Video Editing PCs, They confuse me.

[alexoliveira]

So i've been editing on Sony Vegas Pro 9.0 for a while on my laptop

AMD Athelon II Dual Core 2.0 ghz
4.0 gig ram
64 bit win 7 os

the i borrow this fancy computer

Dual XEON dual core 3.2 ghz processor
4.0 gig ram
64 bit win 7 os

And i'm kinda disappointed because the render time from about an hour to 40 minutes...ok...

What do I need to really make renders speed up big time?

Also the preview window is still chuggy and low rez. What do I have to do to a decent preview? I thought this machine was pretty darn solid.

[Paul Lara]

If you want speed, then consider SpeedEDIT.

[SantiagoVa]

I grew up (video editing-wise) on Premiere and have also used Sony Vegas, which I found easy to learn and use. However, SpeedEDIT is like moving to whole other country, like Pittsburgh (that is a Marx Brothers reference Pittsburgh-ians, be not offended). I am sure I would have liked SpeedEDIT more if I grew-up using it (like spanish). I'm going to learn to love it whether I like it or not. It came with the TCXD300 EventDV magazine has done evaluations on this and (if memory serves correctly) there are many factors that affect render time, such as number of effects (transitions, etc), the type of video card (especially if the video card is built-in and shares motherboard memory), disk drive and memory and whether or not your PC likes you. Search for Stephen Nathans-Kelly's articles in EventDV magazine comparing video render speed on different PCs/Processors.

[Paul Lara]

True. Whatever NLE you start off with will forever feel 'natural' to you (quite similar to language, no?).

[jcupp]

On render speed:
You can't render faster than you can read and write files to the hard drive so drive sub-system speed has a lot to do with render speed.

[alexoliveira]

My mother board has two esata buses. would reading from a drive on one bus and writing to another make sense or do they bottleneck somehow?

Also I have no idea what the write speeds are vs. what usb is cable is reading or writing from usb external drive a bad idea? my spidy senses tell me yes.

[alexoliveira]

Put this another way,

Ok so I want to render a lot faster and I want to build a PC to do so.

What do I need?

I'm looking to break the bank and go with some insane 4500 machine...within reason what can I do?

[bbeanan]

you need different software... that is why I used Vegas only once and then sold my copy

[djlithium]

If you want speed, then consider SpeedEDIT.

Until speedEdit actually smartens up on a few things and or its price drops to sub 500 bucks its a waste.
Sorry Paul, but speedEdit has been spinning its wheels since 2006. Whats that all about?
For example, why is it that I have to set all the clips manually to be the best quality on the timeline before output? why can't I just have that happen in the first place?
Of course I'm still running 1.5 so who knows.... maybe things have changed. Still, in my opinion NT blew it with speedEdit a long time ago. Simple matter of how really. A lack of understanding what a customer needs conflicting with what every other package has as "basic minimal functionality". Don't get my wrong, speedEdit is great, but right now its more like molasses to me.

[SantiagoVa]

Search for Stephen Nathans-Kelly's articles in EventDV magazine comparing video render speed on different PCs/Processors.

Actually, it was Jan Ozer who has done reviews on render speeds in eventDV magazine.

Also, take a look at this setup on eBay (http://cgi.ebay.com/NewTek-VT5-Ready...item25533f212e). Note, I have no affiliation an any way with this seller, but I use the hardware he/she lists as a reference for an edit machine I plan to build. (I have too much of the hormone Technosterone, I HAVE to build my own.) Also, Adobe Premiere has a render engine that takes advantage of the nVidia chipset. See if Vegas has something similar.

I would also suggest getting a motherboard compatible with the new USB 3. Data throughput is even faster than eSATA.

[Dexter2999]

Building a new machine lets you get the fastest processor speed.
And lots of RAM... not guaranteed to speed things up but it NEVER hurts especially for RAM previewing.
But, unless your software is optimized to use multiple cores/processors you aren't going to see the super jump in speeds.
Keeping media files on one drive and rendered fx on a separate drive (not just a partition) is faster than keeping everything on one drive. One head is free to read data while the second drive head is free to write data.

Having a small render farm for 3D I'd love to see editing/compositing app's use distributed rendering. But it's not there yet.

[SantiagoVa]

By distributed rendering you mean other PCs on a network can bare some of the rendering load, I believe Vegas Pro has had that feature since even before Sony purchased it. But you are correct in that the hard drives are a key bottleneck. Just a few years back, SCSI hard drives spinning at 10,000 RPM designed for video (would not re-calibrate during writes) were the cat's meow. . .whatever that means.