Can I Improve On Video Rendering Time?

[jagabo]

What's not answered?

Yes you can use Task Manager to set the processor affinity of a single threaded program to lock it into one core. That will make only a minor improvement in conversion time.

Yes there are motherboards which can use two or four CPUs. Some can even accept dual and quad core CPUs. So you could have 4, 8, or 16 cores in one computer. These tend to be very expensive as the routing of signals from multiple CPUs requires motherboards with more layers. And the economics of scale decreases as few people buy them (most for servers).

How much faster this will make a single encoding program run will depend on the program. Most video encoders are multithreaded now. h.264 scales pretty well with the number of cores. Many other encoders don't scale as well beyond 2 cores. You'll have to find benchmarks for the programs you'll be using. If you run 16 single threaded encoders at the same time on a 16 core system you'll find there are other bottlenecks, like disk I/O.

For video encoding the CPU speed (within an architecture) and number of cores are the most important factors. Right now your best bet is a Core 2 Duo system. Possibly a Core 2 Quad. Beyond that you'll be spending a lot of money. If those are too expensive for you cosider an Athlon 64 X2 system. Price and performance will be a little lower.

As for other components, any decent mid level hardware will do. You don't need super fast hard drives (WD Raptors) or RAID. You don't need two $500 graphics cards. You don't need huge amounts of DRAM. Consider 2 500 GB hard drives, 1 or 2 GB of DRAM, and a US$100+ graphics card*.

If you want to get an idea how much faster a new system will be compared to your old one look at the link to toms hardware I posted earlier. Guessing that your AMD 2.8 GHz system is a Athlon 64 2800+, you'll get a 3 to 4 fold increase in rendering speed with a mid range Core 2 Duo (E6600).

* Over the last year or so there has been some talk of using the graphics card's processors to perform video compression. This hasn't really materialized outside of a few demos but could be one reason to consider a more expensive (faster) graphics card. I'd buy an inexpensive card now and see what develops...

[nlec]

Everything you asked has been answered, drtalk. In fact, Soopafresh gave you the best answer in the very first reply to your original post. You never said what your current hardware is and in light of that I think you've been given some good suggestions. Core 2 Duo will cut your rendering times in half (at least) and a Core 2 Quad will cut them in half again.

You want QUICK and EASY because you're getting "heavily" into video, but your schedule doesn't leave you enough time to research all the details. My view of that is you can't have quick and easy WITH plenty of time to research the details, never mind WITHOUT it.

You never said what your budget is so that kind of makes it a nebulous problem for others to sort out. The final choice is up to you and I think you're off base coming here and saying, "Tell me what to do because I don't have time to figure it out for myself." Plenty of people here are willing to help you, but you can't expect anyone to hold your hand from start to finish when you don't have time to be bothered with any of the details.

My unsolicited advice (no offense) if you want to do it right: change your schedule. If you don't invest the time you will never be satisfied with the results. If it was easy as a one-page TODO list then everybody would be doing it without any problems at all. That's simply not the case. Either that or pay somebody to do it for you.

Good luck. Core 2 Duo.

[Soopafresh]

Thanks for the props, nlec. drtalk, sounds like a case of "analysis paralysis". Plunk down the dough and enjoy the performance. I just helped a friend set up a quad core Mac Pro running XP and I was amazed at the performance. Encoding jobs were running 4-5X faster than his previous Xeon 2 proc system, which is a pretty fast machine as it is.

[nlec]

I've been in the "paralysis by analysis" boat myself on occasion, so I sympathize with him to a point. But you're right. Saying 'go out and buy it' is easier said than done usually, but he did sound like he was willing to spend the bucks for a new computer, and I think your advice was right on the money. With the same software he's got right now his rendering times should drop dramatically.

I'm in the same boat now, but for different reasons than my schedule My budget won't be set for a new machine until October. In the meantime I'm suffering with extremely long renders and gathering as much info as I can. It can be overwhelming. The machine I would have bought 2 weeks ago isn't the one I would buy today and all that will probably change again several times between now and October.

[drtalk]

Everything you asked has been answered, drtalk. In fact, Soopafresh gave you the best answer in the very first reply to your original post. You never said what your current hardware is and in light of that I think you've been given some good suggestions. Core 2 Duo will cut your rendering times in half (at least) and a Core 2 Quad will cut them in half again.

You want QUICK and EASY because you're getting "heavily" into video, but your schedule doesn't leave you enough time to research all the details. My view of that is you can't have quick and easy WITH plenty of time to research the details, never mind WITHOUT it.

You never said what your budget is so that kind of makes it a nebulous problem for others to sort out. The final choice is up to you and I think you're off base coming here and saying, "Tell me what to do because I don't have time to figure it out for myself." Plenty of people here are willing to help you, but you can't expect anyone to hold your hand from start to finish when you don't have time to be bothered with any of the details.

My unsolicited advice (no offense) if you want to do it right: change your schedule. If you don't invest the time you will never be satisfied with the results. If it was easy as a one-page TODO list then everybody would be doing it without any problems at all. That's simply not the case. Either that or pay somebody to do it for you.

Good luck. Core 2 Duo.

Thanks so much for the polite reply. In case you weren't aware, there are people in the world that don't have the same skill level as you guys do when it comes to computers. I came here for help and of course someone like you who feels they can say whatever they want & treat people how ever they they want because you're hiding behind a screen name is sad.

[RabidDog]

"Umbrage" is a very rarely used word these days, but quite apt, in some cases.
Price cuts are coming on Amd cpus in early July, so intel will probably also cut prices, as well as probably announcing their top secret single core "core2?" at higher clock speeds.




**we need CSI:London ..and with my own background in detective work (all shows watched from ironside to Morse to CSI) surely I would be a shue-in for the lead role??

[jagabo]

Intel already has price cuts scheduled for July. The 22nd I believe. Core 2 Quad Q6600 will drop in price by half! To US$266 it appears.

http://www.hkepc.com/bbs/itnews.php?tid=789466

[hiptune]

Thanks so much for the polite reply. In case you weren't aware, there are people in the world that don't have the same skill level as you guys do when it comes to computers. I came here for help and of course someone like you who feels they can say whatever they want & treat people how ever they they want because you're hiding behind a screen name is sad.

Hi, I have read this whole thred and the one best suggestion I can make it this.

(just had to edit my post below)

I would capture to avi, and edit that, and render out of Vegas again in avi. Then go back and encode that avi to mpg2 using whatever you feel best with. You could do captures in vegas and ditch the Pinnicle device all together. Get an ADVC 110 capture for analog, and use a Firewire 1394 card installed on computer. then after all editing, enocde your finished file with whatever you wish. Vegas would be your better choice over how you were doing it. I used procoder 1.5 (dongle version) and love the quality and nice rich interface.

I think with doing encoding at the end of the process, before authoring the dvd is the right way to go. Then you can try different settings that work within your expectations of quality.

I find that for top quality on a Pent 4 it can take 4 hours to encode 1 hour of footage. I'm fine with that because I have a bunch of computers so I am never tied up there. And I like the best quality, so I feel good about doing it right.

capture in avi. render to avi, and encode to mp2 got it! It is not only about time here, capturing to avi is considered the right way to work with video, not mpg encoding during capture. The Vegas will handle the file like two peas in a pod.

[menellyc]

I would like to share with everyone my experience on video rendering. Let me start by first describing my hardware setup. 3 Hard drives. 1st is a 120 gig for XP. 2nd and 3rd are each 250 gig SATAII drive setup as individual drives, not RAID. I use one for capturing and editing, and the other for the temporary or auxillary (finished) encoded project (Audio_TS, and Video_TS).
I am sporting an Nforce 4 Ultra MB with 2 gig of DDR800 RAM, and an Athlon Brisbane 4800 dual core processor. I keep all drives extremely well defragged.

The software, although getting a little old now, I use is Pinnaccle Studio 9.4.3. I just recently learned that it IS a multi-threaded app and I can see both cores being used (task manager). I usually capture the video off my DV-firewire camera not at DV full quality, but at full quality MPEG 720x480. Unless you are doing an extrodinary amount of editing, clipping, special affects type stuff, MPEG works great as a capture file (and is a heck of a lot smaller than DV)

Just recently I tried out this new system setup and successfully rendered 2 hours 15 minutes of video, complete with menus and scene transisitons in just over 2 hours 30 minutes (minus burning). MY OLDER SYSTEM would take around 6 hours to do the same thing. I'm extremely happy

In conclusion, get a multi-threaded software package, a dual core processor, and seperate your original captured files and created files ON DIFFERENT DRIVES!!! You won't be disappointed.

www.pcbroken.com

[thecoalman]

Just recently I tried out this new system setup and successfully rendered 2 hours 15 minutes of video, complete with menus and scene transisitons in just over 2 hours 30 minutes (minus burning). MY OLDER SYSTEM would take around 6 hours to do the same thing. I'm extremely happy

If you're capturing in MPEG the software you are using is reencoding the MPEG file. You should only need to do this if your are applying filters that change the entire clip from one end to the other such as brighteneing the entire clip. As mentioned way back at the beggining of this thread if you're going to use MPEG as a capture format use software designed for editing MPEG. You can edit author MPEG files quite quickly even with a slow machine with the right software.

Just to add that seems quite long under any circumstances if your just transcoding a MPEG with some transitions added unless you have added a filter like a brightening filter across the entire clip. In that case you might as well just capture to DV-AVI to begin with. For comaprison I can accomplish what you have suggested in the same time with the computer listed under my specs.

[Nelson37]

I said it once, hiptune just repeated it, and no one seems to have noticed.

Capture to AVI rather than MPG. Edit, then encode that. Good odds this will decrease your time by 50% to 75%, for FREE.

The reply you got was, IMO, Exceptionally Polite. Continue in your current mode, and I will give you something at which to take umbrage. No one here is paid, no one here owes you or anyone else a damn thing. You have asked for advice, and have been given much that is very valuable, and much you have ignored.

The best bang for the buck on a PC changes on a daily basis. Pick a dollar amount, shop for bargains, buy it and don't look at prices anymore till you are ready to upgrade again.

You can decrease your time dramatically, right now, without spending a dime. Reading just 2 or 3 of the beginner Guides would have given you this knowledge, along with complete instructions to accomplish your goal. Many people have spent many hours to improve and illustrate these guides. Is it really too much trouble to expect you to actually read a few? Is it not just a bit obnoxious to expect others to read them and then spoon-feed you the results?

You need more knowledge of procedures and methods. When you see someone driving screws with a hammer, the solution is not to get a bigger hammer. But if you really want one, have at it and whack away.

[E6600]

I found this old thread whilst Googling to find ways of improving MPEG2 rendering performance. It took my eye as early on in it the E6600 Core Duo CPU is recommended and this is exactly what I chose when speccing my custom build machine for home audio visual work!

So, to my question; my kit is the fastest I have used for MPEG2 video rendering but is there anything I can easily do to speed it up or am I there or thereabouts already?

ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium mobo
E6600 Intel Core Duo 2.4Ghz mildly overclocked to 2.6Ghz
3.0GB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM
XP SP2 MCE 2005

HDD1 - Barracuda 320GB SATA
C - o/s and paging file
D - Program files
E - Documents
F - Music

HDD2 - Barracuda 320GB SATA
G - Projects and work in progress

HDD3 - Barracuda 500GB SATA
H - Photography master and authored output

HDD4 - FreeAgent Pro 1TB SATA-eSATA
I - Primary backup

The "jumpers" are removed from all three Barracudas thus setting them at their fastest read-write speed.

Using Sony Vegas Platinum 6 loaded from the "D" logical drive, I render MPEG2 files from source material in physical drive "G" and write the output to physical drive "H". I am meticulous about PC housekeeping including paging file and HDD defragging (I use Diskeeper Pro for both).

Rendering speed is more or less "real time" but if there are realistic ways to improve it without spending a hill of cash I am willing to try them.


TVM!

[jagabo]

CCE can render an hour of DV to MPEG (single pass, constant quality) in less than 15 minutes on a E6600.

[E6600]

Thanks, jagabo.

I've made another quick search in light of what you wrote but didn't find a definitive answer so please can I ask here before deciding whether to try CCE: I really like Sony Vegas for its feature set, interface and ease of use, stability, and that it is the first such product I've used that has proven to be totally devoid of lip-synch issues.

Would CCE replace it, or would it render whatever I produce in Vegas? Please excuse my ignorance but whilst I have done enough editing to produce some pretty slick stuff and have a decent knowledge of PC hardware I have much to learn on video editing tools and processes outside the few that I have used.


Cheers.

[jagabo]

No, CCE won't replace Vegas. It is only an encoder.

I don't know if Vegas will let you use an alternate MPEG encoder. You could always save as DV AVI then use CCE to encode that to MPEG. The extra steps may eat up any savings in MPEG rendering time though.

[guns1inger]

Vegas won't let you use CCE as an alternate encoder from within the Vegas interface, but you can always use the DebugMode Frameserver to frameserve from the Vegas timeline to CCE. However, from past experience I have found that if you are using filters in Vegas and encoding with multiple passes it is usually much faster to do a single pass encode to a lossless codec such as Lagarith, then encode with CCE from there.

[E6600]

Thanks, guns1inger. I'm interested in seeing this through, but now have the next question that neither Google or the Vegas help file has answered; how do I force a particular Codec to be used, in this case Lagarith. This codec installed in the blink of an eye and is shown as installed when I run my copy of the GSpot codec identifier utility, but I don't know what to do now. In addition to Google and the help file I have played with the rendering options until the cows came home, without success!

TVM