Vegas vs. Mac: Rendering

matt24671 wrote on 9/7/2004, 5:38 AM
Folks-

A friend has a Mac G5 with FCP, and the DVD program (DVD Pro?)

On my PC, to render 1 hour of footage to MPEG-2, and then burn a DVD, takes at least 10 hours - maybe more like 15.

He claims he can render and burn in 1 hour.

My PC is almost state of the art - P4 2.5 Ghz, 512 MB RAM, Intel motherboard. His G5 in the single chip model.

I love Vegas, but with the very long renders, it doesn't sem as good a value, compared to the MAc, as I had thought....

Comments

Jackie_Chan_Fan wrote on 9/7/2004, 6:45 AM
Does he have a hardware Mpeg Encoder? :)

How many effects does he have in his render, vs yours in your render.

Not exactly a fair comparison until you define the specifics of the experiment, and stick to them like glue.

Dach wrote on 9/7/2004, 6:51 AM
I agree that a fair comparison would be to render the exac same projects. I myself with the work I have been doing have been creating one projects with a 4 to 5 hour render time.
spacesounds wrote on 9/7/2004, 7:39 AM
"My PC is almost state of the art - P4 2.5 Ghz, 512 MB RAM, Intel motherboard. His G5 in the single chip model."

Actually, your system is FAR from state-of-the-art - especially with a non-HT/non-XEON CPU and only 512MB of RAM. Sorry,but that's the way it is... maybe two years ago your system would be considered ALMOST state-of-the-art.

You really can't compare a P4 to a G5 - they're both radically different CPU technologies. You can't put a 2.5 GHz P4 next to a 2.5GHz G5 and think that they're similar since they both have identical clock speeds. The G5 is a faster chip, in fact, EXPONENTIALLY faster. In a dual configuration, you're talking SERIOUS CPU horsepower! It's really no wonder that this is the preferred pro platform for video, audio and graphics.

In all fairness, I think your friend is exaggerating the render time difference, but that's impossible to tell without knowing that IDENTICAL projects were used as a basis for comparison, on systems with IDENTICAL specs.

Don't get me wrong, I love my PC (a FAST HP system w/2GB RAM). I'm very happy with Vegas 5/DVDA 2. For audio, I use Acid 4, Cubase SX3 (just ordered the upgrade) and Wavelab 5. For 3d, I use 3ds max 6. But I'll be honest with you, with all of the security problems surrounding XP SP2, I'm taking a VERY CLOSE LOOK at Apple's Production Suite (Motion, FCP HD Pro, DVD Studio) with one of their new 20-inch iMacs. I've pretty much had it with WIndows!
johnmeyer wrote on 9/7/2004, 7:47 AM
Something is not right with your figures. If you put one hour of DV video on the timeline and then render (i.e., not effects or anything), then you should be able to render with your computer in two hours or less. With a brand new computer, you should be able to render at close to, or better than real time (less than one hour).

Are you sure that you are doing a simple MPEG render, or are you also having Vegas do fades, overlays, composites, etc.? If you are, then you are definitely NOT doing an apples-to-apples comparison.
davids wrote on 9/7/2004, 8:13 AM
spacesounds wrote:
with all of the security problems surrounding XP SP2

wow! can you point me to (credible) accounts of security problems? I've heard about the Heise Security report, but it seems rather dubious (more likely the wanted to throw the first stone). Others?
Jackie_Chan_Fan wrote on 9/7/2004, 8:15 AM
*QUOTE*

"The G5 is a faster chip, in fact, EXPONENTIALLY faster. In a dual configuration, you're talking SERIOUS CPU horsepower! It's really no wonder that this is the preferred pro platform for video, audio and graphics."

*END QUOTE*

Frankly this is simply not true at all.

As a profesional 3d animator working on productions from film to videogames, most hardware used for the bulk of the work are PCs. They range from PC workstations running windows 2000, xp and linux to PC servers running linux for render servers. NO ONE in the game industry is running macs :)

The bulk of 3d animation today is done on PC hardware, Softimage XSI, Softimage 3D, Alias Maya, 3D-studio max, Lightwave, Houdini, Messiah etc... Are all dominating the PC workstation world. Granted Softimage, Alias, and Houdini are available on various platforms, but mostly are used on a windows PC these days.

Toss in Photoshop, Painter, Deep Paint 3d, Digital Fusion, Aftereffects, Premiere Pro, Vegas, etc etc etc... Yes some are available on macs, but most of the bulk of audio and video work are being done on PCs. The quality of software and the number of suites are more plentiful on PCs which are cheaper and just as powerful it not more.

I've worked with professional Protools users who couldnt tell their ass from their elbow outside of protools. Protools at times was very frustrating as i could have done the work in vegas myself personally just as fast, if not faster. Unfortunately the guy doing the final mix was a protools studio guy, and we had to deal with it. VEGAS is faster to work with. How about Nuendo? HUGE tool. I know film audio guys that never leave home without Nuendo :)

Mac's do have a long history in publishing, video, and audio. Things have changed greatly though and PC's have clearly more users on their side.

Just because Mac has a good healthy sized Protools, FCP, Shake, and Avid user base, does not mean they dominate. There is a lot of other work that goes into production, and those apps are more or less finishing apps.

A lot of of the higher end work is still done on PCs, linux, windows, Discreet productions suites on sgis etc.. There are still quite a bit of work done outside of the mac world that simply makes mac the "not so superior" video and audio platform it onc was when Photoshop 1 and Premiere 1 were all the rage.

Macs are not crap. I'm just trying to shed light on this. Your statement about macs being "the prefered platform for video and audio" is far from true. Most folks in the 3d animation and game developement world would laugh at your statement as they do not at all prefer macs for their work.

I'm not saying Mac doesnt have a certain user base that uses specific apps. They do. But in terms of numbers, the PC has a wider user base using a lot more various applications, than just protools, avid, shake and FCP.

There are a lot of PC render servers out there also, more than any mac would dream of.

Macs are nice computers and i would enjoy using them for whatever. But the bulk of my work, and the various places i've worked are all PC workstation based with perhaps a few macs. In all fairness though, i've been to some very professional publishing studios that do some major magazine layouts.. and they were all mac based. But thats more of a historical thing, than a preference based on capabilities. In other words a PC could handle magazine layout just fine :)



spacesounds wrote on 9/7/2004, 8:23 AM
spacesounds wrote:
with all of the security problems surrounding XP SP2

Do a google search with "xp sp2 security problems". You'll be surprised at the results! See for yourself. I'm staying with SP1 until the bugs are worked out of SP2! (but then, that's only me!)
davids wrote on 9/7/2004, 9:10 AM
I did the search on google, and I went through the first page of hits. I can't find anything that'll have me uninstall sp2.

First, PCMag reports on how code on the local machine running as admin can access the WMI interface to the Security Center and perhaps spoof you into thinking you have anti-virus code running. Ahem. If malicious code is already running on the local machine in admin mode, then the horse is already out of the barn.

Second, bbc news (amongst others) reports that Secunia has found a way to have people drag and drop files from one part of a web page (the internet zone) to another (the local zone) to exploit a hole. This seems low risk (just don't drag-and-drop on a webpage as you wouldn't download and execute unknown code). This can't be exploited without your help.

Third, theregister reports that 200 apps clash with sp2. Almost all of these (or maybe even all) are due to the firewall blocking their access to the net. You can easily allow those that you care about in the control panel, and not allow the spyware to get out.

Finally, there is also a reference to the Heise issue.

All other hits were variations of the above. With the amount of fixes in sp2 (including the automated buffer-overrun protection that has been enabled), these 'issues' seem rather insignificant.
spacesounds wrote on 9/7/2004, 9:12 AM
Given the fact that the G5 is a 64-bit chip, it IS exponentially faster than a P4 (note that I did NOT mention XEON!). Also, AMD now has a serious competitor with their new 64-bit chip. However, speed comparisons depend entirely on the given benchmark that's being run, and also how well a given app is written for the given platform.

I work with many advertising agencies and production companies in many markets (especially prominent markets like NY and LA). In video, audio and graphics, the Mac IS the preferred platform. Period. I'm not making this stuff up! HOWEVER, in 3d and gaming, I agree the PC is the preferred platform - and will more than likely continue to be the preferred platform..

As I indicated earlier, Apple's Production Suite looks VERY slick and serious, along with the new iMac. I plan on making the purchase within the next month or so, and using the system alongside my PC. Besides, a friend of mine works at an Apple store. I get a 25% discount on hardware, and a 50% discount on software (which means that the Production Suite will cost me only $650!). How can I go wrong with that???
[r]Evolution wrote on 9/9/2004, 10:32 AM
VEGAS renders are slower. That is no secret. The thing is that the VEGAS UI and Workflow are where you find your Advantages.

Editing the same piece on another NLE(not VEGAS) or platform(not VEGAS) I feel that you will complete your edits a lot quicker with VEGAS. You hit 'render' then you're off to the beach or off to bed. When you come back your render is complete. You're not still sitting in front of your NLE battling some crazy workflow that has additional steps to do the same tasks as you would be with other NLE's.

I switched to VEGAS for this reason. I can deal with the longer render times as it doesn't take any effort from me at all.
apit34356 wrote on 9/9/2004, 11:03 AM
the real power of the G5 is the IBM designed floating point unit, extremely fast, and does long seq well,( deep pipeline ). 50% you cann't go wrong. Pixalar is an apple house.
musman wrote on 9/9/2004, 2:54 PM
WHat about for real time previews at full frame rate and at least preview quality? I saw a friend edit a short movie a few weekends ago and it seemed like the dual G5 did a good job at that.
Of course I'm comparing it to my 2 year old p4 2.4 system. And the mac did like to crash all the time. Luckily the editor was great and knew how to save the file just before a crash when the dreaded error message appeared. In fairness, he claimed the instability was the result of his company's immediately upgrading to the newest versions of fcp and their os.
winrockpost wrote on 9/9/2004, 5:10 PM
.........On my PC, to render 1 hour of footage to MPEG-2, and then burn a DVD, takes at least 10 hours - maybe more like 15



Something is wrong, I get close to real time (no effects) with a system close to yours.
Laurence wrote on 9/9/2004, 8:30 PM
Two things:

First, if you render to a regular DV avi then rerender to a mpeg 2, it's a whole lot faster than if you render straight to mpeg 2.

Second, It's been a few years since I've used FCP and DVD Studio Pro, but back when I was using version 2 of FCP and version 1 of DVD Studio pro, the mpeg 2 renders where nowhere near the quality of the Vegas mpeg 2 renders. The DVD Studio Pro renders were quick (about two times real time back then) but they were dark and grainy while the Vegas 1 renders, while more time consuming, were pretty much indistinguishable from an DV compressed avi.

It is likely that that has changed. Has anyone compared mpeg render quality lately? I know that Vegas mpeg 1 renders still seem to look horrible beside anything else, but Vegas and DVD Architect mpeg 2 renders have always been pristine. When I switched from FCP and DVD Studio Pro, the Apple mpeg 2 render time was way quicker, but the quality was nowhere near what Vegas could do, albiet in about five times as much rendering time. I imagine that the Apple systems are rendering higher quality mpeg 2 now since projects I've seen that were done on Apples lately look great. Have you compared the quality of your friend's G5 renders with the ones you are doing? Are they as good? I know that the default rendering settings on my old Mac system used to highly sacrifice quality for speed.
farss wrote on 9/9/2004, 9:32 PM
From the little I know the Vegas audio and video pipelines are all floating point. Macs are mostly double precision integer. So even on exactly the same hardware the Mac apps will run faster.
And BTW the fastest renderer I've come accross is MGI Videowave, several times FASTER than RT! And it's mostly FREE. Cause you can't do much with it but I still cut a hundred or so videos with it and it does use the uStuff codec (shudder).

Bob.
spacesounds wrote on 9/10/2004, 6:16 AM
Speaking about the G5, here's an interesting USAToday article about John Lowry's Star Wars HD prep and restoration project (with 600 networked G5's) for the upcoming box set scheduled for release on September 21st.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2004-09-06-star-wars_x.htm

They only mention the hardware. I'd like to know more about the software they're using (maybe something proprietary?).
jkrepner wrote on 9/10/2004, 7:34 AM
Not to beat this thing to death... but I have thought about the G5 and FCP and noticed something interesting on Apple's site. They show speed tests between a baseline top-of-the-line Dell P4 machine and various flavors of G5s. The new 2.5 ghz G5 is something like "89% faster" than the dell when it comes to rendering a photoshop image with something like 70 filters applied. Here is my question (and I searched and searched for the answer) they don't tell you what the actual times are. Okay, so the G5 is 100% faster then a similar Wintel machine - but what is that really mean? If it takes 1 sec on a dell, but a 100% faster Mac, can do it in a half sec, then there is NO real difference at that point. (half of nothing is nothing 0 times 10 is still 0) There is a reason they don't post the times. It may be twice as fast - but it's twice the cost and the real bottom line is that to the user, its not faster at all. We just love to see numbers and neat little graphs. With that said, I'm still thinking about the FCP w/ G5 - in addition to the vegas machine.

TGIF.

Jeff
farss wrote on 9/10/2004, 7:40 AM
Don't tell me Apple are still using these cooked up figures. I trust no one is actually dim enough to believe them, heck even the Macolites don't believe them anymore.

Bob.
williamconifer wrote on 9/11/2004, 5:14 AM
Matt wrote: "My PC is almost state of the art - P4 2.5 Ghz, 512 MB RAM, Intel motherboard. His G5 in the single chip model."

Up your Ram! no that's not an insult *chuckles*

I do a lot of 15 min. montage work (lots of motion and some fx). My ram requirements to render are usually around 650-750 meg and that's with everything other app closed (not counting auto start apps). It looks like to me that your using virtual memory on your HD which will string your render time out big time.

Have 1 gig ram. One day I was in my case dinking around with IDE cables and later that night I went to render a 1 min clip and it took me like 15 or 20 mins (don't remember the exact time but it was like 10 times the run time). I checked my memory allocation and sure enough I was using virtual memory for rendering and only had 512 meg of physical ram. It turns out I accidently unseated a sitck of ram in my case.

512 meg of ram in Win2k or XP is a minimum amount for normal usage (IMHO), for video go for atleast 1 gig ram.

ttfn
jack
matt24671 wrote on 9/11/2004, 7:45 AM
Thank you all for this rinteresting discussion. Will increase my RAM!

Matt