Slow Render again, tried most suggestions, looking for more

[Brad Leigh]

And I tried render with CPU only, looked like a minor increase, peaked at 23% max.
As well I have a very simple project, no plugins, 4 edits with dissolves, one video track, one extra audio track near end ( mp3 )
This piece is very very simple. Shot 1080i HDV, render to AVCHD. It is 2 minutes long and takes about 25 minutes to render.
Thanks again
Brad

i7 2600 3.4 Ghz 8Gig Ram , Win 7 Pro, Vegas Pro 10

[Mike Kujbida]

Your source footage is HDV so why are you rendering to AVCHD?
Rendering to the same setting as your source footage will mean that things will go very quickly instead of what’s happening now.

[Brad Leigh]

But under any circumstances shouldn’t cpu usage exceed 20%.
It was a test, the project will be mixed HDV and AVCHD footage so in that case rendering would involve converting codecs.
Today I am being same getting the system up to snuff before I start the project.
Thanks
Brad

i7 2600 3.4 Ghz 8Gig Ram , Win 7 Pro, Vegas Pro 10

[Mike Kujbida]

[Brad Leigh] “But under any circumstances shouldn’t cpu usage exceed 20%.”

These days it’s a guessing game as to which combination of footage and added FX is going to make your CPU work harder.

“…the project will be mixed HDV and AVCHD footage so in that case rendering would involve converting codecs”

No conversion is necessary.
Drop everything on your timeline and render out to the desired format based on your needs.
I’ve done projects where I’ve had a mix of footage ranging from DV-AVI (720×480) all the way up to ProRes HD (1920×1080) on the same timline.

[Brad Leigh]

Mike
I believe that is what I am doing, putting HDV and AVCHD in a time line and rendering my project to AVCHD. I am not pre rendering anything.
If my render times are long, and I see low CPU, RAM, and Disc, usage it seems to me Something else is wrong. I see many threads on this issue that refer to the following…. Setting threads at 8 not 16,Setting pre-render ram at 0, use CPU not GPU to render. I have read many threads on this issue. I thought maybe I missed one and there was a setting I missed, because I found bits and pieces in different threads.
Thanks again
Brad

i7 2600 3.4 Ghz 8Gig Ram , Win 7 Pro, Vegas Pro 10

[Brad Leigh]

I started over with all the new settings and started a fresh project, and my render times seem good.
Timeline to AVCHD seem to be about 3:1 which feels pretty good to me.
(1 minute time line = 3 minute render). (it had been taking about 25 minutes for a 2 minute timeline)
I did have a mp3 music bed in the project that extended under black and that doen’t seem to render fast so I might try replacing that with an AVI. My cpu usage, disc and RAM in task manager still seems low (20% cpu)but my render time seems good, so I’ll move on with the project.
Thanks for your help.
Brad

i7 2600 3.4 Ghz 8Gig Ram , Win 7 Pro, Vegas Pro 10

[Dave Haynie]

If you’re not seeing much beyond 20-25%, it sure sounds like you have a plug-in somewhere that’s single-threaded. Or you have Vegas set to limit the number of threads.

I’d step back a little. Check the setup to ensure Vegas can use at least one thread per CPU. Try rendering just a plain, unchanged HDV track to AVC (AVCHD is the disc format, not the video format, so it’s proper to say “AVC” here) and see how your CPU percentages run. If that’s in the 90-100% range, try adding complexity until it slows down, and you may be able to identify the culprit.

You should always see something over 90% CPU when rendering. If not, that’s an indicator the CPU isn’t the bottleneck. But it should always be, since it’s the only thing in a typical system that can’t match the demands we video folks put on the system.

-Dave

[Brad Leigh]

Dave
Thanks so much for chiming in here. I have made 2 changes at the same time, so I don’t have a good feel for what to expect. I upgraded to Vegas Pro 10 from Studio 10, and I bought a new i7 2600 3.4g with 8 gig ram.
Here is my test. New session, 1920x1080i 29.97.
Import clip from my HDR-FX1 HDV camcorder.
Import a clip on 2nd internal Sata drive duration 00:01:24:24
( I will be adding more SATA Drives this week )
Render to AVC 1920x80i M2ts. To internal Boot SATA, or render to external USB drive.
(as soon as new drives arrive this will be replaced)

Render time 7:07
Cpu usage very low20% or less, when I look at threads
I see 0,2,4 show about 20%, Drive usage is a series of spikes of only 3meg sec, Free mem is listed at about 5 gig.

One question I have is under the Preview window is says project settings
1920x1080i 32 and same for preview. My camera is 12 bit, but I’ve looked around pretty good and I can’t find anything set at 32 bit.
I’ve even selected project settings match media ( HDV)Is this the problem?
Thank you so much again, something still doesn’t feel right.
Brad

i7 2600 3.4 Ghz 8Gig Ram , Win 7 Pro, Vegas Pro 10

[Lex Gernale]

try this.
divide the project in two and make 2 Regions then save. for example if you have 2 minutes video on the timeline, make region for 0-1 minutes and the second region 1-2 minutes. Render the first region. open another instance of Vegas pro and the same project. render the second region.
check the task manager if cpu increase to 40%.

when the render is complete, create another video track on top, put the 2 rendered files and render it again to make it continuous 4 minutes rendered video clip. no worry for render generation because of smart render for avchd.

I have AMD Phenom II X4 system with 8 Gig of RAM. Vegas pro 10e

if i notice the cpu usage is very low, i chunk the project in to 2-4 render.

hope this helps

thanks

[Quinn Vu]

I have the same low cpu usage problem as well. I have a fast AMD 1090T Hex cores CPU and 8G of RAM. But no matter what I tried, rendering to Sony AVCHD never get above 25% CPU usage. My work around is to open 3~4 Sony 10e instances then render them in parallel. That way CPU usages now can get up to 90~95% level. This is a tedious process but seems to be the only way to get things done faster.