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Here is how dynamic ram preview is affecting rendering times
Hey all,
I’ve done some experimenting on my machine with how Sony Vegas’ setting for Dynamic RAM Preview is affecting rendering times (at least on my machine).
This is a follow up to thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/24/941540
Before getting started, here’s my laptop’s setup:
1) Win 7 64-bit ultimate
2) SVP 11 64-bit release build 511
3) nVidia GTX 460M GPU
4) i7-2820QM CPU
5) 16GB 1333 Memory
6) Two physical drives.
– Physical drive #1 is a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB hybrid drive with two partitions: C (where OS and programs are kept) with a 120GB partition; W has a local website and my mp3 files.
– Physical drive #2 is a 7200 rpm 750GB drive with two parititions: T (which is a temp partition for downloads and formerly Vegas/Photoshop/Firefox cache/temp/scratch folders) is 20GB; F is the remaining space where all my video/vegas files are kept, read from, and rendered to. I know it’s not ideal but keeping all the files here ensures the hybrid drive just uses the static memory keeps Vegas and the OS files in it for faster OS performance.ANYWAY. To ELIMINATE the possibility of it being a drive bottleneck by my current set up, I have a 2GB RAM DISK (logical drive D) set up on my machine. This is where I now have the browser caches pointing, my Windows TEMP/TMP environment variables, Vegas/Photoshop scratch disks, etc.
To reduce bottlenecks even further with the results you are about to see, I have also copied my Vegas project into the RAM Disk so all the source files are there, and renamed the source files folders on my F drive so Vegas won’t be able to find them (to make sure it doesn’t use them).
I start up Vegas Pro 11, open up the veg file from my RAM Disk. I change the project properties under “File|Properties” to use DTemp as the “Prerendered files folder”.
I also went under “Options|Preferences|General” and changed “Temporary files folder” to D:temp.
So Vegas shouldn’t be using any physical drives: should just be reading from and writing to memory for maximum performance.
For my project, I just select the last 4 minutes to render and render as:
Main Concept AVC/ACC (*.mp4) and choose the 3rd template “Apple iPod 320×240 Video”I specify the render location to be my D drive and the file to be “sheree.mp4”.
For the first 3 screen captures below, I had Dynamic Ram Preview set to 256MB.
1) Before starting. You can see the disks and almost zero disk activity
2) The second capture is at 30% through the file.
3) The third capture is at 60%.
This took less than 2 minutes.
Notice how the queue length on the D drive is nil (expected) but all the “files” being used?Now for the remaining captures I set the Dynamic Ram Preview to 4096MB; everything else the same.
4) Before the start again. Waited for all disk activity to settle.
5) At 6% rendered
6) At 15% rendered (starting to slow down)
7) at 20% rendered (really slowed down)
8) At 29% rendered (this took 4 minutes to get to)
As expected, the disk queue length for Drive D hardly spikes as it reads the movie file and renders it to RAM.
Notice how there’s LESS files listed under the “File Column” in the resource manager for disks, and yet the top picture showing the disk activity seems to show A LOT of disk usage?
Since that spike only seems to happen with Dynamic Ram Preview set to >= 256MB, can anyone explain this to me or have any insights?
Thanks!
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https://www.davelozinski.com
https://www.davelozinski.com/DemoReel/
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4 Replies
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Looks like in your last screen shot that most of the disk usage is photoshop.exe, but you had it unchecked for the other screenshots, why?
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[Mark Barton] “Looks like in your last screen shot that most of the disk usage is photoshop.exe, but you had it unchecked for the other screenshots, why?”
Two reasons:
1) for the first 3 captures where I have the Dynamic RAM set to 256MB, there’s a lot of other files listed, so I unchecked Adobe to save space in the listing2) I checked it in the last one to show everyone that it wasn’t affecting anything. If you notice, it’s writing to the D drive, which is the RAM drive (that’s where I have all the Photoshop scratch disks and temp folders set up). Look at how much data it’s reading/writing and the queue for the RAM Drive D isn’t even flinching.
I only had Photoshop open to do the screen captures.
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https://www.davelozinski.com
https://www.davelozinski.com/DemoReel/
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I’ve never tried using dynamic RAM as a logical drive. Maybe there is actually a bottleneck with Vegas dynamic RAM? Have you tried using a physical disk instead?
-Jim.
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[Jim Greene] “I’ve never tried using dynamic RAM as a logical drive. Maybe there is actually a bottleneck with Vegas dynamic RAM? Have you tried using a physical disk instead?”
Hi Jim:
I’m not using dynamic ram as a drive (if you’re referring to the dynamic ram setting in Vegas?). I’m using a RAM Disk, which is separate. I can’t tell from your post if that’s what you’re referring to or not.
To answer your other question, yes. The whole reason I’m using a RAM disk for this now is to eliminate and prove that it’s not a bottleneck on my physical drives from the rendering process.
See this thread:
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/941540So by using a RAM Disk, no physical drives are involved at all. All the source files, Vegas temp drives, and rendered files are set to the RAM disk.
Yet, for some reason, when increasing the setting in the “Dynamic ram preview” > 256MB, Vegas rendering slows down, whether in the RAM disk or when using a Physical disk.
Also, my Ram disk I have set to a size of 2GB so there’s plenty of room to hold the source file and render to.
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https://www.davelozinski.com
https://www.davelozinski.com/DemoReel/
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