"Mortimer" wrote in message
...
"G Hardy" wrote in message
...
"Mortimer" wrote in message
...

I've set the rendering and VIDEO_TS folders to be on an external USB2
disk (and it *is* running at USB2 speed!) so as to lighten the load on
the system disk.

There's your problem. Assuming you can put them on different drives, put
the VIDEO_TS folder on the system disk.

So out the render directory on one drive (external) and the VIDEO_TS
directory on another disk (eg C?

Will that actually help? The time is in populating the rendering folder
rather than the final copying from render to VIDEO_TS folder. Which drive
should the raw MPG files be on - the ones that make up the project? Should
they be on the render drive or the VIDEO_TS drive?

At present all three (source, render and VIDEO_TS) are on the external
disk, mainly to keep the system disk free for any pagefile access. Maybe
there's a better way of doing it. Sadly Studio 10 SmartStart doesn't have
any PDFs of manuals, and the help file doesn't seem to offer any advice on
optimum setup of disks.
My arrangement is as follows
CPU Intel 2.8Mhz
RAM 1 Gig
PageFile fixed minimum 2.5gig on C drive
MPEG files for rendering on C drive in My Documents
Output location from rendering on D drive
Storage and archiving only on G drive external Firwire 2 (800mbps Oxford
Chipset) I avoid USB as in my experience with 32 bit systems you can get
data bottle necks.

Normally if I'm using VSO ConvertXtoDVD to author and burn a disc takes
around 1 to 1.5 hours max, if I'm using NeroVisionExpress around 2+ hours
and for a really simple and quick DVD I use DVDAuthorGUI that never seems to
take more than 20 minutes to produce the VIDEO_TS folder with files -
although no menu's and set chapter points at 5 minute interval.
I defrag both the C and D drive prior to editing and authoring (generally
the night before and use PerfectDisk v7)

For editing and demuxing etc I use Womble, Vegas, ProjectX and
MPEGStreamclip

This arrangement works for me after a few years of frustration and trial and
lots of errors!!!

"Mortimer" wrote in message
...
"G Hardy" wrote in message
...
"Mortimer" wrote in message
...

I've set the rendering and VIDEO_TS folders to be on an external USB2
disk (and it *is* running at USB2 speed!) so as to lighten the load on
the system disk.

There's your problem. Assuming you can put them on different drives, put
the VIDEO_TS folder on the system disk.

So out the render directory on one drive (external) and the VIDEO_TS
directory on another disk (eg C?

Yes - in essence, always try to read from one drive and write to a different
drive. Note that the benefit is lost if the two drives use the same IDE
cable.



Will that actually help? The time is in populating the rendering folder
rather than the final copying from render to VIDEO_TS folder...

With such large files, you get a benefit by using two different drives
whatever you're doing. Whether the benefit is noticeable is really down to
processing power, because as the PC gets more powerful, the bottleneck
caused by the drives becomes more apparent.

The very first DVD I made (must be 8 years ago!) was on a 800MHz Duron PC
with 128MB memory. The encoding software stipulated that it needed 128MB
_free_ memory, so bunging another stick in there made a HUGE difference to
encoding time (something like 10X). At the time, a second hard drive was
prohibitively expensive for me, but I don't expect it would have changed the
encoding speed much because despite the memory, the bottleneck was still the
CPU power.


Which drive should the raw MPG files be on - the ones that make up the
project? Should they be on the render drive or the VIDEO_TS drive?

I think, by that, you mean internal or external drive? Your particular
bottleneck is the USB cable, so you need to be doing whatever you can to
minimise the amount of data going through the wire.

To be honest, if speed is that important to you, you'd be better off taking
the HDD out of the external drive and putting it onto the second controller
in your PC.


At present all three (source, render and VIDEO_TS) are on the external
disk, mainly to keep the system disk free for any pagefile access. Maybe
there's a better way of doing it. Sadly Studio 10 SmartStart doesn't have
any PDFs of manuals, and the help file doesn't seem to offer any advice on
optimum setup of disks.

Think of the data coming from the drives then being processed, then going
for write to a drive; as being roads wide enough for one car, so they are
controlled by traffic lights. You want your data to flow along the cables in
such a way that the lights on that road can stay on green for the duration
of that operation. The USB road is a slower road so you might consider
putting the least amount of traffic down that one. DVD writers do not use
data as fast as hard drives, if you do put the hard drive from your USB
enclosure into the system box instead, you might consider (if the enclosure
is big enough) putting the optical drive in its place.

"Mortimer" wrote in message
...
snip

I think I went out of the frying pan into the fi originally I had
everything on the system drive and then I changed to have everything
on the external drive, so I was no better off! With a bit of thought
I'd have ensured that I was always copying from one drive to the
other.


You probably made things even worse!

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:53:08 +0100, "Mortimer" wrote:

"Stuart" wrote in message
...

A suggestion - increase you physical RAM to 1 gig and set your virtual
memory to a minimum and maximum of 1.5gig
Should make quite a difference to rendering time. Also don't forget to
defrag your hard drive frequently.

I've increased the RAM to 1 GB - I found some RAM that I'd ordered for a
customer who then decided not to upgrade: I'd forgotten all about it!

Surprisingly the increased RAM doesn't make any difference to the rendering
time.

Nor would I have expected it to - or defragging your HDD which is one
of the biggest white elephants around. It's pure CPU that's holding
you back, as you say - and if it's already maxed out and there's not
another process taking CPU time, then I'm not sure there's much you
can do.

I've always found Pinnacle to be a slow renderer though - even v11
doesn't seem to be properly threaded so as to make use of multi-core
processors.

"Ed Chilada" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:53:08 +0100, "Mortimer"
wrote:

snip
Surprisingly the increased RAM doesn't make any difference to the
rendering
time.

Nor would I have expected it to - or defragging your HDD which is
one
of the biggest white elephants around.



Just to clarify the above remark so that no one gets confused...
Defragging is a white elephants as far as rendering is concerned, but
a very real issue were capture/transfer from tape/DVD play-out is
concerned, rendering doesn't need to be real-time unlike the latter.

On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:49:33 +0100, ":Jerry:"
wrote:


"Ed Chilada" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:53:08 +0100, "Mortimer"
wrote:

snip
Surprisingly the increased RAM doesn't make any difference to the
rendering
time.

Nor would I have expected it to - or defragging your HDD which is
one
of the biggest white elephants around.



Just to clarify the above remark so that no one gets confused...
Defragging is a white elephants as far as rendering is concerned, but
a very real issue were capture/transfer from tape/DVD play-out is
concerned, rendering doesn't need to be real-time unlike the latter.

Aye yes, to be fair it might help if your HDD is in a ridiculous state
and you don't have much more space available than the tape you're
capturing, but if you've got a decent amount of HDD space available
(so that it's not having to use every available cluster regardless of
location), then I still don't see it being much of an issue.
Certainly, spending hours de-fragging is a waste of time if you're not
getting dropped frames in the first place.

"Ed Chilada" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 22:49:33 +0100, ":Jerry:"
wrote:


"Ed Chilada" wrote in message
. ..
On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 20:53:08 +0100, "Mortimer"
wrote:

snip
Surprisingly the increased RAM doesn't make any difference to the
rendering
time.

Nor would I have expected it to - or defragging your HDD which is
one
of the biggest white elephants around.



Just to clarify the above remark so that no one gets confused...
Defragging is a white elephants as far as rendering is concerned, but
a very real issue were capture/transfer from tape/DVD play-out is
concerned, rendering doesn't need to be real-time unlike the latter.

Aye yes, to be fair it might help if your HDD is in a ridiculous state
and you don't have much more space available than the tape you're
capturing, but if you've got a decent amount of HDD space available
(so that it's not having to use every available cluster regardless of
location), then I still don't see it being much of an issue.
Certainly, spending hours de-fragging is a waste of time if you're not
getting dropped frames in the first place.


If you use a defrag program like PerfectDisk it won't take hours - I have
several 500gig drives and I don't need to defrag them overnight just a
couple of hours. A badly defragged disc ie with bits of the file scattered
all over will affect programs like Nero if you are burning a DVD to
rendering if the heads are thrashing about. I've worked in several
commercial editing suites and the first thing the techo does before any of
the clients arrive is defrag all hard disk,delete unnecessary files to
maximise freespace. With PerfectDisk the more you use it the less you have
to use it! It does a much better job than M$ even though it is endorsed by
M$. The answer is not just one thing but having everything working well from
the CPU, the quality of the RAM and harddisk. Even noise control of
harddisks (Samsung etc) can have a bad effect on performance - a balance
has to be struck..