Well, cloud drives are not really 'memory', but storage. I suppose you could, in theory, use cloud storage as some sort of virtual memory - but I imagine it would be excruciatingly slow.

How much physical memory (RAM) do you have in your system? What kind of videos are you rendering (resolution, length, etc). And when you say you've been rendering for two days, you don't mean you've been rendering for 48 hours I hope!

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

I have 4 processsors, 8gb ram.

HAve been rendering 13 files each taking about 3-4 hours each. nO NOT ONE FILE TAKING 24 HOURS - MANY FILES TAKING TWO DAYS TO GET THEM TOGETHER FOR RENDERING.

The files ae located on the cloud drive.

Wondering IF i SHOULDN'T BE RENDING WIH THE FILES ON THE INTERNAL HARD DRIVE THEN MOvE THEM OUT TO THE CLOUD drive.

Highest quality from converted 8mm film.

Alan

Any file you are processing should be on a hard drive on your computer. After you have finished your production, THEN upload to the cloud.
My opinion. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

I'm with BarryTheCrab on this one. The drive that PD is accessing the most during a render - in this case the one with the source video files on it - should be the fastest one you have access to: Your local system drive(s). With a quad core processor and 8GB of RAM you should do fine with rendering speed (8mm is standard definition, so super high amounts of RAM aren't as critical as with HD source files). Three to four hours for each file seems like a lot of time to me to render a single SD file: Probably because of the time it takes to access the cloud drive (That cloud drive could literally be thousands of miles away from you!).

If I were you, I'd place those source files on your local drive - a separate physical drive from your system drive if possible, not just a different partition on the same drive - and go from there. If you only have one physical hard drive in your system I would seriously consider buying an addition one just for projects such as this. Nowadays you can buy 1TB hard drives for well under $100 and really fast ones too! If you do that, I'd be willing to bet that your rendering times will be a quarter or less of the original time. I just bought an SSD (Solid State Drive - no moving parts) and the overall system speed is WAY faster than it was before. I move my source files to that drive at the beginning of the project and remove them when everything is done. The whole editing and rendering process is soooo much better now.

Anyway, good luck!
Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

Russell,
so, if I have an SSD for just my media, but retain my C drive as is, that will still speed things up? If so, I'm going shopping! HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

I agree. I was looking at biilding my own computer and still may do it and the Video Guys indicaed the same thing. The cloud drive is basically for storing data not for fast access video processing. I should have known that

Barry, how come you list yolur wife last on inerensts on your profile??

Alan

Quote: Barry, how come you list yolur wife last on inerensts on your profile??Alan

I like to save the BEST for last. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

I've found that to be true. And it makes sense, too, because the OS is CONSTANTLY accessing the hard drive - even when you are essentially doing nothing with your app(s). The other reason is that, in the case of PD, when you are rendering a project, the program is basically reading from your source drive, processing that info (rendering) and then writing the output to the same drive. And since those two locations - the source 'folder' and the destination folder - are not necessarily close to each other on the drive, the drive head has to go back and forth continuously between those two points. Not only does this slow your system down, but it puts more wear and tear on your hard drive. This applies to mechanical hard drives. SSD or RAM drives drives can randomly access any area of its storage (RAM) at any time and so the wear and tear is virtually non-existent (The flash memory used by SSD drives does eventually start breaking down, but that's another matter).

Because of the random access nature - and speed - of SSD drives, you can put your OS and PD source files on the same drive and still see large performance gains. Here's what I do: Since I only have a 250GB SSD in addition to my 3 mechanical drives, I only have about 50GB of free space on the SSD once I migrated my OS from my old mechanical OS drive to the new SSD drive with all of my installed programs, etc. So, I COPY (keep the originals in a safe place, always) my source files - all of them, including audio tracks, subtitles, whatever - to a folder on my SSD drive during the render. Once everything is done I delete the copies. This seems to have a significant impact on overall speed of PD, especially on HiDef types of projects.

Lots of system RAM is helpful, too. In fact, if you have a lot of it you can get a program such as DataRam's RAM-Disk (free for non-commercial use but limited to 4GB of 'storage') and use your own system RAM as an extra drive! And system RAM is even faster than SSD memory - by a LOT (DDR3 has a throughput rate of 6400 megabytes per second - Really fast SSDs have a rate of between 500 and 900 megabytes)! One downside to this approach is that system RAM is volatile - It will cleared when you shut the system down. However, DataRam's Ram-Disk has an option where it can copy its contents to your physical hard drive when you go to shut down and then do the opposite when you boot back up (copy it back into RAM). This can make shutdowns and reboots take a bit longer, but it may be worth it. [note: Windows 7 Home Premium and lower can only access 16GB of memory - no matter how much RAM you actually have installed. I found this out the hard way. You need Windows 7 Professional or higher to have access to all of it (up to 192GB!). If you have a 32 bit OS, then you will be limited to 4GB no matter what.]

Anyway, yes, I would highly recommend an additional drive for source files. If you instead migrate your OS to the SSD and use your old mechanical drive for the source files you will not only make PD faster, but your overall system will be much faster as well, including other programs you have. Loading of programs, for example, is virtually instantaneous. If I had another SDD for source files only, I'd be in heaven!

Russell1967

p.s. DataRam's RAMDisk can be found here: http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk (scroll down about halfway and click on the 'RAMDisk Lite' download button under the 'Personal Use Software' section).

p.p.s. The non-free version of the personal use RAMDisks from DataRam comes in 4 'flavors': 12GB, 24GB, 32GB and 64GB. The 12GB (which is more than I would probably need in 95% of projects) is only $9.99. Although it looks like it's a physical product on the website, it is actually just a program that supports a certain amount of RAM disk storage.

p.p.p.s. (Whew!) There's a totally free RAM disk program that supports more than 4GB called ImDisk. It can be found here: http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/#ImDisk
I don't know anything about it, but it may be worth a look if you don't have the $$ for the other RamDisk option. System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

My computer uses ddr2 memory. Not the fastest. That is why I was looking at building my own computer with faster bus speeds and 16 processors with 16 GB ram. putting in system ram storge. The video guys have a great configuration of a DIY complete comuter for about $1,500. Does not include the ram drives.

Alan

Good answer Barry.

$1500? Is this a super gaming system? You can build a VERY fast system with a top-of-the-line video card, i7 processor, loaded memory and the works for a lot less than that.

Whoa, did you say 16 processors? Is this a motherboard that supports dual 8-core processors or 4 quad-core processors or what? If so, rock on! If not, explain what you mean. (99% of non-server motherboards support only one processor, perhaps with 2,4,6 or 8 cores).

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

No it not their gaming system - that costs more with different configuratiolns.

Go to this link and it describes the configuration:

https://www.videoguys.com/Guide/E/Videoguys+DIY+10+++Our+wait+for+Thunderbolt+is+over/0x86959ff2ee4098c3eef68b2070f368dd.aspx

Alan

I guess you may have to copy and paste the link into the URL

Alan

Nice system! It uses the 6-core i7 4930K, which is equivalent to 6 processors. And the 'K' on the i7 indicates that it is 'unlocked' for overclocking (which I do NOT recommend in most cases, unless you're going to be over-clocking 15% or less. And in that case, is it really worth the potential trouble?). I believe PD can take advantage of multiple threads (processor cores in this case), 6 instead of 4 is good.

Remember that SOME of your current computer parts may be able to be used on the new system, saving you money. For example, if your system has a 500W power supply or higher, you can probably utilize that. System RAM, unfortunately, is not backward compaitble so you can't plug in your DDR2 memory into the DDR3 slot. Granted, DDR3 has large speed advantages so you wouldn't get the best performance, but anyway...

You may be able to use your case if it's not proprietary (Some, like certain HP desktops, etc, have a non ATX style arrangement so you can't use other motherboards).

Anyway, let us know how your build goes. If this is your first build, just take it slooow. One step at a time. If you run into an obstacle, stop, check everything you did and, if necessary, go online and research the problem/solution.

Good luck!
Russell1967

p.s. The link is clickable in the final post, so no copy/paste is necessary. System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

Just thinking about it. I would not want to take parts from my working computers. Too much software on them to try and rebuild. You know how that goes.

I just sprung for the Retro-8 film transfer unit to copy 8mm and s8mm films to transfer films into movies, where you can transfer multiple tracks, music, titles/subtitles, and just about anything you want to do with thsese films. Been doing this for some time but this transfer unit should make the work a lot easier and much better.

I will wait to see how that goes before I build the new computer.

Are we having fun yet?

Alan

Yeah, true. Cases and power supplies, etc aren't super expensive and it's nice to have new parts under warranty, etc.

There are several free (open source) or free-for-non-commercial-use programs out there that can 'migrate' your current OS partition to a new drive without changing anything or having to re-install anything. All you do is install the new drive as a secondary drive, run the migration program which will move everything from the old OS drive (and its installed programs, etc) to the new one and set its boot flag to 'Yes'*. Then you shut down the system, install the new one in place of the old one and start the computer back up. Worked like a charm for me. ***OF COURSE IT'S ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA TO BACKUP YOUR SYSTEM BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS. I recommend the free-for-personal-use 'Macrium Reflect' to make an image backup of your main system disk. It's easy to use and bootable (The download, if I remember correctly, is an ISO file that you burn to disk).***

(* = You might want to clear the boot flag on the original drive so Windows doesn't get confused with two boot drives, although usually it boots the FIRST bootable drive it finds).

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

I just backed up all my computers data to the 8TB cloud drive (raided into 2 4TB logical drives). That works pretty slick.

The computer I process video on also has a raided internal hard drive.

If I built a computer, it would be primarily for video processing - don't like the idea of fooling around on the computers with all that softwre installed and have to think about reinstalling it. Especially when most of it is downloaded and all the updates.

My other computer also has a raided internal drive.

My laptops do not.

Not a fun project.

RAID is soooo much easier to do these days as compared to when it first debuted. In fact, many middle-of-the-road motherboards support RAID right out of the box: Just plug in 2 or more drives and set a few things in the BIOS, etc and you're ready to go. The new "lightning" interface drives make it even easier, although not that many motherboards support it out of the box yet.

But yeah, if you're doing this professionally or semi-professionally it's best to keep it as simple as possible and not clog up your system with unnecessary programs that can waste space and even interfere/conflict with your main software, whatever that might be. Basically, we're talking about a dedicated workstation for editing.

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive

I agree.

You are in FL - and we are having a major blizzard with very high winds and snow. (IA).

Better get in the RV and head south or southwest.

Alan

Looks like you have a very strong computer.

How do you like the configuration for video processing. Is it for gaming also or just video stuff?

Would yolu change anything now?

The video guys had a similar configuration that you hav e with 32 gb ram and processors for around $2,100.
At the same place as the other one.

Alan

I don't do video editing professionally, but can't stand having lags and slow response times when I am editing some video or whatever, so I looked around and, over a period of several years, kept upgrading various things in my system to make it a pleasure to use. PD helps in this capacity because it has been 99% rock solid for me. Another video editor I had years ago (It rhymes with "Spinnacle Fludio") use to crash ALL. THE. TIME. It was maddening. I thought it might be my system, but after checking various user reviews (something I should have done before I bought it...), crashing is a very common occurrence with that program.

Anyway, for my own personal needs, my setup is great! I have two monitors (My mom gave me her old one when she bought a bigger one so her and my dad can play games on it together - My parents are really cool), and that's nice to have so that I can have the preview full screen while using the main monitor for the timeline, etc. At the time, I couldn't quite afford an i7 so I bought a fast unlocked i5. I can upgrade to an i7 later, but not the newest Haswell i7 because it's a different socket type (1150 instead of 1155). It really irks me sometimes. DDR3 and DDR2 are pin incompatible, so you can't transfer your old memory. Newer CPUs have their own socket configurations, so you can't bring your old processor (usually). It's a conspiracy!

Anyway, my advice is: get the fastest components you can comfortably afford and that make sense for what you are going to use your system for. Lean towards fast storage and lots of memory!

Russell1967 System specs: Windows 7 Professional x64; Gigabyte Z77-DS3H motherboard with i5-3579K 3.8Ghz processor with 32GB RAM; Zotac GTX 760 w/4GB; 1xWestern Digital 1TB 10,000RPM HD; 1x Samsung 840 Pro SSD System Drive