files across the network at all. All used files reside in the project directory on the same HDD.

[Mike Teutsch]

If you only have two drives, one drive should be for audio and one for video files. I would suggest your main system drive handle audio and the program itself, and the second drive be dedicated to video files.

Mike

[Steve Burke]

Wouldnt that make things slower as it would be rendering from 2 separate disk drives? I was always told to keep all project files together to avoid the 'cross disk' delays??????? Is this true? How would separating the audio from the video HDD render faster? Im a little confused?

Thanks.

PS - DV avi's have their audio 'embeded' inside so how would you separate them in any case?

Steve

[Mike Teutsch]

In a word---No!

Check your manual under scratch disks, and it will tell you the same thing.

Mike

[Steve Burke]

Ok, but surely you agree that it is impractical to unlink all clips, to remove the embeded nature of the DV file audio, and then save the audio to a separate disk????? How does this work in the manner you describe?

[Mike Teutsch]

Originally Posted by Steve Burke

Ok, but surely you agree that it is impractical to unlink all clips, to remove the embeded nature of the DV file audio, and then save the audio to a separate disk????? How does this work in the manner you describe?

Whoa!!!! We are talking about when you are capturing, not after you have them in the timeline.

Go to Edit-Prefferences-Scratch Disks. Then set your video capture location to your secondary drive. That should at least help a little. Too late for the project you have running unless you want to recapture or move the files manually.

This way the processor can draw and work from two disks at once. I use three drives with the files divided up between them. My processor runs at nearly 100% using about 1.5 gig of ram when rendering.

Please get out your manual and look up scratch disks and read what it says.

Good Luck---Mike

[Steve Burke]

ahhhh I now understand you, Mike. Thanks for your patience..... :-)

What you say makes full sense now, especially with a dual processor system, as 1 processor can be caching the audio as the other is doing the video bit from different disks...... I agree the manual does say to separate the disks, but for the life of me I couldnt understand why. It is now clear thanks to your explanation.

Thank You.

Steve