Time seems to be a premium when editing HD video. We hear horror stories of guys who hit the render button, go to bed and when they wake up their poor computers are still grinding away. Others say they don't have problems. But nobody says how long their systems actually take.

You guys out there who are sucessfully rendering final products would help those of us who haven't if you gave us ballpark figures of how long your rendering process took or if you can add effects and play them back in real time. Please! only guys who are on "consumer" computers. Not you Pros running systems we regular guys couldn't get our hands on.(above $6,000 for instance )

Give us your systems and give us your times. Help us make upgrade decisions. Just ballpark estimates would be a great help.

Recently did a 4 mintue piece shot on HDV - added a Nattress warm film effect and sweetened audio hit render and it took 31 mintues. Simple dissolves for some transitions and very few graphics. Used a Dual G5 2.3 with 2GB Ram and a RAID running (4 x 160 SATA Drives) In RAID mode if you use 4 Drives instead of 2 - in the case of my system the thru put went from about 100 megabytes a seconds to 220 megabytes per second. Vast performace improvement for HD editing.

Personally whether your on a PC or Mac I believe in how fast your storage devices are will impact your performance along with your CPU and Memory. But what good is a 3Ghz plus machine if your write speed to you storage is slow... also perfer at least 1GB of Memory or more...

Hope this helps...

Chaz, It's a rather open-ended comparison because of the huge variation in kinds of render that can be involved (no effects, simple effects, intensive effects etc etc).

Can I suggest you set us a task to undertake some simple, fairly standard rendering scenario of your choosing that we can apply to a few minutes of footage and then report back to you?

Jeff,
Now that's what I'm talking about. Just a little nugget of info. like that opens a huge door of understanding for those of us who are standing on the edge... ready to take the plunge.

Graham,

I hear what your saying, and I agree. Ok, lets say keep it under 5 min. Any kind of shot transitions and only color correcting type effects. Keep it super simple and avoid as many intensive effects as possible. Just to keep it easy.

Now, those of you who would like to report on projects you either finished or are working on (whatever the time and whatever the length), please do so because the more wide based and varied the responses are the better our education. More info = better education. So don't hesitate to jump right in with you two cents worth.

OK here goes:

Three minutes of video involving a 10sec fade-in, a 10sec crossfade, and a 10sec fade-out - with color-correction applied throughout.

I'm using PremierePro1.5.1 with AspectHD. The footage is from an HC1 (i.e. 1080i60) transcoded during capture to 1440x1080 Cineform avi.

My system is about the minimum - a Pentium 3.0GHz 800MHZFSB, 1GB DDR3200, video on 2x7200rpm SATA drives in RAID config. It has been fine at providing real-time preview of all the Cineform-based effects.

Rendering out to an HDV transport stream: 22 min

Rendering out to a Cineform 1440x1080 avi: 19 min

Without the color-correction it would have obviously been MUCH faster, as Premiere would have only smart-rendered the fades.

Hope that helps!

I will report back here once I receive my HDR-HC1 next week!