Nested Veggie and Render Times

dand9959 wrote on 11/30/2005, 7:55 AM
I have a question about render times (re-render times, actually) of projects with nested .veg projects.

Say I have a master project that consists only of 10 nested projects (A.veg - J.veg) laid one next to another. Assume each nested project takes 100 minutes to render when done individually.

Maste timeline: A B C D E F G H I J
Render time: 1000 minutes

(Initial master render = 10*100 = 1000 minutes, ignoring overhead, etc.)


What is the master re-render time if:

1) I change a single nested project:

New timeline: A B C D e F G H I J
Re-render time: ___________

2) I make no nested changes, but switch positions of two nested projects.

New timeline: A B C D E F H G I J
Re-render time: ___________


3) I make no changes or switches, but simply add time to start of project:

New timeline:____A B C D E F G H I J
Re-render time:____________

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/30/2005, 8:03 AM
1) 1000 minutes
2) 1000 minutes
3) 1000 minutes + whatever is necessary for the new material.
dand9959 wrote on 11/30/2005, 8:05 AM
I was afraid that'd be the answer. :-(
Chienworks wrote on 11/30/2005, 8:10 AM
Now, if you were to render each individual section to a finished AVI file first, spending 1000 minutes to do so, then use these finished files in your nested project instead of the .veg files, then your answers would be more like

1) Just slightly over 100 minutes
2) couple o' minutes
3) couple o' minutes + time for the new material.

Then again, you could do this without nested projects.
dand9959 wrote on 11/30/2005, 8:20 AM
So, what's the point of having nested projects?

(I suppose rendering a sub-project to AVI, and then rendering that to mpeg in the master is lossy - lossie?. But maybe not enough to warrant incurring 1000 minute re-renders just to move a title 5px in a sub project.)
Chienworks wrote on 11/30/2005, 8:23 AM
What's the point? There are several ...

- You can combine small projects into a larger one.
- You can have stock projects that get recycled into other projects.
- You can simplify large projects by working on pieces individually.
dand9959 wrote on 11/30/2005, 9:09 AM
...all of which you can do by rendering subprojects individually to .avi, and including the avi into the master. And, as you said, the re-render times are much quicker this way.

A big benefit of nested veg, as I see it, is that you can preview the nested projects in real-time (sort of) in the master projects, thereby saving you all that render time during development. This is really nice when you have multiple levels of nesting.
Grazie wrote on 11/30/2005, 10:00 AM
But the real + for me is I can Edit back to the veg FROM/WITHIN the head proj. Make a change, save and have it updated in MAIN proj. G
Sol M. wrote on 11/30/2005, 12:47 PM
There are several benefits, but it just really depends on what you want to do.

If you do a final render, but intend to be moving stuff around on the master timeline, and render again, then nesting projects would not be the best solution and would not save you time in the long run.

If however, you want to speed up the editing process by nesting segments in one master veg to get your final assembly, then nesting projects will keep you from having to render until AFTER you're happy with your edit(s). This way, you don't have to stop your editing just to let something render before you can continue your work.

I don't think the nested projects feature was put in there to be a be-all and end-all solution for all purposes, but it sure is nice to have. You just have to choose the best workflow for what you want to get done.
vitalforce2 wrote on 11/30/2005, 12:58 PM
One other advantage of the nested timeline system on long-form projects is that you can render all the .vegs lined up on the timeline to a single MPEG-2 file for DVD purposes (as I believe DSE has noted) and skip the intermediate render to avis, with its potential loss of color information / resolution, especially where there are filters, fades, etc. between or within the avi's, as well as getting better render quality on non-avi graphics such as titling, credits, stills or a flash file.