Noob needs help with HDV rendering

G

geff

New member
Hi guys,

Firstly let me say a little about the fact that I am a complete Noob so go really easy on me. I'd consider myself a very knowedgeable computer user I've built many PC's and know my way around but this is the first bit of Video editing I have ever done. So you may have to explain some things to me. :)

I have a Sony HDR-HC3 video camcorder and finally managed to get round to editing my Holiday videos to Peru & the Caribbean....the holiday was in 2006!!! So its taken me some time.

I captured all the HDV footage using Vegas 8 and the files are m2t files of 1440x1080. So my project properties are set at this.

I've done all my editing...took 2x 8hr days! Theres 2 video tracks and 2 audio tracks with enveloping on all, some varying transitional effects between some clips but mostly cross fades and some simple generated text between some clips as well. The whole video works out at about 1.5hrs. I want to render down to an HD format that I can play on my HTPC. So I figured an HD-WMV was the best bet and set it going on the default 1080 8Mbs 30fps setting. It started going and the time said it would take over 20hrs!! Does this seem crazy to anyone else?

My PC Specs are:

Intel Q6700 quad core processor, 4GB of OCZ DDR3 memory, 4x 320GB HDD in RAID5, Nvidia 8800GT graphics (the rest you probably don't need)

Whan I checked the CPU usage it was only 30% while rendering why is Vegas not using more? Anyway....despite that I let it go overnight and checked it yesterday after 19hrs....it was still going (CPU usage still only at 30%). I checked again before bed and the CPU usage was at 0% the preview screen was black with frame number 0 highlighted but the progress bar was only at 87% saying 2hrs remaining. I left it again overnight and checked this morning and it was still saying the same so I guess it screwed up..any ideas?

So basically what I am getting to is; I really dont mind what is the best format to actually to render to. Could anyone give me advice on what format could be a better option. I still want to try and preserve as much quality as I can and I still want it in HD as my HTPC is HD. I don't have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD writer so just need it in a single video file I can play direct from the HTPC...like an mkv file or an HD DivX or if I can get it working an HD-WMV.

Any recommendations on format and the best settings to use would be really appreciated. I can't face the idea of leaving it rendering for another 24hrs only to be dissapointed again. Thanks in advance! :dankk2:
 
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Hi geff. I don't have a solution for you I'm afraid, but thought I should let you know that there are numerous reports of Vegas having rendering problems when it is an HD project and a quad core processor. Not saying it affects everybody, but you might be one of the "lucky" ones.
 
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Oh....thats not the best of news. Is it definately a Vegas problem or the encoder I'm actually using? Is there any way of getting a striped save out of Vegas? What I mean by that is a render of the video file that is the same format as the source files in this case m2t. Hopefully making the render of this video quite quick as its not compressing at all, then I can encode outside of Vegas?

Thanks for your help so far.
 
You can try the Main Concept AVC format.

As for the length of time for the render, it depends on a lot of things. Rendering to a large format like 1080 can slow it down. Lots of effects -- and particular kinds of effects (blurs, velocity ramping, etc.) -- can do the same. Also, you didn't say if you're using Vegas or Vegas Movie Studio; VMS renders more slowly.
 
Thanks for the help guys. I have actually managed to sort it. I am using Vegas 8 so I was beginning to get wound up that this cost me £300 and It wasn't working to my liking. Anyway I figured it out. The Dynamic RAM Preview was by default set at 128mb, when I started seeing this underperformance (CPU use of only 30%) I started scouring the internet and found some advice to turn it to 0....which I did and it made no difference. The other day I read some advice contary to that and it suggested putting it to 512mb, I did this and straight away noticed a massive difference in render times. The file that was originally taking over 24hrs to render finished this morning in 9hrs!!! Using 90% of my CPU pretty much all the time.

Thanks anyway guys but its sorted....just for your info as well I tried with the AVC format while I was still having the problem and the issue was worse with that codec.
 
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