Allocating RAM for rendering

Clark77042 · Post by **Clark77042** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:16 am

I am running a 3.2 GHz Dual core processor with 2 gigs of RAM, if I add 2 more gigs will it speed up the rendering process? It took me 3 hours to render a 1 hour and 20 minute video from MPG to DVD. Also is there a way to allocate more memory for rendering or does it do that on it¡¦s own? The maximum amount of RAM I can put on my board is 4 gigs. I am running Ulead Video Editor 8.

Clark

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:37 am

Before installing more RAM or even Creating a Video Editing Profile. you need to see how much RAM is already being used.

Press the (Ctrl]-[Alt]-[Del] keys together and bring up windows task manager and then view the [Performance] tab. Now render some video and watch the graphs to see how much of your RAM is being used. This will give you an informed indication of whether or not you need to install more RAM.

A computer will work at the speed of the slowest item. Even if you have a bucket full of RAM it will only reach a certain speed which could be limited by the speed of the processor, the spin speed of your hard drives, even the design of your motherboard.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 7:58 am

You have more than enough RAM, assuming you are not trying to ude the computer for 101 other tasks (such as Internetting, virus checking e-mails and other resident tasks etc.) at the same time.

The reason that inputting and outputting MPG (or any other highly compressed format) takes a long time is that each frame has to be reconstituted out of up to one or two dozen other frames. The only way of avoiding this is to make your input file all-I frames and have no P or B frames. If your input MPG is HD, that is one helluva lot of pixels that have to be treated before you have a P or B frame reconstituted. In fact, although I have never run HD, a 2x real time would seem to be roaring through the job. If I were to encode a DV file (which is a higher quality all-I frame format, not requiring reconstitution) to DVD-compliant MPEG-2, it takes me about 1x real time.

My guess is that adding more RAM will make no difference, under normal circumstances.

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Sat Dec 15, 2007 3:49 pm

Doing something daft like taking the source MPEG from a USB drive and sending the result back to the same USB drive would slow your render, no matter how quick your processor and memory. As Steve says - you need to find the bottleneck.

Clark77042 · Post by **Clark77042** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 4:19 am

I took SJJ1805's advice and did the new profile he recommended and now it is twice as fast Rendering DVD¡¦s, what took 3 hours to render a 1 hour 20 minute video now takes 1 hour and 39 minutes to render a 1 hour 2 minute video.

You are right about the RAM when I setup the new profile Ulead Movie Factory 4.2 was only allocating 256 megs of RAM for rendering. What is interesting is even though the DVD rendering sped up, when I create MPG files using SJJ1805¡¦s new profile it was just as slow.

I need to stop filming in high definition and stick with standard definition. I am not sure what you mean about P, I and B frames and get them into I frames, most of my videos are done with JPG files and anything to speed up the process would be most appreciated, all of my work is put into DVD format so it would help me immensely to speed up the process, my PC is very much at the computing limit and I don¡¦t think adding a quad and 4 gig¡¦s of RAM is going to speed up the process enough to justify the cost.

If you can make some recommendations on how to speed up the process and what the best format to put it in to speed up the process I would be most grateful.

Clark

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 2:16 am

As far as I'm aware Windows XP can only usefully address 2gig of ram. Anything over that and it doesn't know what to do with it.
Also, XP is not really very good at using large amounts of RAM; these kind of RAM sizes weren't really in the picture when it was created. You _could_ try to play around with your swap file size (or even turn it off) to force XP to use more RAM, or it might just make it even slower.
I would recommend cutting a smaller test video, so you dont have to wait and hour and a half each time you test a new configuration!
But from the times you have given and your processor speed I would say you wont get much more speed out of it. In the immortal words of Scotty from star trek, "She's givin ya all she's got cap'n."
(My MSP8 machine is a 3.4ghz with 2 gig RAM, I would expect the same sort of times that you posted - slightly slower than realtime)

Clark77042 · Post by **Clark77042** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:32 am

The files I was talking about were not test files.

These were full scale projects that needed to get done, which are completed now so I am going to get a USB drive and backup 45 gigs worth of data created by the one 1 hour and 2 minute wedding video, longest project so far! (My own wedding!)

Since RAM is cheap (about $25 a Gig) I am going to put two more sticks in my machine, which will bring it up to 4 Gigs of RAM which is the maximum that Windows XP pro 32 bit can address, take your advice and turn off the swap file and render a 5 minute test file (new project) and see if that will speed things up, my next project will be a combination of JPG's and Power Point converted to MPG. Your right "She's givin ya all she's got cap'n." and adding a Quad Duo will probably not make it much faster.

Clark

Clark77042 · Post by **Clark77042** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 4:11 pm

Gorf wrote:Doing something daft like taking the source MPEG from a USB drive and sending the result back to the same USB drive would slow your render, no matter how quick your processor and memory. As Steve says - you need to find the bottleneck.

I have a half a terabyte USB drive I use to backup my projects so I can re-use the space on my SATA 2 hard drive to render my projects, the bottleneck doesn't seem to be the SATA 2 hard drive or the memory for that matter. The hard drive light flickers ever 2-3 seconds so that is telling me that's not what is slowing me down. I created a new profile and shut everything down including antivirus and internet access to that new profile, it is using 75% processing power and spiking to 100% every now and then. With both 3.2Ghz motors running at 75% and plenty of fuel to burn (2 Gigs of RAM) and running a 1066Mhz Front side Bus plus adding an NVIDIA 8600GTS card with 512 megs of video RAM, It's all the computer is going to give me. I am not sure if adding a 3Ghz Quad Duo processor will speed things up or if windows will handle 4 processors. The price on the 3Ghz Quad Duo processor is $1,000 wholesale and I am looking at $100 for a motherboard plus another $200 for 4 gigs of RAM, that's a $1,300 expense and I am risking the fact that it will not be any faster.

Clark,

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 1:59 am

Yes, the old law of diminishing returns. However, if your 3.2Ghz processor is in fact a Pentium 'D' 3.2 then you will gain a LOT of speed by switching to the newer Core 2 Duo processors. In fact even a 2.4Ghz C2D will be much faster at rendering than a Pentium D 3.2
My laptop has a 2.4 C2D and it runs rings around my Pentium 3.4

But you are quite correct in as much as there would be very little (if any) increase in speed by moving from a C2D to one of the new quad cores. In fact in some cases software has run *slower* on a 4 core. This is due to the processing power required to split the threads across all 4 processors. It all comes down to how the software is coded for multi threading.
I know MSP8 is coded for hyperthreading, and this must have some benefit with dual cores, but I seriously doubt it will utilise 4 cores.

Still, you would win when it comes to bragging rights (except against the 8 core Xeon)

Cheers,

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Tue Dec 18, 2007 11:56 am

troppo wrote:...I know MSP8 is coded for hyperthreading, and this must have some benefit with dual cores...

Do you think that's why the 2.4 dual core performs better than a 3.4 single? I'm just debating whether to replace my old 3GHz P4 HT with a 2.8 dual core, and I can't see how an application written for single core might benefit from dual, except perhaps if you set the processor affinity intelligently so system tasks use one CPU and MSP can be dedicated to the other... I have to admit to being ignorant about dual core (among other things) so I'm quite keen to know how such a speed increase is possible.

(many, many other things)

Clark77042 · Post by **Clark77042** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:34 am

I went from a 2.4 Ghz single core to a 3.2 Ghz dual core and the performance doubled, I just priced a 3 Ghz Quad Duo at $300 for the CPU, if you have the money that's the best way to go.

Clark

Gorf wrote:
troppo wrote:...I know MSP8 is coded for hyperthreading, and this must have some benefit with dual cores...
Do you think that's why the 2.4 dual core performs better than a 3.4 single? I'm just debating whether to replace my old 3GHz P4 HT with a 2.8 dual core, and I can't see how an application written for single core might benefit from dual, except perhaps if you set the processor affinity intelligently so system tasks use one CPU and MSP can be dedicated to the other... I have to admit to being ignorant about dual core (among other things) so I'm quite keen to know how such a speed increase is possible.

(many, many other things)

Clark77042 · Post by **Clark77042** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:42 am

troppo wrote:Yes, the old law of diminishing returns. However, if your 3.2Ghz processor is in fact a Pentium 'D' 3.2 then you will gain a LOT of speed by switching to the newer Core 2 Duo processors. In fact even a 2.4Ghz C2D will be much faster at rendering than a Pentium D 3.2
My laptop has a 2.4 C2D and it runs rings around my Pentium 3.4

But you are quite correct in as much as there would be very little (if any) increase in speed by moving from a C2D to one of the new quad cores. In fact in some cases software has run *slower* on a 4 core. This is due to the processing power required to split the threads across all 4 processors. It all comes down to how the software is coded for multi threading.
I know MSP8 is coded for hyperthreading, and this must have some benefit with dual cores, but I seriously doubt it will utilise 4 cores.

Still, you would win when it comes to bragging rights (except against the 8 core Xeon)

Cheers,

I looked at the 8 Core Xeon V8 and it would cost about $3,500 to $4,000 to put a system like that together and thats the wholesale price!!!

I can build one once MSP8 starts making me a profit and when it comes avialable on the market!

I would have to use Microsoft Server for the operating system to get all the processors to work, which is almost a grand by itself!

Clark

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 2:29 am

Do you think that's why the 2.4 dual core performs better than a 3.4 single?

No, the 2.4 performs better because it is a totally new chip design. The old Pentium 'D' dual core processors (at speeds of 2.8 to 3.4) were just essentially 2 pentium class chips on the same die.
The newer Core 2 Duo is a totally different design architecture. It allows more instructions per clock cycle, so although it runs slower than the Pentium chips, it actually achieves alot more in the time given. Running a slower clock speed saves heat and electricity, and is generally more efficient.

It is somewhat confusing, as the old pentiums ramped their speed right up to 3.8Ghz in an effort to stay competitive with AMD, resulting in very hot and power hungry processors. While the newer Core 2 Duos run slower, they are MUCH more powerful. Because of this, comparing Ghz is not really an effective way of comparing processors anymore. While a 3.8Ghz P4 _sounds_ very fast, it still loses out to a 2.8Ghz C2D.

Also, although Pentium 4s already had some pretty good optimisations for
video (SSD instruction sets) the newer C2D have even better optimisations, making them very good at video editing.

I looked at the 8 Core Xeon V8 and it would cost about $3,500 to $4,000 to put a system like that together and thats the wholesale price!!!

Yep, it ain't cheap! I'm waiting till apple release the updated Mac Pro. They have one now with 8 cores by using 2x4core Xeons. But it ain't cheap neither, however, it is shiny .

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Wed Dec 19, 2007 12:57 pm

troppo wrote:The newer Core 2 Duo is a totally different design architecture. It allows more instructions per clock cycle, so although it runs slower than the Pentium chips, it actually achieves alot more in the time given.

I'm still in the process of tweaking it, but I thought I'd have a run through a few counterstrike maps with my son, last night. Performance was very choppy until I set the CPU affinity so the game only used one processor, then it was fine.