Speed up render?

[sealilly]

Been using VS for years and currently using VX10. 99% of my projects are with AVCHD .M2TS Files. I am quite often providing clients with raw footage and todays case in point has me rendering 3 files, each is 1 hour and 45 minutes to fit on a DL disc. I set project setting to DVD and am rendering to an ISO file so I can burn when back in office. Am I missing any settings, or perhaps advice on how to speed up my renders? Current render is over 3 hours as seen below.

Screen shot

[asik1]

Well sealil , if you used VS for many years, you surly know that rendering is not one of it strong points.

[Ken Berry]

I am quite often providing clients with raw footage and todays case in point has me rendering 3 files, each is 1 hour and 45 minutes to fit on a DL disc.

Could you please clarify whether you are just trying to store the original footage on the DL DVD disc, or whether you are deliberately down-converting the AVCHD original high definition footage to standard definition DVD-compatible mpeg-2. The latter would involve using a low bitrate of around 4000 kbps to fit the total 5 hours 15 minutes of video onto a DL disc.

If, however, you are merely trying to archive the original footage on the disc in its original format, then you shouldn't using Video Studio for that at all. Other programs, like the Nero or Roxio suites, or even Windows itself, can do that.

[sealilly]

Thanks Ken, I was hoping you might reply! I am a wedding videographer and may not be using VX10 properly in certain instances. I also know my workflow is a bit bizarre. After I import I save as one huge file. I bring in the huge file, edit to a (roughly) 60 minute version as their "Edited Version" I burn 3 DVD's and one Blu ray, all from VX10.

I also provide them with all the raw footage on DVD. What I am currently doing is splitting the huge file at about 105 minutes so it would fit on a DL disc. This method takes about 3.5 hours to render each disc. I think from your post I should be doing it differently;

Should I be rendering to mpeg2 at 4000 bitrate? Will I also shorten my render time at all?

Since I have you, I hope to soon be delivery on USB and Digital Delivery. If I begin my edit using AVCHD as Project Properties, do I change this before rendering to DVD and/or MP4? I think since one of my upgrades I lost the "Set Project To first Clip" option and am always a bit confused about this.

[Ken Berry]

Thanks for the extra information. My reply above was really mainly directed at this part of your problem, and your new information now makes the situation a bit clearer:

I also provide them with all the raw footage on DVD. What I am currently doing is splitting the huge file at about 105 minutes so it would fit on a DL disc.

On reading your first post above, I was under the impression that you were trying to archive the whole 5 hours 15 minutes of video to a single DL DVD. I now understand that you are in fact producing 3 archive DVDs containing raw AVCHD and running at 1 hr 45 minutes each. You don't, however, give the original properties of the original video, or in this case more importantly, how big each of the 3 original 1hr 45 min videos are. Size depends to a large degree on the bitrate used, but you have evidently decided that each of those 3 videos is too big to fit on a 4.3 GB single layer DVD and have opted for the dual layer ones instead.

But as I said above, if you are only producing archive discs of the original video, you don't use Video Studio. It cannot do that job. It is designed to produce video discs, not data archive discs. And in doing so, it converts if necessary the video to a format with properties which are compatible with international DVD or Blu-Ray standards. So what you need to do to produce these 3 discs in particular is either use Windows itself to burn the three original videos to disc, or a program like Nero, Roxio, Ashampoo Burning Studio or even the freeware ImgBurn to do the job. You don't have to worry about changing the properties or bitrate of the original video to do this. The burning program simply treats them as data, not video, even though it is in fact video and will play back as video, though not necessarily on all stand-alone DVD or Blu-Ray players. Those discs will certainly play as video on a computer, and on some, though not necessarily all Blu-Ray players.

After I import I save as one huge file. I bring in the huge file, edit to a (roughly) 60 minute version as their "Edited Version" I burn 3 DVD's and one Blu ray, all from VX10.

So this is a completely separate exercise and is what Video Studio was designed to do. First the Edited Version DVDs. You have 60 minutes of video, and this will fit on a single layer DVD at the highest quality DVD bitrate of 8000 kbps no problem. But under the international DVD standard, the video on a standard DVD must be mpeg-2. So your original AVCHD mpeg-4 video has to be converted, and this can be done either as part of the Editing process in Video Studio or as part of the burning process. Both should work, and both will take roughly the same time overall. Personally, I prefer to do my editing and then go to Share and choose MPEG-2 rather than the DVD disc option. The default settings will work, though you should check that the bitrate is 8000 kbps, Field Order is Upper Field First. The audio can be either LPCM or Dolby (which produces a smaller audio file).

Then when this conversion has been done, you can play it back to make sure everything is looking the way you want it. Then in VS go to File > New Project. Don't bother about a name -- you just want to clear the Editing timeline. Then go to Share and this time choose DVD. The burning module will open and its timeline should be empty. If anything is in the timeline, delete it, then go to the top left and use Add Media to navigate to where your new mpeg-2 file is stored and select it. Check in the Options cogwheel icon in the bottom left of the burning screen and make sure the box beside "Do not convert compliant MPEG files" is ticked (though it should be by default). Build your menu and burn. Your decision to burn to an ISO is a good one as it makes reproduction of other copies easier.

The production of your Blu-Ray disc should be quicker and easier. Your original video is AVCHD which is already Blu-Ray compatible under the international Blu-Ray standard, so no further conversion is necessary once you have reached the stage of producing your 60 minute Edited Version (which I am assuming is still in AVCHD format). But the procedure is roughly the same. Start a new project to clear the editing timeline. Then go to Share and this time choose Blu-Ray. Insert your Edited Version AVCHD, check that the "Do not convert MPEG" box is ticked, build your menu and burn. This should be quite a quick process, as I say.

The long (3 hour plus) render you mention I have assumed relates to your incorrect use of VS to burn the archive DVDs as VS will be thinking it is producing a video DVD and not a data DVD. As such it will be converting 1 hour 45 minutes of AVCHD to DVD compatible mpeg-2, and probably also applying an even more time consuming process to compress the video bitrate so that the resulting mpeg-2 will actually fit on a DVD. In such a case, I would not find 3 hours an unreasonable time. But burning the archive discs should be much faster as no conversion or compression is involved.

Burning the *video* Edited Version DVDs will be halfway between the two. The AVCHD will still need conversion to mpeg-2, and as I said above, this can happen in either the Editing or Burning modules, but the time taken will be roughly the same in either module. But overall, depending on your computer and the burning speed you use, I would not have thought this burn would take much more than an hour, and could conceivably be even less.

Since I have you, I hope to soon be delivery on USB and Digital Delivery. If I begin my edit using AVCHD as Project Properties, do I change this before rendering to DVD and/or MP4? I think since one of my upgrades I lost the "Set Project To first Clip" option and am always a bit confused about this.

First you might want to go to Preferences > General and make sure the box beside "Show message when inserting first clip into timeline" is ticked. That should restore the Set Project Properties to First clip option. And then, with a brand new project, when you insert the first clip you should now get the message. I would say OK to that, and leave your Project Properties set that way for both the archive and Edited Version DVDs and also the Blu-Ray discs.

With the archive disc and Blu-Ray disc, your Project Properties will be set to AVCHD and you can then use Share > Same As Project Settings (or even Same As First Clip) to produce either the 1 hr 45 min video destined for the archive disc, or the 1 hr Edited Version destined for Blu-Ray.

And for the video DVDs, the Project Properties are largely irrelevant since you are manually overriding them when you select Share > MPEG-2 and/or Share > DVD.

[sealilly]

This is great stuff Ken, thank you for detailed info. My intent is never archiving, just to play on DVD players. If you had a 5 hour long, AVCHD file and needed to get on DVD (multiple DVD's of course) what would your workflow be?