Love Vegas Hate Render time

[Ralph Bowman]

I tried out Vegas 5 and 7 and loved the interface but was blown away when I added one filter to a 10 minute clip...that it took almost one hour to process. I have Canopus DVSTorm 2 and am spoiled by putting 3 filters on a clip and playing in real time and ready to output...What does it take to make Vegas render free..and I mean no render all night long for a half hour show. This is totally unproductive..fun software but not practical. Computer requirements? Money requirements?

Please tell me what you have that makes this software scream...

Thanks,

Ralph Bowman

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Hardware processing is all but gone...the Storm was a great system.
Rendering is required with the Storm for certain filters, but you already know that.
To speed render time:
1. Have a fast system.
2. System must be configured properly.
3. Use Network-based rendering
4. For fast renders, avoid certain types of filters that require spatial and temporal shifting of frame content.
5. Output same media format as source media.
6. Be sure project settings are optimized.

There are more tricks, but these are the biggies. A LOT falls under #2.
Having a dual/dual core for example, really speeds things up. Having a SATA RAID really speeds things up. You should be sure that no background apps are stealing resources, particularly antivirus (should never be on an editing station, IMO), and be sure that drives are properly allocated for storage, rendering, and OS.

[David Jimerson]

Did you apply Magic Bullet filters? The render times on those are inSANE, especially if you applied more than one.

[John W. Lee]

I just switched from 6-year-old Canopus Storm/Adobe Premiere 6.5 installed on a P4 3GHz system to Vega 7 on a Dual 2 Core system three weeks ago. I haven't tried out all the plug-ins, but all the video transition effects and color correction are in real time. I think a fast system does help a lot. I am using E6400 (2.1GHz) overclocked to 3.3GHz, 2GB RAM, and 10000 RPM Raptor drive.

John

[Paul Cascio]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

2. System must be configured properly.

4. For fast renders, avoid certain types of filters that require spatial and temporal shifting of frame content.
.

Douglas, could you expalin these in more detail? Not sure I understand what #4 means.

Also, does a 2nd computer for networked rendering provide a 50% boost or maybe just 20%?

Funny, but I just posted a similar question and discovered I put it on the wrong forum.

Thanks

[Matthew Chaboud]

So, it's actually a little harder than merely spatial filters being rough. What matters is the underlying algorithm.

For instance, the median filter is somewhat expensive to do. It's an expensive algorithm in almost all implementations (other editors, etc). The median in Vegas does some things that nobody else does, though, so I don't expect apples-to-apples comparisons. For those who don't remember, a median finds the middle of a list of values. This requires ordering those values and picking the middle (or something numerically equivalent). This is pretty time-consuming.

The gaussian blur could, in the simple case, be as slow as the convoluton kernel at certain sizes, and one might expect it to get massively more expensive as it gets larger. It doesn't. Why this is the case is left as an exercise for the reader (I have a paper on this somewhere).


Other filters are slower for different reasons. Any filter that shows up as yellow instead of green in the filter list requires state-data from frame to frame to produce consistent output. This means that it is not suitable for multi-threaded rendering. In portions of your project where filters like these are used, Vegas uses only one thread for rendering. I believe that this is covered in the help, actually.



You'll learn which filters are slow with experience. It's safe to say that filters that feel slow in playback generally feel slow in rendering, as well.



As far as network rendering goes, performance increases depend on the complexity of the project, the intermediate format used, network speed, processor speed, etc. It's tough to say what the performance benefit may be. If you have a really slow network and a straight-to-render project, say from HDV to DVD, you might end up taking longer to render over the network than otherwise.

[Ian Stark]

Great thread. Just need a little more depth in a couple of areas if that's OK?

In an attempt to improve my render times and the quality of playback while previewing I have just bought the components for a decent spec system. This is detailed in another thread but basically it's a Quad Core QX6700 (4 x 2.66GHz cores) with pretty decent kit around it including 2Gb fast memory, a 10,000RPM WD Raptor 150Gb system drive and a fast data drive. Yeehar!

So, looking at Spot's list I believe I have number 1 checked off. It's number 2 that interests me now. That and the comment about not running antivirus software. All makes sense, and it's something I have been thinking about for a while.

For the first time ever I am going to absolutely not allow this new system access to the internet. Period. Not going to happen. But I DO want it to be on the LAN to let me enjoy network rendering and access to the several terabytes of multimedia data sitting on other machines.

How do I do that? Is this a firewall thing?

If I turn off A/V software to improve CPU usage in Vegas's favour am I putting my new PC at risk by keeping it on the LAN? The other PC's on the LAN will continue to have access to the internet (albeit behind firewalls and with A/V software running).

Numbers 3 and 4 I'm comfortable with.

Number 5 - output same format as source. Does this mean if I am editing DV I should output using the AVI 'uncompressed' preset or the (in my case) PAL presets? Should I then be doing format conversions in something else, eg Squeeze? I agree that would take the conversion overhead out of the initial render but I guess that requiring a further render (in or outside of Vegas) kind of adds that overhead back in! Li'l clarification, please?

Number 6. Optimised in what way? Are you thinking from an 'audit' point of view (eg, making sure there aren't any unwanted crossfades, composite level envelope issues etc etc) or are your thoughts somewhere else?

Further clarification welcomed (from all) and thanks in advance.

Ian . . .

[Floris van Eck]

Why shouldn't antivirus be on? That would force me to disconnect the computer from the internet entirely. I would love to get rid of it but nowadays, you are forced to have antivirus and spyware software. I do believe that there is a big difference if you use Norton (system heavy) or AVG which I am using.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Your machine will run faster without antivirus, period.
It'll wear your system out faster as well.
But...if you don't have a dedicated machine and don't pay attention to what you're doing, then you definitely need antivirus.
I've never run antivirus except in testing render speeds and impact on video editing, but I'm also exceptionally careful about where I go.
Put differently, I don't walk the dark areas of Central Park at night (potentially dangerous websites), but if I did, I'd likely wear body armor and perhaps carry a gun (Antivirus).

[Matthew Chaboud]

Using Norton Antivirus is like carrying a loaded gun always pointed at your crotch, even when horse-back riding. It makes you move more slowly, and sometimes it ruins your day for no reason whatsoever.

Be careful where you go. Don't execute random code. Use Firefox or IE7. Virus scan regularly.

That last one can be done with NAV. Just don't leave the "agent" on, or whatever it's called these days. The flood of reports of this causing problems with all sorts of software just never stops.

It's worth noting that I haven't kept virus software installed on my computer for a few years. Trend Micro has a solid online scanner (java-based). We use their enterprise products at work, and they are fairly well-behaved.

[Glenn Chan]

The gaussian blur could, in the simple case, be as slow as the convoluton kernel at certain sizes, and one might expect it to get massively more expensive as it gets larger. It doesn't. Why this is the case is left as an exercise for the reader (I have a paper on this somewhere).

Would you happen to have a link for this?

[Lars Siden]

You could have a PC/server that is your intenet-gateway. That PC/Server would have two NIC:s - one for connecting to the internet and one for connecting to the LAN/switch. On that machine you can run AV / IDS and other stuff to keep the LAN clean. Just make sure that you unpack all files on that machine.

Good luck ...and I'm VERY jealous of your QX6700 - I'm looking at the QX6600, the 6700 is so expensive here in Sweden that I'll have to sell my daughter to get one :-) I'll try to keep my wallet closed until the Penryn Quad core hits the market in July...

// Lazze

[Mike Kujbida]

You folks might be interested in the Results of render times for ALL Vegas fXk thread on the Sony forum. Even though it's now a few years old, it's still a good reference chart.
Many thanks to John Meyer for doing it.

[Ron Evans]

IF you want real speed in DV then go with Edius. IT truelly is realtime for almost everything, staight out to tape from the timeline. However if you want to do fine control with keyframes, lots of multichannel audio etc then Vegas is much, much better but it is painfully slow to render to the point I almost never use it for video!!!! Like Ralph I have a Canopus DVRaptor RT2 starting with Premiere then started to use Edius ( I have Vegas from audio days). So I use the Premiere 1.5.1, Vegas 7.0e and Edius 3.62 for what are useful and the least frustating to me( Being retired seems to have reduced my tolerance level !!!). Edius as main program for its speed, Vegas for audio and some keyframe controlled needs and Premiere for titles and any rework as it has the fastest Smart render!!!
To the computer question. I have a router on my cable modem, dedicated computer for mail and internet searching with AVast and Zone Alarm and the other computers for editing have no virus checking of any sort but all are on the LAN connected through the router so can access the internet for updates etc and each other for file transfers. The editing computers have most unnessary services turned off to optimize speed. I also check with Trendmicro online check every so often. Other than program updates all other downloads come through the internet computer are checked and then transfered to any of the others as needed. Access is one way, ie the editing computers get the files from the internet computer no file sharing on them only on the shared directory on the Internet computer.

Ron Evans

[John McManimie]

I am not a video professional but I am a computer professional with several years in continuity planning, security and network administration,

I think that the absolutely worst option is to run a system that is connected to the Internet without running anti-malware software (antivirus, antispyware). If you feel comfortable using the Internet without antivirus installed, more power to you; I consider it very poor advice to suggest that other people do the same.

The options really seem to be:

1) Use a dedicated editing system that is NOT connected to the Internet.

-OR-

2) Use your common system for editing BUT disconnect from the Internet and disable antivirus *temporarily* (products such as Symantec Antivirus allow you to disable until the next reboot --- that removes the burden of remembering to enable it).

-OR-

3) Use a dual-boot system and disconnect form the Internet when using the editing system (which should be configured to run minimal processes).