Brand New Computer + Slow Rendering Speeds SV10 - Is This Normal?? Please Help!

[adamsheretohelp]

Hi, I need some help/advise

To begin, For the past year and a half I have been struggling with incredibly slow rendering speeds using sony vegas movie studio HD Platinum 10. I was taking me on average 3-4 hours to render 15 minutes of 640x480 video, 6-12+ hours to render 15 minutes of 1280x720 video, and not even conceivable to render 1080i it would take so long. At the time I was using a lap top, a top of the line lap top mind you, with 4G Ram, good graphics card, and lots of free space. I was rendering from Sony AVCHD to wmv in every case. But I did try the other formats and it will made no difference time wise. Each video contained only 1 audio and video track, and only effects were contrast and sharpen, and no changes in opacity.

Conceding that it may have been that I was using a laptop I purchased a brand new desktop, that SHOULD in theory have been excellent for rending videos.


My new computer has the following Stats

Dell XPS 8300
16 GB DDR3 SDRAM, 1333MHZ 4x4GB
Windows 7 64 bit
Intel(R) Core i7 2600CPOU @ 3.40 GHZ 8MB Cache
NVIDIA Geforce GT530
2TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200 RPM

currently, I have 1.73 TB free of 1.80

Compared to my old computer, my rendering speeds have increased - good - but please keep reading...


The first thing I did when I set up my computer was install Vegas, and Sony PMB (I use a Sony HDR XR550V handycam to shoot with and PMB is the only software I have to transfer the files to my comp)

I began editing and rendering some videos I have been sitting on (directly from my external hard drive)

In all cases assume the original file format is AVCHD rendering to 1080 wmv 1video and 1 audio track, sharpen and contrast effects; unless stated otherwise. (it actually makes no difference, because I also used video from a flipcam - shot in mpeg I believe - and the rendering speeds are exactly the same)

At first it was rendering 1 minute of video in about 1 minute, but then a couple days later the rendering speeds started to increase... I had installed a couple of programs (photoshop CS5, autocad, and revit architecture, and windows did its typical automatic updates which I have now disabled.) My rendering speeds went from about 1 minute to 3-6 minutes per minute... I thought it might be the programs or automatic updates that did something so I did a system restore, which did NOTHING but cause me to have to re-install all of my programs again...

Now, it is taking me 18-20 minutes to render 1 minute of video... Really makes NO difference what output format it is in, wmv. mpeg, doesnt matter, but wmv seems to be the fastest.

Currently I am trying to render a 10 minute clip and so far in total it says it will take over 2 hours, but it increases as time goes by and is only halfway done so far...


I have taken the exact same video (this time with no effects) and rendered in in Windows Movie Maker MUCH faster. It takes about 30 seconds for 1 minute of 1920x1080 HD or 15-20 seconds for 640x480. Unfortunately WMM sucks for editing, they have no audiotrack to look at, etc. and I am used to using Vegas.

I thought it may have been my copy of vegas 10, and was informed that even though my comp is 64 bit vegas ten only works on 32bit so I installed the trial version of vegas 11. It made zero difference, infact my rendering times increased slightly. So then I continued to use Vegas 10 instead.

Per a recommendation, I turned off my windows indexing, as well as background Mcafee and restarted my comp - that made no difference.

I tried rendering with CPU or GPU preference and neither made any noticeable difference.

I tried rendering in every format available, and they are all similar speeds comparatively.


Looking at my computer system, is this normal rendering speed for Vegas?? It seems incredibly slow to me. What if I want/need to render a 1 or 2 or 3 hour long video, it will take me a week! or longer if I want more than one video / audio track and some more intensive effects!!!!!! Is this normal!!??

How fast are your rendering speeds comparatively, and how does your computer system compare to mine??

I have contacted Sony Vegas Tech Support a week ago and they still have no responded.


I dont understand what the problem is here, I think I have a good computer and should have much faster rendering speeds with Vegas... Does anyone know something that might be wrong??

Please help!

[vidmanners]

Six hours may seem a long time for a reply, it's a bit of a lottery.
FWIW. I use VS10 also and have a desktop with broadly similar spec, although I try to keep C: drive for programs only, Vegas tries to bury things there.
All my SDHC cards are read via internal reader and HD clips (1920x1080 50i) are stored on internal SATA HDD.
Here are some differences....I use 32-bit Win7 (4G RAM) . . . and I understand your 64-bit isn't recognised by VS (DYOR-see Sony website). The result is your 64-bit will downscale to 32 - this "might" be a part-answer, but in general I found the use of USB HDD was ruinous to Rendering times -with a processor at 2.8GHz and only dual-core I have a typical Render-factor about 5x. That means a 2min vid takes ten minutes. I think this shows your times are excessive, but you need to calc a similar "Render Factor" to compare.
Do make the "Preview window" quite small - it's a drain on resources and my VS plonks a "progress" graphic bang on top.

Then there is the time for creating DVD (yes a bit wasteful for just 2mins!), but that will be a few minutes extra.

Your Laptop spec looked quite reasonable, as many have "integrated graphics" so this steals working RAM.
Sorry, but I'm somewhat baffled. The only other possibility that might cause a small delay is if there are any files which are external,or via a card-reader.... but your tech description shows this is not happening.

Don't believe the Render-time "estimates" I had a complicated 5min vid that claimed 1.5 hours, but it was over much sooner.
EDIT:"...5m05s Vid showed 54min (on estimater) - at halfway, after just 10min and 97% 17min i.e. Factor=3.3 times..."
The "estimate" keeps rising until it gets part-way and then VS has the courage to recalculate, based on existing Render complications. VS can't know what's about to be thrown at it - peeking-forward would waste processor time.
Of course you've shut down all other apps - perhaps we'll have to wait for a more informed view . . . they are here, but may be reading another Forum/Thread...etc.

[Midnight Blue]

One thing I noticed you said was that it seemed to slow down after a Windows update, you could have a go to see if doing a system restore to a point before the update helps to bring it back to how it was.

[Z Cheema]

I have similar specs on my Laptop and mine ( I use Sony Vegas 10- pro) and it renders super speed. about 25% - 40% faster depending on effects & files.

Have you looked at the Task Manager and see what it and the memory is doing? also see what other programs are running in the back ground.

[adamsheretohelp]

Thanks for the replies

I do keep the preview video - while its rendering - at best and full quality (maybe that has SOME effect?)

I tried to make a DVD with the associated DVD architect program, and it said it was going to take 16 hours and counting - after an hour of letting it do its thing, It had 19 minutes of video in it...

One thing I noticed you said was that it seemed to slow down after a Windows update, you could have a go to see if doing a system restore to a point before the update helps to bring it back to how it was.

Did system restore once I noticed the change, it actually made no difference in the rendering speeds at that point. I just had to re-install all of my programs again :/

I have similar specs on my Laptop and mine ( I use Sony Vegas 10- pro) and it renders super speed. about 25% - 40% faster depending on effects & files.

Have you looked at the Task Manager and see what it and the memory is doing? also see what other programs are running in the back ground.

I'm not currently rendering on the laptop anymore - using the desktop with 16G ram, etc.

I started a render just at this moment to test. I do not know what any of it means... It says;

CPU Usage is jumping from 15% to 86%

Physical memory is moving up at down between 2.25-2.35 GB

Physical Memory (MB)

Total 16366
Cached - moving from 7700 - 7800
Available - moving from 13900 - 14100
Free - moving from 6300 - 6400

Kernal Memory (MB)

Paged 415
Non Paged 138

System

Handles 28921
Threads 1087
Processes 73
Commit (GB) 3/31

CUP Usage jumps from 15 - 85%
Physical memory - jumps around 13-15%

As I said, I dont know what any of these really means or what to do to change any of it.

I have two applications running, Vegas and Firefox.

[Z Cheema]

don't know the specs of your main PC so hard to say if that is good,

you will have more then two programs running, the others run silently in the back ground, which can be seen in task manager under
process, and look for user name and your name you have used. see how many total are running, mine is about 50 to 80 items

[adamsheretohelp]

My main PC is the one I listed in the original message. It is the one I am currently so confused about, being that it is way better than my laptop but still seems to render very slow compared to other peoples sytsems. (not that I wasnt confused as to why my laptop takes so long either, but my new computer especially)

The brand new computer (desktop - purchased less than 1 month ago) is...

Dell XPS 8300
16 GB DDR3 SDRAM, 1333MHZ 4x4GB
Windows 7 64 bit
Intel(R) Core i7 2600CPOU @ 3.40 GHZ 8MB Cache
NVIDIA Geforce GT530
2TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200 RPM

currently, I have 1.73 TB free of 1.80


Last night I tried rendering a clip with 5 video tracks 1 audio track - effects were brighten/contrast and lots of cookie cutter. It is 9 minute longs, I was able to render it in 1080i wmv in 2 hours the night before, but I missed some things and needed to re-render it. When I just checked (after letting it sit over night and render) it was on 12hours with 11 to go and counting WTF

[adamsheretohelp]

What do you mean?

[Refers to a spammy post, since deleted]

[Midnight Blue]

Ignore that spam reply above.[Refers to a spammy post, since deleted]
12 hours is a long time for a 9 min video even with five tracks. When you go into task manager click on the process tab and then right click on Sony Vegas program select priority to a higher level. This should get you processor working nearer 0 when rendering. Also if you can see if there is anything else running in the background that you know you don't need on like emails, Norton Anti virus can be a memory hog etc..

Make sure you do some house work on your PC, defrag, clear up disk space etc..

I read in another thread that not using the CUDA capabilities in Vegas can speed up rendering if you already have a fast processor but I don't know if that's true I don't have a CUDA graphics card. This would be somewhere in your preferences setting, check for the help to see if you have it.

[adamsheretohelp]

This is with priority set to high already :( I'm rendering it again, now it will probably take 3.5 - 4 hours to finish. I swear it jumps up and down. Before I canceled and restarted it this morning it said 11 hours remaining (and 12 hours had already passed...)

that still seems high to me.

I should have free disk space, its brand new and I really havent done anything on it. I have 1.73 of 1.80 TB free space. I dont really have much on my computer right now.

one process I notice takes as much memory as vegas to run, some windows process apparently - so I cant delete it :(

I'll check to see about CUDA I never noticed