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Slow rendering / low CPU utilization
Apparently I’m not the first one to bring up this subject, but I’d like to hear any possible expert opinions on what’s the matter with very slow rendering and low cpu utilization.
I have a brand new computer with Intel Core i7 860 processor, 8Gb of RAM and 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate Edition, running Vegas 9.0e 64-bit. The thing is that I have some projects from my old computer (Q6600 with only 2GB of RAM+Windows XP 32bit) and Vegas 9 is practically sometimes even slower in overall rendering speed than my old computer was! The video plays back in preview slightly better, but the rendering is slower than expected.
According to the task manager, only two cores out of eight are processing at about 60%, when total CPU load remains steadily at as low as 12-14%. I’ve tried giving Vegas the “high priority”-setting in Task Manager and all the usual gimmicks like increasing allowed memory size in Vegas video preferences and so forth.
In my the project I’m trying to render material that’s either a PAL DV AVI video source or uncompressed AVI into a PAL DV AVI. I originally used a variety of different source materials (like a few elements that were in MJPEG). I noticed that the rendered video had some glitches, caused by the MJPEG stuff so I converted it into raw uncompresed AVI.
So far I’ve tried Googling just about every possible forum on this subject but it seems that nobody has had much of luck with solving this issue. It seems that there is one or many bottlenecks somewhere in the rendering process. From what I read from other forums, some people are also blaming Sony for their bad programming/codecs that causes exactly the slow rendering/low cpu utilization problem I’m experienced.
If anyone would have any suggestions on what to do, I’d highly appreciate them.
Also, I’d like to know if it’s preferable to use uncompressed AVI sources or would it be better to use all source material as PAL DV.
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2 Replies
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I’m new to video, but my recommendation based on other programs is to look at your hard disk. You have a fast processor and plenty of ram, so the most likely culprit is either a slow hard disk or limited disk space. When you are rendering, large files are constantly written to disk and re-read into ram. The overall system is only as fast as the slowest component. If you purchased an off-the-shelf system, the manufacturers often put very, very slow hard disks into their systems because most people don’t look at disk speed and cache sizes. My recommendation to you is to add another hard disk…a very fast one with large cache. Then use one of your disks for media files while using the other for your paging/work/cache files. Since your current hard disk contains your Windows files, you might consider using the new disk for paging files because Windows is also constantly reading and writing files. You have to balance the workload between the two hard disks.
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I have a similar problem; I had 2 core processor and 2 g RAM and vegas worked great! I must say I have prepared projects which I constantly use and worked fine with that cpu I had. But now I have a 4 core processor and 4 g RAM and the same hard disks (3) and the same… everything, I just formatted one to install the OS (Win 7 64) and got a graphics card GeForce 9500GT, and one of the projects that worked before is not working now as I supposed it would, it got reeaaally slow. Before, it would take 20 min for rendering, but now it will take hours (a 35-second project).
I read this from a forum:If it’s not caused by FAT32 file system size limits or a bad encoded source video, it might be an issue about Vegas engine saturation.
Vegas render engine gets saturated when there are clips with large frame sizes with too much effects on timeline.
It’s very easy to experiment it.
1 Just open a new project.
2 Insert a video track and set it’s composition mode to 3D Alpha.
3 Get a still image and put it on the track. (or pick a texture from Media Generators)
4 Enter Track Motion and rotate the frame in any direction.
5 Set the preview screen mode to Good (Auto).6 Press Play on timeline… It should play nice.
7 Duplicate the track and play it again.
8 Repeat step 7 until your Vegas gets saturated.While rendering a frame, Vegas ignores cancel commands. It waits the render engine to finish the frame and it executes your abort command while moving to the next frame.
On my PC, I can have 8 tracks maximum. More than 8 gets Vegas into [Not Responding] status.
I tried this: I erased a couple of video tracks from that project and it started rendering just fine, then I put them back and it would not work. Now my question is, if I suppousedly have a better cpu, why is the project not working…at least in the same way as before?
Any help? I would really appreciate it.
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