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How can I improve my Sony Vegas rendering speed/times?
Hello Everyone,
I’m fairly new to video editing and I was wondering if anyone had some tips for improving the rendering times of Sony Vegas.
Right now it’s taking about 60 minutes to render a 15 minute video. I’m not sure if that’s fast or slow according to my render settings/PC setup, but if there is something I can do to speed up the render please let me know.
My computer specs & render settings are below:
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Quad Core 3.20 Ghz Processor
8GB DDR3 RAM
VT Radeon HD 4870 512MB Ram Video Card
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit OS
Sony Vegas 10Render settings:
https://www.tmtmz.com/render001.jpgProject settings:
https://www.tmtmz.com/render002.jpgAlso, if it makes a difference. The videos I’m rendering are only being used to upload to YouTube. I thought that perhaps I could lower the render bitrate and speed up renders but I figured that would also degrade the quality of the .mp4 I uploaded to youtube and make the final viewable version on youtube even worse than it already is, perhaps I’m misunderstanding that.
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10 Replies
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I’ve found that using the lowest possible number of tracks helps with the rendering time. Even if you have a muted track, it will render faster if you delete it from your workspace. That said, your render time seem pretty good to me already. In comparison, my last project was a music video for my son’s rock band. Using multiple cameras (tracks), with effects for color correction and a lot of panning the seven minute video took over six hours to render. Needless to say, my computer renders while I sleep 🙂
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Thanks for the info… The video I just rendered had 4 tracks, 1 video and 3 audio tracks…
It was 17 minutes long and took 1 hour and 49 minutes to render. So I mean it’s not super slow but it does take its time.
Also, if there is not a way to speed up the renders, is there a way to queue rendering? For example, if I created 10 fifteen minute videos and wanted to queue them to all render one after another is there a way to accomplish that?
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You can cut your render time in half by not rendering at 60fps which no one can see. YouTube is 30fps. You are uploading twice the frames with no benefit.
You can also improve your render times by not keeping you project at 32-bit pixel format (unless you have a very good reason for using that). You are asking Vegas to do a lot of additional processing for nothing.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
You want faster rendering, get a faster processor.
That’s easy to say, and it’s true, but your processor is exactly what I have and it works fine, even with HDV.
That’s an awfully high bitrate for YouTube.
In general – the default settings in Vegas need very little adjustment.
Also, I have not found lots of tracks to slow the render or encode time. Effects and compositing will always take more time to render. If you do something that effects the whole event on the timeline, like a lower-thirds on the whole video, then you will be rendering *every* frame of the video. If you REALLY want to run slow, like if you’re paid by the hour, set the opacity to 99%. You won’t see the difference, but every pixel of every frame will have to be processed – ant that will take a really long time.Here’s what I use:
Start with the AVCHD 1920×1080, 60i profile.
Change the bitrate to 3,000,000
Save it with a unique name – Mine is “YouTube – AVCHD 1920×1080, 60i profile”https://www.mmdv.com/sonyvegas/you_tube_profile.jpg
Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com -
7 hours to render 6 minutes? Ouch!
I frequently do multi-cam edits with titles, color correction, photo montages, transitions and effects. Typically I can render 1.5 hours of HDV footage using the DVD Arch template at Best settings at CBR in just over an hour. If it is a 2 pass VBR render, that blows out to about 3 hours.
One thing Trent can try is install an NVIDIA video card as Vegas makes use of the CUDA cores in the card. The Radeon is based on an ATI card, which Vegas is not optimised for.
Trent also did not mention how many HDD’s he had. Having dedicated HDD’s for storing source and output will boost performance by increasing the number of spindles.
eg
HDD1: C drive, contains operating system files
HDD2: Vegas program and source video files
HDD3: Output filesIt is possible to configure/optimise Vegas by specifying where you want the pre-rendered files to be stored. They typically default to C:. You might want to redirect them to another HDD.
If you really want performance, and have deep pockets, install a bunch of Solid State Drives!
A cheaper alternative is Western Digital Raptor drives. 3 years ago I purchased a couple and set them up in a RAID 0 configuration. They were quicker as they spin at 10,000 RPM, but they came at a heat cost – they ran extremely hot. If you are in a cold climate, that is less of a problem. My home edit suite does not have a/c, so editing in summer is a bit uncomfortable when the room temperature is 35C and rising.
Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6
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Thank you everyone for your helpful replies..
John, the 30 FPS trick is definitely going to help. I had no idea youtube was only 30 FPS. I record video game footage and the game runs at 60 FPS so I figured I would just mirror what the games FPS was.
In regards to the 32 bit colors, I actually just copied the settings I saw from another youtube user who uploads gaming videos online. It looks like I don’t need the full 32 bit colors and I probably don’t need to run a 10Gbps bitrate. If I drop the bitrate down to like 5Gbps or 3Gbps am I going to notice a difference in the final uploaded video on youtube?
Stephen, thanks for the input however I don’t even see AVCHD as an option to render to, also I’m not sure I want to render in 1080i as I record the footage in 720p, so going interlaced would not be good right?
Nigel, thank you for the advice on the video card. I would have bought an Nvidia card but the ATI card was a really good deal and I got it for almost $100 cheaper than a comparable Nvidia card so I’m not ready to just swap out for an nvidia card quite yet.
In regards to the Harddrives thank you for reminding me about that I completely forgot about them. This is what I have:
My C: drive is an 84GB SSD, that’s where Sony vegas is installed.
The Z: drive (the drive I’m rendering to) is 2 dynamic drives that are striped together to improve write speeds. They are WD 1TB 7200RPM Sata drives. I also have a 3rd drive F: which is just a standard 750GB 7200RPM Sata.So I’m not sure what would be fastest. Rendering to the SSD and then copying to the Z: drive afterwards? or perhaps installing Sony vegas onto the Z: drive and render to the SSD? Or maybe the current setup I have with vegas installed on the SSD and rendering to the striped drive.
Any input you had on that would be appreciated.
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84 GB is not much to render to. I would leave it as is.
Are your source and output render files on the same striped array? That could possibly impact read/write performance. You might want to consider separating them.
An NVIDIA video card will definitely give you a rendering performance boost. ATI cards do nothing for Sony Vegas.
Intel i7 920, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10 (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6
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[Trent Bingham] “John, the 30 FPS trick is definitely going to help. I had no idea youtube was only 30 FPS. I record video game footage and the game runs at 60 FPS so I figured I would just mirror what the games FPS was.”
Actually, that’s not a “trick”. That’s what most people use. In North America and Japan (NTSC countries) all TV sets display at 30fps (29.97). In Europe and Asia (PAL countries) all TV’s display at 25fps. Hollywood movies shot on film are at 24fps. You can probably get away with 15fps and still have fairly fluid motion. So 60fps is way too much. Just because the game can push out 60fps doesn’t mean you should record at 60fps. I would record at 30fps because this is what you are going to deliver at. This will save both processing time and rendering time.
[Trent Bingham] “In regards to the 32 bit colors, I actually just copied the settings I saw from another youtube user who uploads gaming videos online.”
Most people get into a lot of trouble watching YouTube videos and changing parameters they don’t understand. You should always use the defaults and only make changes if you are not satisfied with the results.
[Trent Bingham] “Stephen, thanks for the input however I don’t even see AVCHD as an option to render to, also I’m not sure I want to render in 1080i as I record the footage in 720p, so going interlaced would not be good right?”
Select Sony AVC and use the Internet 16:9 HD 30p template. There are also AVCHD templates under Sony AVC but the “Internet” templates were designed for YouTube upload. This is what you should use.
[Trent Bingham] “So I’m not sure what would be fastest. Rendering to the SSD and then copying to the Z: drive afterwards?”
First you should determine if your hard drive is the bottleneck. If the drive light is on steady during rendering, then I would say it is. My guess is, your hard drive light blinks periodically which would indicate that your render is CPU bound and it doesn’t matter what drive you render to at that point.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
Thanks John for all your help, you’re the man!
In regards to the harddrive/cpu bottleneck, my CPU under system resources goes up to almost 100% so I imagine the bottleneck is CPU related so I won’t worry about the harddrives.
Thanks again everyone.
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Vegas 10.0d will leverage AMD GPUs when it is released any day now (5/2011); it’s a free update for current Vegas 10 customers.
Despite possibly seeing some rendering speed increase, I would recommend avoiding the use of CUDA acceleration as reviews have shown it to have a major negative impact on video quality. AMD OpenCL render acceleration has less benefit on render times, but doesn’t have nearly as much impact on the quality. Either way, you might test it on a short clip and upload that clip to YouTube to see if the end result is worth whatever gains in rendering you might experience.
Intel’s QuickSync isn’t supported on Vegas yet, but has a ginormous impact on rendering times with minimal effect on quality. Vegas didn’t seem to leverage CUDA very well according to user posts here and on other forums, so it remains to be seen if AMD acceleration will provide benefits to anyone except those using a very weak CPU + high end GPU – an unusual combo, to say the least.
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