Please advise on this config

[John Rofrano]

– CPU: i7 920
– 4 GB DDR3-1333

The Core i7 uses triple channel memory. That means you need to add memory in groups of 3 to gain this benefit. Since video rendering is memory intensive, you want your memory running at full speed on all channels. I recommend at least 6GB of memory (3 x 2GB sticks).

– 500 GB Western Digital SATA 2 hard disk
I know I could add a 2nd hard disk, which I already own, to host rushes and rendered files separately

Make sure you add a second drive for ALL of your video work not just rendering. You want all of your video assets off of the C: drive where windows is swapping to and temp files are stored. That means the entire video project on a separate drive. Rendering to a separate drive may have made sense way back in the days of SD when I could render SD MPEG2 at 4x real-time but for any HD work, your render will not produce frames fast enough to tax even the slowest of drives.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Jeff Schroeder]

I’m with John on this one. The triple channel memory make a difference, I have 12 GB, with an i7 920 on a similar (Asus) board. The second hard drive is a must, even if you use a real small one for your C drive. My C drive is 64 GB because it is an SSD, it raised the price but is worth it.

Be sure to cool that CPU well, the stock coolers that come with the 920 boxed edition are not up to it. I don’t remember what cooler I used (I’m at home at the moment), but I can fully recommend mine on Monday.

Jeff

http://www.narrowroadmedia.com

[Mike Hinkel]

John could you explain a little farther on this line as to what to move and why?

You want all of your video assets off of the C: drive

[Frederic Baumann]

I finally bought my new PC while you were answering. Here is what I now have, and also some benchmarks (Movie Studio Platinum HD 10):

– Core i7 950
– 2 x 2 GB (too bad John, I wish I could have read your notice before. However I have just found a benchmark showing there is no noticeable perf loss between 2 and 3 channels. But this is just a test)
– graphics card: Asus GTX 460 / 1GB DDR5
– motherboard: Gigabyte X58 USB3
– Seagate baracuda 500 GB Sata II Hard drive (only one HD so far)

For a 3’30 movie with AVI rushes coming from an EOS 7D, converted from MOV to AVI by Cineform, I get the following perf for different MP4 10Mbps settings:

1) Main Concept MP4
Total rendering time : about 7′
The 8 cores are loaded at about 98%

2) Sony AVC plugin,
GPU rendering activated
Total rendering time : 6’35
The task manager shows about 4 cores working on the 8 available
average CPU load 30-40%

3) Sony AVC plugin,
GPU deactivated
Total rendering time : 6’26
Here also, the task manager shows about 4 cores working on the 8 available
average CPU load 30-40%

So I am very confused by the Sony AVC plugin. I don’t see the value of the GPU rendering, while my GTX460 has 300+ cores available to help the CPU!!

However, compared to my P8400 laptop, the Sony AVC plugin required 13’46 instead of about 6’30 with the i7, so I have a gain of 2 in overall rendering perf.

With the MainConcept MP4 plugin, the P8400 required 30’30, instead of 7 minutes with the i7 : gain of about 4.5.

Please let me know if you have any comments, or questions.
And also, any hints to leverage the CUDA rendering, as it appears to bring nothing so far on my machine…

I will also have to redo the tests with a 2nd hard drive.

Frédéric

—
Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my video tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/baumann_frederic/Sony-Vegas_event-pan-crop-tool/1

Or about Keyframes? https://library.creativecow.net/articles/baumann_frederic/Animating-with-Keyframes-in-Sony-Vegas.php

French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999

[John Rofrano]

John could you explain a little farther on this line as to what to move and why?

What to move: I thought the word “ALL” kind of covered it. If you have a C: and D: drive them create a project folder on D: and place all of your captured media in it, and save you project veg file to it, and do all of your work in it. I don’t know how else to say don’t put any files on C:

Why?: The “why” has to do with the way Windows works. The Windows OS keeps it’s swap file and temporary files on C: by default. It is constantly writing to them which requires hard drive activity. If you run low on real memory Windows will swap memory out to the hard drive. You don’t want windows swapping out to the same hard drive that you are trying to write to for your video work to because it causes contention for the drive heads. Other applications like Vegas are also writing temp files too to keep track of undo buffers and such which causes contention for the drive heads. All of this drive access could cause dropped frames during a real-time DV or HDV capture. It could just slow things way down for other write activities that are also memory intensive like rendering.

Vista was notorious for having a particularly poor an aggressive file caching scheme that seemed to always be accessing the hard drive. You just don’t want any of this OS housekeeping to interfere with your video work so the “rule-of-thumb” is to keep your work off of the C: drive for best performance.

It is important to note that we are talking about real physical C: and D: drives here and not a single drive that is partitioned as C: and D:. What we are after is two sets of drive read/write heads that can work independently. Partitioning a single drive is the same as having one drive in this case. You need two “physical” drives.

Some even suggest three physical drives with the third being dedicated to render. The idea is that during render you read from one drive and write to the other simultaneously which is quicker than doing it synchronously on a single drive for high speed transfers. This is particularly useful during smart-rendering when source is simply being copied to target.

Hope that helps.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Frederic Baumann]

I have played around with my new PC, and I noticed strange things in terms of perf, that I would like you to comment if you see where the problems come from…

First, if it matters, my motherboard is not a Gigabyte X58-USB3 as I wrote, but a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R. And my Ram is 2x2GB Corsair XMS3 1600 MHz.

Second, I have 3 hard drives:

C: is my main Windows Seagate 500 GB Sata II hard drive (swap here)

E: is a secondary IDE Matrox 320 GB hard drive (I know, it would be better to have Sata instead of IDE)

G: is an external WD 500 GB USB2 drive

Independently from Vegas, transferring a big file from one drive to another gives the following throughputs:

E: to C: 78 MB/sec
C: to E: 73 MB/sec
E: to G: 30 MB/sec
G: to E: 32 MB/sec

I have tested the rendering of the same 3-minute project (containing one single track with AVI files from Cineform), to MP4 at 10Mbps, with different configurations. In all cases, it takes between 6 to 8 minutes to render. And looking at the Windows resource monitor, the throughput of harddrives never exceeds 10MB/sec.

With the Sony AVC plugin, the CPU never runs at more than 35%, with approx only 4 cores used (GPU being used or not). With MainConcept MP4, it runs at 90-95%, with all 8 cores used.

So it looks like there is a bottleneck somewhere, which is not the CPU, and which are not the hard drives. It might be the RAM as John pointed out, but how could I check this? Or could it be something else?

More details on the various rendering configurations:

1) Sony AVC without GPU. source files on E: and target on C: -> CPU 33%, disk throughputs 8-9 MB/sec. total time 6’30

2) MainConcept. source files on E: and target on C: -> CPU 90%, disks 8 MB/sec. total time 8 minutes

3) MainConcept. Source files on E: and target on G: -> CPU 90%, disks 7 MB/sec. total time 8 minutes

4) Sony AVC with GPU. Source files on E: and target on G: -> CPU 35%, disks 9 MB/sec. Total time 6’30

5) Vegas Pro 64, MainConcept, Source files on E: and target on E: -> CPU 90%, disks 7MB/sec, total time 6’30

Also, even with Vegas Pro 64 bit, the memory used never exceeds 2 GB. It raises up to 2.03 GB in the task manager. Don’t you find it strange?

My OS is Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium.

Many thanks in advance, and sorry for having been so long!!!
Frederic

—
Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my video tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/baumann_frederic/Sony-Vegas_event-pan-crop-tool/1

Or about Keyframes? https://library.creativecow.net/articles/baumann_frederic/Animating-with-Keyframes-in-Sony-Vegas.php

French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999

[John Rofrano]

– 2 x 2 GB (too bad John, I wish I could have read your notice before. However I have just found a benchmark showing there is no noticeable perf loss between 2 and 3 channels. But this is just a test)

I would strongly recommend that you go out and buy a third 2GB stick before you run into your next problem… low memory. Here’s why:

The rule-of-thumb for configuring an NLE workstation is to have a minimum of 1GB per thread. You now have 8 threads and 4GB of memory which is 2:1 instead of 1:1. Adding that third channel of 2GB more will ease that ratio. Remember, each of those threads is going to need memory from the same pool when rendering. It is quite possible that some of those threads are not going to have enough memory to do their work and you will see low memory errors when all 8 cores are active.

You might want to wait and see if you have any problems but if you do… you now know why. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Frederic Baumann]

Thanks John – I am going to consider an extra budget for an extra 2GB… however so far I did not get any out of memory error. Movie Studio, like Vegas Pro 64, never eats more than 2 GB even if I have 4 GB available. I guess it is normal for Studio (32bits) but isn’t it strange for Vegas Pro?

BTW, I would greatly appreciate if you could have a look to the last post I have sent (the one with 5 comparative tests on different settings), and give feedback. There are things looking very strange to me, and I guess they would be clearer for you…

—
Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my video tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/baumann_frederic/Sony-Vegas_event-pan-crop-tool/1

Or about Keyframes? https://library.creativecow.net/articles/baumann_frederic/Animating-with-Keyframes-in-Sony-Vegas.php

French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999

[Mike Hinkel]

Thanks so much for your attention to detail on my question, John. This certainly gives me a better understanding on how it is supposed to work. This is what I thought the word “ALL” pretty much covered what to move, too, lol. I just wanted to make sure and again, I thank you for your time and effort in helping all who may have had the same questions. You are to be commended!

[John Rofrano]

Thanks for the kind words Mike. When the teacher forgets what it’s like to be the student, it’s time to stop teaching. 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com