On Fri, 26 Nov 1999 22:22:16 GMT, 106255.1565@compuserve.com (Richard C. Ferryman) wrote:

>I am considering replacing my PII-450 system to speed up render time.
>This may involve upgrading from Win98SE to NT to support dual
>processors (maybe 2000 if this supports two). I am considering the
>effects on Premiere and MSPro as they are common mid range NLE
>packages.
>
>1. Has anyone rendered a clip on PII and PIII systems and compared
>render time?
>2. Has anyone compared render times between similar single and dual
>processor systems?
>3. Has anyone experience of NT/Win2000/Win98 speed comparisons with
>one NLE application.

Most of these questions have been well-answered by other
posters (P or MSP don't really make good use of dual
processors; switching OS is unlikely to help; moderate
increases in CPU speed will increase render time only
moderately...).

>I am disregarding disk or processor clock speed as that is easily
>quantifyable and well documented. Disk speed has little effect on
>render time anyway unless memory is low.

Yes - but you are ignoring the DV-codec.
There is a big difference in render speed between Spark
and Raptor renderings, for instance...

>What I hope to end up with is some idea of what to expect of speed
>inreases from various options then start trading speed against cost.

Basically, a 450MHz machine running Raptor does a one-second
cross-dissolve in Premiere 5.1a in 4.3 seconds; the same machine
with Spark takes about 8 seconds. Changing anything else but
CPU speed (assuming sufficient RAM and drives fast enough
for capture/play) is unlikely to change things much, and little
short of nearly doubling the CPU speed is worth doing - and
doing that isn't very cost-effective... In practice, render times
have gotten fast enough to make even overall filter applications
for parts of even long projects practical (I assume you are not
rendering ALL the material, but just what has been changed in
the editing process...).