Advice for speeding up rendering of hdv footage on my pc please... at DVinfo.net

Stick Tully · October 22nd, 2006, 12:49 PM

Hey all, got my fx1 over the weekend and absolutly love the image quality, captured no problem at all but any colour correction/de interlacing/after effects takes a long time on my pc... i know hdv contains much more information than dv but i am hoping to speed up the process... ive tried using cineform aspect and its a great improvement but still rather sluggish

im running

pentium 3.4ghz
2gb of ram
128mb gecube x700 radeon graphics card

would i be best to upgrade?

thanks

Stick

Liam Carlin · October 22nd, 2006, 01:21 PM

i dont really know all that much about HDV but to help speed up XP, i recommend this.

http://www.computerforum.com/54420-t...indows-xp.html

it really makes a difference. it may only be a little but its made a big difference to the performance of computer.

Graham Hickling · October 22nd, 2006, 02:40 PM

AspectHD will run fine with this specs, provided you have 7200rpm drives with plenty of space.

Without some numbers its hard to say if its more "sluggish" than it should be with those specs. Rendering is never speedy, but you should have real-time scrubbing and preview...

Paul R Johnson · October 22nd, 2006, 02:50 PM

with that pc - you should have an advantage on many of us anyway - perhaps you're just expecting a little too much?

Matthew Nayman · October 25th, 2006, 07:02 AM

Now, honestly...

How good are Aspect HD's cineform files compared to real MT2's?

I see that when I pause a Cineform file, the colour space reverts back to HD and it looks so much better...

Lee Wilson · October 25th, 2006, 08:04 AM

Get yourself a big and fast firewire 800 extenal drive, store your footage on this and not on your internal drive.

Graham Hickling · October 25th, 2006, 09:11 AM

When you play the file, you are probably seeing it displayed via the graphics card's "overlay" surface. Nvidia cards in particular often have a mismatch in color settings between overlay and non-overlay display. The Cineform website has information on how to get them matching.

Kevin Shaw · October 25th, 2006, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stick Tully

...any colour correction/de interlacing/after effects takes a long time on my pc...

Are you talking about editing itself being sluggish, or the render time back out to a finished video file? The latter can be time-consuming even on today's fastest computers depending on what you're doing, because there's a huge number of calculations involved. In the long run it would be best to upgrade to at least a dual-core processor and maybe even a quad-core setup, and make sure other components (e.g. hard drives) are also current.

Whatever performance you got on your computer with DV, expect 1/4 of that or less in HDV (1080i) because there's over 4 times as much data. That's a big performance hit.

Jon Snyder · October 25th, 2006, 03:47 PM

First, switch out whatever hard drive you are running and instead, run a pair of Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptors, and put them in a RAID 0.

Second, switch out your processor and get the new Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 or 6700. (you will need a motherboard upgrade)

Doesn't hurt to upgrade RAM, especially when you are working with file sizes that large, but don't expect much of a performance increase. Video card upgrade won't help either because it's CPU intensive.

Lastly, upgrade your OS to XP Pro 64 bit edition. I've heard of increases of RAM performance which will give you a slight edge.

Doing these things will probably halve your rendering time. CPU increases will give decent improvements to games, but in number crunching scenarios such as rendering, it's almost always the most performance increase you can get.

All in all this will cost 1200-1300. Not the most efficiant increase you can do with your money since you're coming off a P4 3.4, but if you want to increase it, thats what you do.

Jon

Jon Snyder · October 25th, 2006, 03:50 PM

It is true that quad cores are coming out this month (in theory, next year in practice), however it will take software copanies a few months AT LEAST to offer patches to utilize it. Factor in 6-9 month drop of prices to become reasonable and you're waiting a full year - not worth it.

Graham Hickling · October 25th, 2006, 04:59 PM

First, switch out whatever hard drive you are running and instead, run a pair of Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptors, and put them in a RAID 0.

Why would that help? HDV has essentially the same datarate as DV.

Stick Tully · October 26th, 2006, 02:58 AM

Thanks for all your help people... i turned off open gl in after effects and its all running much better now

£1200 would be a lot for an upgrade so i'll stick with what ive got for now
thankyou again

Stick

Ken Hodson · October 26th, 2006, 04:58 PM

Yes Graham, I would also question some of the logic offered here.
Dual Raptors will not offer any substantial benefits over two standard 7200rpm drives. Only a much, much bigger price tag. As well I have difficulties understanding the recommendation for a big external firewire 800 drive. Sure an external drive is nice to have if one has a need for portability, but doesn't have any advantage over simply adding another internal drive, which will cost a lot less.
Having a separate physical drive(Not simply a partition) for O/S and programs, and one(or preferred a RAID) for video files, and one or more as needed for storage. De-frag often. Second is learn what Stick has already done, learn to tweak the software for better performance.

George Ellis · October 26th, 2006, 07:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ken Hodson

Yes Graham, I would also question some of the logic offered here.
Dual Raptors will not offer any substantial benefits over two standard 7200rpm drives. Only a much, much bigger price tag. As well I have difficulties understanding the recommendation for a big external firewire 800 drive. Sure an external drive is nice to have if one has a need for portability, but doesn't have any advantage over simply adding another internal drive, which will cost a lot less.
Having a separate physical drive(Not simply a partition) for O/S and programs, and one(or preferred a RAID) for video files, and one or more as needed for storage. De-frag often. Second is learn what Stick has already done, learn to tweak the software for better performance.

I second this advice. Your motherboard may not support a Core Duo either. OS, storage, and render drives are probably the biggest benefit for your configuration. Watch the prices too. New dual cores that would be good for editing are rapidly approaching the $1000 mark.

Robert Young · October 30th, 2006, 03:09 PM

My understanding is that if you are going to edit in the original "native" m2t file format you need max processing power, but the data rate is about the same as DV.
If you are editing in the Cineform CFHD intermediate format, it is not as processor intensive, but the data rate is about 4X that of DV- so you need bigger and faster drives (DV 1 hr = about 12 Gig, CFHD 1 hr = about 40 Gig.). Internal 7,200 RPM SATA RAID 0 seems to be quite adequate.

October 22nd, 2006, 12:49 PM	#1
Stick Tully Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Brighton Posts: 92	Advice for speeding up rendering of hdv footage on my pc please... Hey all, got my fx1 over the weekend and absolutly love the image quality, captured no problem at all but any colour correction/de interlacing/after effects takes a long time on my pc... i know hdv contains much more information than dv but i am hoping to speed up the process... ive tried using cineform aspect and its a great improvement but still rather sluggish im running pentium 3.4ghz 2gb of ram 128mb gecube x700 radeon graphics card would i be best to upgrade? thanks Stick

October 22nd, 2006, 01:21 PM	#2
Liam Carlin Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: UK Posts: 154	Is it XP? i dont really know all that much about HDV but to help speed up XP, i recommend this. http://www.computerforum.com/54420-t...indows-xp.html it really makes a difference. it may only be a little but its made a big difference to the performance of computer. __________________ www.basicproduction.co.uk

October 25th, 2006, 03:47 PM	#9
Jon Snyder Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Mesa, AZ USA Posts: 35	Here's what you do... First, switch out whatever hard drive you are running and instead, run a pair of Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptors, and put them in a RAID 0. Second, switch out your processor and get the new Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 or 6700. (you will need a motherboard upgrade) Doesn't hurt to upgrade RAM, especially when you are working with file sizes that large, but don't expect much of a performance increase. Video card upgrade won't help either because it's CPU intensive. Lastly, upgrade your OS to XP Pro 64 bit edition. I've heard of increases of RAM performance which will give you a slight edge. Doing these things will probably halve your rendering time. CPU increases will give decent improvements to games, but in number crunching scenarios such as rendering, it's almost always the most performance increase you can get. All in all this will cost 1200-1300. Not the most efficiant increase you can do with your money since you're coming off a P4 3.4, but if you want to increase it, thats what you do. Jon

October 26th, 2006, 04:58 PM	#13
Ken Hodson Trustee Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Vancouver BC Canada Posts: 1,315	Yes Graham, I would also question some of the logic offered here. Dual Raptors will not offer any substantial benefits over two standard 7200rpm drives. Only a much, much bigger price tag. As well I have difficulties understanding the recommendation for a big external firewire 800 drive. Sure an external drive is nice to have if one has a need for portability, but doesn't have any advantage over simply adding another internal drive, which will cost a lot less. Having a separate physical drive(Not simply a partition) for O/S and programs, and one(or preferred a RAID) for video files, and one or more as needed for storage. De-frag often. Second is learn what Stick has already done, learn to tweak the software for better performance. __________________ Damnit Jim, I'm a film maker not a sysytems tech.

October 22nd, 2006, 02:40 PM	#3
Graham Hickling Trustee Join Date: May 2004 Location: Knoxville, Tennessee Posts: 1,669	AspectHD will run fine with this specs, provided you have 7200rpm drives with plenty of space. Without some numbers its hard to say if its more "sluggish" than it should be with those specs. Rendering is never speedy, but you should have real-time scrubbing and preview...

October 22nd, 2006, 02:50 PM	#4
Paul R Johnson Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Lowestoft - UK Posts: 4,045	with that pc - you should have an advantage on many of us anyway - perhaps you're just expecting a little too much?

October 25th, 2006, 07:02 AM	#5
Matthew Nayman Major Player Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Toronto Posts: 917	Now, honestly... How good are Aspect HD's cineform files compared to real MT2's? I see that when I pause a Cineform file, the colour space reverts back to HD and it looks so much better...

October 25th, 2006, 08:04 AM	#6
Lee Wilson Major Player Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: London UK Posts: 376	Get yourself a big and fast firewire 800 extenal drive, store your footage on this and not on your internal drive.

October 25th, 2006, 09:11 AM	#7
Graham Hickling Trustee Join Date: May 2004 Location: Knoxville, Tennessee Posts: 1,669	When you play the file, you are probably seeing it displayed via the graphics card's "overlay" surface. Nvidia cards in particular often have a mismatch in color settings between overlay and non-overlay display. The Cineform website has information on how to get them matching.

October 25th, 2006, 03:50 PM	#10
Jon Snyder Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Mesa, AZ USA Posts: 35	It is true that quad cores are coming out this month (in theory, next year in practice), however it will take software copanies a few months AT LEAST to offer patches to utilize it. Factor in 6-9 month drop of prices to become reasonable and you're waiting a full year - not worth it.

October 25th, 2006, 04:59 PM	#11
Graham Hickling Trustee Join Date: May 2004 Location: Knoxville, Tennessee Posts: 1,669	First, switch out whatever hard drive you are running and instead, run a pair of Western Digital 10,000 RPM Raptors, and put them in a RAID 0. Why would that help? HDV has essentially the same datarate as DV.

October 26th, 2006, 02:58 AM	#12
Stick Tully Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Brighton Posts: 92	Thanks for all your help people... i turned off open gl in after effects and its all running much better now £1200 would be a lot for an upgrade so i'll stick with what ive got for now thankyou again Stick

October 30th, 2006, 03:09 PM	#15
Robert Young Trustee Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Coronado Island Posts: 1,472	My understanding is that if you are going to edit in the original "native" m2t file format you need max processing power, but the data rate is about the same as DV. If you are editing in the Cineform CFHD intermediate format, it is not as processor intensive, but the data rate is about 4X that of DV- so you need bigger and faster drives (DV 1 hr = about 12 Gig, CFHD 1 hr = about 40 Gig.). Internal 7,200 RPM SATA RAID 0 seems to be quite adequate.