What kind of rendering times?

[Rick Mac]

[sean141] “What kind of rendering times am I looking at with the Vegas software to complete a video.”

That is a loaded question.
Render times depend on many factors.
It sounds as if you have a pretty fast computer which
helps those render times a lot.

Render times are dynamic. For example, will your project be rendered to the same format as your source video? If not, your computer has to do more work than if you do not change your scale or codec. Some effects take a lot more processing time than others. For example, gaussian blur is very cpu intensive. Some plugins render quickly while others are a lot slower. For example, if you are going for a film type color balance, VASST reelpak’s process very quickly when compared to Magic Bullet.
HDV takes more time than DV.

If you are rendering a DV to DV project with modest effects and transitions you will most likly render faster than realtime. If rendering to MPEG for DVD it will take longer.

Maybe others on the forum can share their render time experinces with you. I tend to do very long and complex projects with lots of plugins, filters, and broadcast filters. I run a AMD X2 3800+ dual core with 2gig ram and my render times are pretty good. I have found Vegas to be fairly efficient with render times as compared to other products.

I know this does not exactly answer your question, but there are just to many variables to reach the enlightenment you seek
grasshopper.

Regards, Rick.

Rick Mac
Director of Audio Production
TCT Network – Directv 377

[Sean141]

Rick,

[Rick Mac] “I know this does not exactly answer your question”…

Actually, you did answer my question. I apprecitate you taking the time.

Being just a home video type guy…I would be going from mpeg to DVD quite a bit.

[Mike Kujbida]

…I would be going from mpeg to DVD quite a bit.

Does this mean that you’re capturing from your HI8 as an MPEG stream?
If so, this will increase your render time as MPEG was meant to be a mastering format and not an editing format.
This has changed with Vegas 8 as it now has a “smart render” feature for MPEG files.
However, just as with DV-AVI, any time you add an effect, it will be re-rendered.
Also, going from MPEG to MPEG will mean another drop in quality as the original video is already compressed and you’ll be compressing it further when you render it for DVD.
My suggestion would be to either buy a device like a anopus ADVC-55 or a used miniDV camcorder from E-Bay (as long as it has the pass-through feature!!). The transport function can be broken as long as the electronics are functioning.
This will allow you to convert the the analog signal from your camcorder to a digital one that will be much easier to edit.
If you don’t already have one, you’ll need a firewire card for your computer but they’re available for around $30 or less.

[Sean141]

What I do is….hook up my sony hi8 cam to the dvd recorder, burn it to a dvd then put it on my harddrive and import it, edit it and when I’m done…burn it to dvd.

Your saying… I’d have better quality by using some sort of capturing device on my computer, import it to my software, edit it and use what special effects I’m going to use and then burn it? This will make the effects look even better also..correct?

I’ve got a device that came with my pinnacle software that I bought about 3 years ago. I can use that can’t I? My computer has two firewire ports.

[Mike Kujbida]

Your saying… I’d have better quality…
This will make the effects look even better also..correct?

Yes to everything!!
By it’s very nature, MPEG is a highly compressed format.
As an example, camcorder footage is (approx.) 13.5 GB/hr.
An hour of MPEG footage (on a DVD) is around 4 GB.
That’s more than 3:1 compression.
Something has to give with all that compression and it’s your image quality.

I’ve got a device that came with my pinnacle software…

Try and sell it on E-Bay.
There have been numerous posts over the years stating that it won’t work with Vegas.

[Sean141]

Thanks Mike. Much appreciated.

I looked up the ADVC-55…do you know of anything else off the top of your head that is cheaper than $200 that will work with Vegas 8? If not, that’s alright.

Thanks again.

[Rick Mac]

Datavideo DAC-200

I have one and it works very well.
Since it is a bidirectional device you can hook up
a video minoitor to it and during playback from
the vegas timeline it will output video to your video
monitor.

Regards, Rick.

Rick Mac
Director of Audio Production
TCT Network – Directv 377

[Edward Troxel]

[sean141] “Your saying… I’d have better quality by using some sort of capturing device on my computer”

Yes you would. If you don’t have firewire out on the camera then you can get a convertor like the Canopus ADVC series or ADS Pyro.

Camera -> analog (i.e. S-Video) -> convertor -> firewire -> computer

Then capture into a standard DV-AVI file. As a side bonus, DV-AVI files are much easier to edit than MPEG2 as well.

When finished, then render back out to MPEG2 for creating your DVD.

Edward Troxel

[Sean141]

Thanks Rick.