25 Hour Render times & I'm not impressed w/Vegas 6

ptalsky said:
Envision,

Is everything installed on a drive other than the drive your OS is running on? (i.e. most computers run Windows on drive c:, have you loaded Vegas and all of your clips and temp directories and such to run on a separate physical drive (not just a partition on the main drive)? This will speed up your rendering, because of the way Windows prioritizes reads and writes to c:. Another thing to check is what else is loading on your computer and how it effects performance. I recently switched over to the AOL versions of McAfee VirusScan and Anti-spyware, and they significantly slowed my system down. I went to the retail versions and performance peaked back up. But, you may want to unplug your Internet connection and disable the AV and AS software before you start your render. (Another benefit to this is that your system may also be downloading updates during your render, which will also slow things down signficantly.) You can also go into task manager and raise the priority of Vegas while rendering to improve performance.


I've been out for a few days, smashed with deadlines, and see this post got brought back to life. Even though I've got a pretty good system, I'm positive I'm not utilizing it to its fullest potential. I do have it connected to the internet, I do have a software firewall (in addition to hardware firewall) & AV going in the background, and unfortunately have EVERYTHING on one fat drive (2x 250GB drives raid striped). My next upgrade will likely be a small raptor for running my operating system on, and then all software & video files on the striped drive.

I've also given serious thought to just getting a Mac G5 dual 2.5Ghz, with a Virtual Windows platform on it to run all my PC software. I've heard that some PC software is actually more stable in that environment than on a true PC. I wonder how Vegas would do on it? This way, I could learn Final Cut Pro on my own time (just for jobs that require it), but stick with what I know & love, which is Vegas.
 
Living Weapon said:
envision, some quick questions about your system, Does it display smoothly when previewing (at best quality) footage in an external moniter? Just asking because a computer store where I live has a system on sale almost like yours execpt just 1gig of ram and only 1 250gb hard drive. Are you satisfied with your systems performance besides the issue you had with the Vegas 6 program?

It displays smoothly when previewing, but probably not in best quality. Since it's just preview anyway, I only used auto draft mode. With as many effects & transitions as I tend to use, I'm assuming if I were to put it in best quality it would get choppy. As stated in my previous reply before this, I'm probably not running my system like a responsible editor, as it's not a true dedicated system. I've still got a few things in the background (AV, etc.), and run everything off one drive for now (work with what'cha got).

My ENTIRE system, with a 19 inch LCD, Antec Sonota Steel case, 5.1 surround, etc. (& all the stuff I mentioned before) priced out at about $2,100 ... which I pieced together with stuff from Costco & a locally owned computer store. That was in Feb of this year.
 
Jubal28 said:
Even if there’s only one MB effect on a single track, if you’ve got it on more than one track at the same point on the timeline (say, with a partial transparency, or picture-in-picture/split screen, etc.), then you’re doubling the bear of a render time. Sounds like there might be even more than two at play here, with transparency and/or resizing going on. Ouch ouch ouch ouch.

Yeah, I probably had at least 3 MB's going at the same time due to the multiple tracks ... no chained MB effects though. I'll have to get off my ass soon and go check out Vaast's site & pick up your stuff in place of MB.
 
A way i've kept my mb rendering to minimium is by putting the MB effect on the master video bus instead of each video track. This way I know it's only doing one MB pass, it's also much easier to turn on and off for editing (as MB is to laggy to playback with) To see your video bus track press Ctrl+Shift+B or View->Video Bus Track.
If you are trying to get different looks, try using Vegas effects (brightness/contrast/levels/colors) and then go with a consistant MB look.
 
GREAT! I've never thought to put it on the Master Video Bus ... I'll have to give it a shot, and see how it works. Thanks!
 
Envision said:
I've also given serious thought to just getting a Mac G5 dual 2.5Ghz, with a Virtual Windows platform on it to run all my PC software. I've heard that some PC software is actually more stable in that environment than on a true PC. I wonder how Vegas would do on it? This way, I could learn Final Cut Pro on my own time (just for jobs that require it), but stick with what I know & love, which is Vegas.

I don't know where you heard that, but as far as I know Virtual PC running on a Mac is not capable of running ANYTHING AT ALL let alone an NLE. Doesn't matter how fast your rig is, with Virtual PC running, it will recognize your 2.5 as like a 186 or thereabouts... UNLESS the emulation has been improved since the time I have used it or my buddies on Macs have been aware of it, perhaps someone else can elaborate.
 
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