Bizarre VERY Slow AVI Render Scenario

[maxtrack]

I have been rendering AVI files to AVI on disk and to DVD
using Pinnacle Studio 9 with NO problems for months, maybe years.
Recently I changed cameras from a 1 ccd to a 3 ccd with 16:9 60i capability.
I filmed 1 hour 40 minutes of tape with the 3 ccd in 16:9 60i (live theatre)
then dumped to hard disk as one file 22.5 GB in AVI
(Then I had to re-use the tape, did not have a spare tape)

Next I asked Studio 9 to render only the first 19 min 30 sec of the 22.5 GB file
to an AVI file. all I did was chop off everything after the 19 min 30 sec mark,
then said "make movie" to disk. ( I want smaller files to work with and back up)

It has been running for FOUR (4) days, and does show all signs of making progress,
although somethings are weird:

CPU shows 2~4% for about 9 seconds, then at the 10th second shows 35~40%,
then drops back to 2~4%. Page File constant at 477 MB

I would expect CPU to be almost constantly maxed out. (???)
A render of this size previously took about 45 minutes, but that was
data from the 1 ccd camera, and NOT extracted from a 22.5 GB file.

so . . . has anyone had a similar experience?
can anyone explain what is going on? why is it taking so long?

Thank you very much in advance,
~ Allen

[aedipuss]

which cam? what you dumped on the hard drive is probably an HDmpeg of some sort. about the right size. are you sure studio 9 can even handle HD? you may need to upgrade to the latest version studio 11.

[maxtrack]

from the 3 ccd camera I downloaded SD (not HD) 16:9 60i
to an AVI file

I was wondering if the 60i might have been a factor in the very long rendering time.
I did not have a specific reason for using 60i,
I was playing with the camera and that was the way I left it. . . .

~ Allen

[maxtrack]

supplemental info:

I did text chat with pinnacle support,
I told them what I was doing, as per my first post here.
They did not indicate 3 ccd SD 16:9 60i would be a problem,
in fact they said it was not the cause of the problem.

Question is whether or not to believe them.

~ Allen

[Soopafresh]

Might you have noise reduction or high quality deinterlacing turned on? That'll certainly lengthen the render time. You should post 10 or 15 seconds of the orginal somewhere and we'll be able to give you a better idea.

[pijetro]

Perhaps Pinnacle is assuming 4:3 material, but is having a hard time with 16:9..
Does the project setting equal the input footage?
Even Adobe Premiere renders longer with mixed 4:3 and 16:9 material..

But your case is definately strange..

[maxtrack]

I attempted to have a look at settings (deinterlacing) but even thought the CPU only shows 35~40% utilization every 10 seconds, the settings panel would not display. I do *not* think there is any noise reduction or high quality deinterlacing going on. I know I did not select such settings (do not recall seeing them anywhere) and doubt they are on by default.

Regarding project setting . . .
I opened a new project, selected only from one source, the 1hr 40 min 22.5 Gb 16:9 file, clipped the last 1 hr 20min and then clicked make movie, thus I expect it is all 16:9 as it looks that way in the progress window and the "film strip" window below.

Yes indeed, it is weird that it has now been running (revised calculation) for a grand total of 6 days

[maxtrack]

A little more info that may be useful:

on the Make Movie panel, below the graphic showing disc space
available , is written:

DV Video Encoder 720x480 29.97 Frames/sec

[aedipuss]

you may have mentioned your problem. AFAIK, if it's not HD then 60i isn't even in the specs for dv25(miniDV). not sure what encoders might do with an DVavi like that. check your source avi with gspot and see what it says about your file.

[maxtrack]

Thank you. I will have to wait until the render finishes to check the file with gspot, or cancel the render, but after waiting 6 days I want to see what comes out the back end.
Obviously I cant ask what does perform well editing
720x480 SD 60i as you say the specs indicate such a file
should not exist

[maxtrack]

The render "from hell" finally completed and as someone posted/predicted, it produced nothing after 9 days of dedicated processing. However now I can look at the file with GSPOT

GSPOT shows frame rate as 29.971 frames/sec
codec shows dvsd, frame 720 x 480

is there anything else in the GSPOT display that would be helpful to look at?

It seems even though the camera was set for 60i SD 16:9 it recorded in 29.971 frames/sec, although this does not explain the extremely long render time.

Anyone got an idea?

~ Allen

[jagabo]

60i in SD DV is just 29.97i with a different name.

Maybe there's a timecode (or some other) error in your DV AVI file that's confused your software. Pinnacle is easily confused, it's one of the buggiest pieces of software ever.

[maxtrack]

NEW INFORMATION
it turns out the 9 days of rendering DID produce output.
I found what appears to be the 19min 30 sec AVI file I wanted to create. (I have 4 drives on the machine I am using and I forgot where I pointed the output file)
Looks like it rendered just fine, but it did take much longer than I expected.
Does the fact I actually got output change anyone's thoughts about what is going on?

Any other GSPOT information needed (from the source file) to continue the inquiry into why it ran to long (9 days) ??

Thank you
~ Allen

[maxtrack]

Wrapping this up for anyone who is looking for a solution to a similar problem:

I am 99% certain the cause of my problem was reading the 22.5 Gb source file from the same hard drive I was writing out the 4.5 Gb output file. ( I should have realized I was doing that, but I had moved some data files around recently and didn't realize the output was the same as the source until I started examining the hard disks to see if they were fragmented, etc)

I have since rerun the same process a few times to break the 22.5 Gb file into 5 files each about 4.5 Gb in size. As long as I use one HDrive for source and a different HDrive for output the process runs to completion in less than 20 minutes, and the CPU runs along showing minimal load the enitre time.

I just installed another Hdrive to serve as a dedicated paging file and expect if I ran the same process it would run even faster now.

I am thinking it might be interesting to run some tests of the same 9 day process with and without the dedicated Paging Hdrive. If I do the tests, I will "publish" the results here.

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback to my post,
~ Allen

[jagabo]

I am 99% certain the cause of my problem was reading the 22.5 Gb source file from the same hard drive I was writing out the 4.5 Gb output file.

Reading and writing to the the same drive rather than two different drives won't be as big a difference as you're describing: 20 minutes vs 9 days. The only way that might have happened is if your system was swapping VM very heavily at the same time and on the same drive. With Pinnacle Studio and 512 MB DRAM that wasn't likely the problem. In any case that would be easily remdied by increasing the amount of DRAm in your machine (which I guess you've already done).

[maxtrack]

I am glad I did not say I was 100% certain I knew the cause of the 9 day render . . .

I just ran a couple of tests. In each test the render process is exactly the same. The source file is a 22.5 Gb AVI located on drive F: a 250 Gb SATA drive. I extracted 19 min and 30 sec from the 22.5 Gb file (1 Hr 40 min)

In test #1 I sent the output to the same SATA drive F:
Total time= 10 min

In test #2 I sent the output to an IDE drive D:
Total time = 5 min

In test #3 I sent the output to another SATA drive H:
Total time = ( 9 days )

In test #3 I did not actually let it run again, I just recognized this was a recreation of the 9 day render. Now I remember why I could not find the file, I had sent it to the other SATA drive.

Whatever the SATA communication pathway (hardware) set up is on this mother board (ASUS K8S-MX) it has a huge problem using both SATA drives at the same time.

~ Allen