Vegas Video discussions from 2003

Glen Elliott · October 6th, 2003, 01:12 PM

Maybe Vegas is simply properly setting a flag so the media play displays correctly.

Hmm very good point. Quite a possibility.

Joris Beverloo · October 6th, 2003, 03:14 PM

at first I had 512 MB of RAM in my system and I upgraded it to 1 GB of RAM. When rendering I did not notice a thing, just about 10 seconds faster on a total duration of 28 minutes of rendering time. So that is peanuts.
In my eyes it only makes a difference when there are many applications open, like photoshop, vegas, etc, maybe then you use more than the 512 MB you have now.

Randall Campbell · October 6th, 2003, 06:43 PM

I have 1G of RAM in my computer. Vegas in general will not be faster or use the additional memory. I have set mine up with a 512MB RAM preview that I use often to speed up my work for checking edits. This is why I got the extra memory.

Randall

Glen Elliott · October 8th, 2003, 06:28 AM

Finished it last night. A wedding that took me close to twice as long beings I'm still becoming aclimated with the new workflow. I used a workflow similar to Edwards in that I did each part of the program in sections. When completed I assembled them on the timeline and encoded the MP2 (DVDA Template)@ 7mb/s constant bitrate, then wave (PCM) for audio...I had plenty of space and heard that AC3 can attenuate the audio. Did a simple "single movie" template in DVDA and burned it. Popped it in and it played perfect. Some of my color corrections are a bit light but that could be because of the discrepency between the little 13" TV I edit on and my 36" HD Wega I was watching it on.
I wasn't sure if it was going to work because I read over at the SoFo forums that you have to remove Veritas burning software because it conflicts with DVDA. I didn't seem to affect me at all, thankfully.

Lastly I do have one question however. When I encoded my video (MP2 @ 7 mb/s) in Vegas then imported it into DVDA...I do have to go to "Optimize DVD" and change some settings. I saw that the default bit-rate was 8mb/s. What if I had left it at 8 even though the MP2 I encoded was at 7. Whould it have to be re-rendered? I'd naturally think YES, however when I changed the slider the file never displayed an exclamation point only the green check like it was compliant.
Oddly enough when building the disk it took about 10 minutes even before it started burning, is this normal? It said "rendering" in the dialog during this time yet both my video and audio had green checks and I didn't choose to "re-sample video". Is this step just building the DVD, and should it take 10 minutes. In all burning a DVD from start to finish @ 2x took 35 minutes! Is that normal? What kind of times do you guys get?

Edward Troxel · October 8th, 2003, 08:23 AM

Glen,

Congratulations on finishing your project!

Only certain parts of Veritas software will conflict. Apparently you don't have those parts installed. Specifically anything relating to DLA.

As for the Optimize, if you pass it a valid file, it will NOT be re-rendered so the slider makes no difference. Just make sure the Optimize screen says that it does not need to be rendered (i.e. a green checkmark beside it).

Unless you told it otherwise, DVDA probably converted the audio to AC-3 anyway. It does this by default. I have noticed no difference between the original WAV and the AC-3. If you ever want to do 5.1, you HAVE to go to AC-3.

That sounds like a decent render and burn time to me.

Glen Elliott · October 8th, 2003, 08:52 AM

So what your saying is that "prepare" time was the audio being converted to AC-3? I think I found a setting to make it use WAV though. Say if everything is set (in other words the MPG2 is compliant and the audio is as well- with no need to re-render) when you go to burn the disc should it still take ten minutes or so before actually beginning to burn? Does creating the Video and Audio TS folders, etc take that long to build?

Kelvin Kelm · October 8th, 2003, 09:50 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Glen Elliott : Does creating the Video and Audio TS folders, etc take that long to build? -->>>

Doesn't sound out of line. The audio and video have to be multiplexed together to create the large VOB files.

Bruce A. Christenson · October 8th, 2003, 10:09 AM

For the very first DVD, DVD-A appears to manipulate the MPEG-2 and audio files you've provided, into the appropriate burnable files. But it won't re-render proper files. These new files go in a temp directory. Once you've done this, you can do successive burns without repeating this step, and your throughput will be higher. That's why if you want to do a burn of a totally new DVD, it asks you if you want to overwrite the exisiting project files in the temp directory.

Sean R Allen · October 8th, 2003, 01:18 PM

> Does creating the Video and Audio TS folders, etc take that long to build?

For a full DVD, yes, it can. It has to basically copy your source files and mux them into the .VOBs that get burned onto the DVD.

10 mins seems a little long though, it's usually 3-4 mins for me. The time difference was probably what someone mentioned above, converting your .wavs to AC3. Save some HD space, use AC3, nobody will be able to tell the difference.

Steve Sawtelle · October 8th, 2003, 06:14 PM

In response to Edward's question, looking to speed up (reduce) rendering time.

Jesse Greenawalt · October 8th, 2003, 07:59 PM

Rendering time is all about CPU clock speed.

Glenn Chan · October 8th, 2003, 08:01 PM

You can get a very marginal increase in speed from lowering your RAM timings. You have to do this through your motherboard's BIOS. There is a certain point where the quality of your RAM will limit how low you can go (system stability is affected). Quality RAM may let you achieve lower timings but it is likely not worth it. You can get a marginal increase in speed by running 4 sticks of single-sided RAM (same brand) instead of 2 sticks of RAM, but that probably isn't worth it either.

Is your Pentium processor a hyperthreading one? The newest Pentiums have a faster front side bus speed and hyperthreading, both which should speed up rendering. Unfortunately, you would need to pay for new RAM, processor, and possibly motherboard.

Another possibility for improving system performance is overclocking your system. You could get around 15%-50% improvement in system performance depending on how far you go without compromising system stability. If your motherboard allows it try running a 5:4 memory divider and running prime95 (free download) overnight to test system stability. Running the 5:4 memory divider will increase CPU speed by 25% and decrease RAM performance by a bit. There are some cheap improvements you can make to increase system performance further (or to get your computer stable if for some reason this change makes it unstable). The cheapest improvement is properly applying a tube of Radio Shack heat sink grease ($4?).

Edward Troxel · October 8th, 2003, 08:34 PM

To speed up rendering you need:

1) A faster CPU
2) A faster hard drive
3) Faster busses between the various components.

Don Donatello · October 8th, 2003, 10:49 PM

IMO VCD is a little better then VHS ( no scan lines, white spec's) .. i use it often for works in progress as i do NOT want persons to have higher quality till project is finished .

also many commercials i've worked on i (also clients) view different edits on the web ( they post 352x240 mpeg1 ).

mpeg 1 plays pretty much on any computer and i have found VCD play in most DVD players.

we just sent out 30 SVCD's and 30 mpeg2/mpeg1/wmv9 data Cd's. 23 persons said they could not view SVCD on home DVD player ,
14 could not view mpeg 2 on computer ... 1 could not view mpeg 1, 17 could not view wmv9 ...

Peter Wright · October 9th, 2003, 01:10 AM

If you're not after auto play or menus, you can use CD for demos by creating WMV files at the original frame size. Try the 3 Mbps setting if space allows.

They will play in Media player, Alt/Enter makes them full screen and they can look fabulous.

If you use WMV9, viewers will need the latest Media Player, downloadable from MS.

October 8th, 2003, 06:28 AM	#1279
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Finished first large project in Vegas! Finished it last night. A wedding that took me close to twice as long beings I'm still becoming aclimated with the new workflow. I used a workflow similar to Edwards in that I did each part of the program in sections. When completed I assembled them on the timeline and encoded the MP2 (DVDA Template)@ 7mb/s constant bitrate, then wave (PCM) for audio...I had plenty of space and heard that AC3 can attenuate the audio. Did a simple "single movie" template in DVDA and burned it. Popped it in and it played perfect. Some of my color corrections are a bit light but that could be because of the discrepency between the little 13" TV I edit on and my 36" HD Wega I was watching it on. I wasn't sure if it was going to work because I read over at the SoFo forums that you have to remove Veritas burning software because it conflicts with DVDA. I didn't seem to affect me at all, thankfully. Lastly I do have one question however. When I encoded my video (MP2 @ 7 mb/s) in Vegas then imported it into DVDA...I do have to go to "Optimize DVD" and change some settings. I saw that the default bit-rate was 8mb/s. What if I had left it at 8 even though the MP2 I encoded was at 7. Whould it have to be re-rendered? I'd naturally think YES, however when I changed the slider the file never displayed an exclamation point only the green check like it was compliant. Oddly enough when building the disk it took about 10 minutes even before it started burning, is this normal? It said "rendering" in the dialog during this time yet both my video and audio had green checks and I didn't choose to "re-sample video". Is this step just building the DVD, and should it take 10 minutes. In all burning a DVD from start to finish @ 2x took 35 minutes! Is that normal? What kind of times do you guys get?

October 6th, 2003, 01:12 PM	#1276
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	Maybe Vegas is simply properly setting a flag so the media play displays correctly. Hmm very good point. Quite a possibility.

October 6th, 2003, 03:14 PM	#1277
Joris Beverloo Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Nijmegen, Netherlands Posts: 29	at first I had 512 MB of RAM in my system and I upgraded it to 1 GB of RAM. When rendering I did not notice a thing, just about 10 seconds faster on a total duration of 28 minutes of rendering time. So that is peanuts. In my eyes it only makes a difference when there are many applications open, like photoshop, vegas, etc, maybe then you use more than the 512 MB you have now.

October 6th, 2003, 06:43 PM	#1278
Randall Campbell Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Durham, NC Posts: 69	I have 1G of RAM in my computer. Vegas in general will not be faster or use the additional memory. I have set mine up with a 512MB RAM preview that I use often to speed up my work for checking edits. This is why I got the extra memory. Randall

October 8th, 2003, 08:23 AM	#1280
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	Glen, Congratulations on finishing your project! Only certain parts of Veritas software will conflict. Apparently you don't have those parts installed. Specifically anything relating to DLA. As for the Optimize, if you pass it a valid file, it will NOT be re-rendered so the slider makes no difference. Just make sure the Optimize screen says that it does not need to be rendered (i.e. a green checkmark beside it). Unless you told it otherwise, DVDA probably converted the audio to AC-3 anyway. It does this by default. I have noticed no difference between the original WAV and the AC-3. If you ever want to do 5.1, you HAVE to go to AC-3. That sounds like a decent render and burn time to me.

October 8th, 2003, 08:52 AM	#1281
Glen Elliott Wrangler Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Philadelphia, PA Posts: 2,898	So what your saying is that "prepare" time was the audio being converted to AC-3? I think I found a setting to make it use WAV though. Say if everything is set (in other words the MPG2 is compliant and the audio is as well- with no need to re-render) when you go to burn the disc should it still take ten minutes or so before actually beginning to burn? Does creating the Video and Audio TS folders, etc take that long to build?

October 8th, 2003, 09:50 AM	#1282
Kelvin Kelm Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Katy, Texas Posts: 49	<<<-- Originally posted by Glen Elliott : Does creating the Video and Audio TS folders, etc take that long to build? -->>> Doesn't sound out of line. The audio and video have to be multiplexed together to create the large VOB files.

October 8th, 2003, 10:09 AM	#1283
Bruce A. Christenson Regular Crew Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Forest Grove, OR Posts: 122	For the very first DVD, DVD-A appears to manipulate the MPEG-2 and audio files you've provided, into the appropriate burnable files. But it won't re-render proper files. These new files go in a temp directory. Once you've done this, you can do successive burns without repeating this step, and your throughput will be higher. That's why if you want to do a burn of a totally new DVD, it asks you if you want to overwrite the exisiting project files in the temp directory.

October 8th, 2003, 01:18 PM	#1284
Sean R Allen Regular Crew Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: RTP, NC Posts: 66	> Does creating the Video and Audio TS folders, etc take that long to build? For a full DVD, yes, it can. It has to basically copy your source files and mux them into the .VOBs that get burned onto the DVD. 10 mins seems a little long though, it's usually 3-4 mins for me. The time difference was probably what someone mentioned above, converting your .wavs to AC3. Save some HD space, use AC3, nobody will be able to tell the difference.

October 8th, 2003, 06:14 PM	#1285
Steve Sawtelle New Boot Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Storrs, CT Posts: 6	In response to Edward's question, looking to speed up (reduce) rendering time.

October 8th, 2003, 07:59 PM	#1286
Jesse Greenawalt Tourist Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 1	Rendering time is all about CPU clock speed.

October 8th, 2003, 08:01 PM	#1287
Glenn Chan Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 4,750	You can get a very marginal increase in speed from lowering your RAM timings. You have to do this through your motherboard's BIOS. There is a certain point where the quality of your RAM will limit how low you can go (system stability is affected). Quality RAM may let you achieve lower timings but it is likely not worth it. You can get a marginal increase in speed by running 4 sticks of single-sided RAM (same brand) instead of 2 sticks of RAM, but that probably isn't worth it either. Is your Pentium processor a hyperthreading one? The newest Pentiums have a faster front side bus speed and hyperthreading, both which should speed up rendering. Unfortunately, you would need to pay for new RAM, processor, and possibly motherboard. Another possibility for improving system performance is overclocking your system. You could get around 15%-50% improvement in system performance depending on how far you go without compromising system stability. If your motherboard allows it try running a 5:4 memory divider and running prime95 (free download) overnight to test system stability. Running the 5:4 memory divider will increase CPU speed by 25% and decrease RAM performance by a bit. There are some cheap improvements you can make to increase system performance further (or to get your computer stable if for some reason this change makes it unstable). The cheapest improvement is properly applying a tube of Radio Shack heat sink grease ($4?).

October 8th, 2003, 08:34 PM	#1288
Edward Troxel Sponsor: JET DV Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Southern Illinois Posts: 7,953	To speed up rendering you need: 1) A faster CPU 2) A faster hard drive 3) Faster busses between the various components.

October 8th, 2003, 10:49 PM	#1289
Don Donatello Hawaiian Shirt Mogul Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: northern cailfornia Posts: 1,261	IMO VCD is a little better then VHS ( no scan lines, white spec's) .. i use it often for works in progress as i do NOT want persons to have higher quality till project is finished . also many commercials i've worked on i (also clients) view different edits on the web ( they post 352x240 mpeg1 ). mpeg 1 plays pretty much on any computer and i have found VCD play in most DVD players. we just sent out 30 SVCD's and 30 mpeg2/mpeg1/wmv9 data Cd's. 23 persons said they could not view SVCD on home DVD player , 14 could not view mpeg 2 on computer ... 1 could not view mpeg 1, 17 could not view wmv9 ...

October 9th, 2003, 01:10 AM	#1290
Peter Wright Regular Crew Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Perth, Western Australia Posts: 193	If you're not after auto play or menus, you can use CD for demos by creating WMV files at the original frame size. Try the 3 Mbps setting if space allows. They will play in Media player, Alt/Enter makes them full screen and they can look fabulous. If you use WMV9, viewers will need the latest Media Player, downloadable from MS.