Rendering Videos on HDD or SSD

Herc08

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Aug 6, 2016
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So I decided to update and add a 500GB 750 EVO SSD. I know the 850 and 950 are defnitely faster, but it was on sale for under $120, so decided to hop on it. Not complaining, because ANYTHING over a regular HDD is better.

However, I installed my Adobe Creative Cloud apps on my SSD. I want to know will I get faster rendering speeds if I save to my SSD and trasnfer to the HDD later, or just render to the HDD? I have a i5-6600k. I plan on overclocking after I get a better understanding of it. Thanks in advance.
 
Solution
Oh, the raw video needs to be on the SSD, absolutely.

I was just asking as, if you were looking at ~30seconds to transfer the rendered output to your HDD, you may aswell render straight there. If your transfer is near instant, then no big deal. Render to the SSD & then transfer.
There's a theoretical difference rendering to an SSD over an HDD in general. That being said, you're unlikely to saturate a 7,200rpm HDD SATA3 with an i5-6600K - so I doubt you'd see any noticeable difference either way - especially when you add transfer times between the SSD & HDD.

If your rendered output needs to end up on the HDD anyway, I'd just render to there from the outset.
 

USAFRet

Illustrious
Moderator


Test it! You tell us!

Seriously.

We see zillions of 'benchmarks', blad de blah.
Very little actual timed results from actual people out in the wild.

From the same system, same file, which is faster and by how much?
HDD or SSD?
(the real determinant is the RAM and CPU, not the drive)
 

Herc08

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Aug 6, 2016
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Will do, was just seeing what I could do. And guess I forgot to mention that I have 16gb of RAM. I read that rendering is CPU intensive.
 

Herc08

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Aug 6, 2016
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I did a test, and just in case someone is wondering. I am using a i5 6600K (not OC'ed), 16GB DDR4 RAM (2133mhz), 750 EVO, and Blue WB 1TB HDD. I have Preimere on my SSD, and put a 10min H.264 1080p video on my HDD, and rendered it to my SSD. That took about 4mins. I put the same video on my HDD, and rendered it to my HDD, and that took about 8mins. I put the video on my SSD and rendered it to my SSD, and took about 3mins.

I did not have any effects or any true editing done, so I know this will affect itin the future. I think having the programs on my SSD really helped as well. I will probably export the files to my SSD, and then transfer to my HDD to save on my space. Thanks for the suggestions.
 
Glad to hear some real-world examples. It's a little slower than I expected (as I mentioned initially), as I doubted outputing to either drive would really change timing at all.

From what you've described (time-wise), you're at 3 or 4 mins depending on whether your output is going to your SSD or HDD?

How long is your transfer time when moving the file between the SSD and HDD?
 

Herc08

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Aug 6, 2016
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Yes I am, it is about 3 or 4mins to export. The thing is, if it is on my HDD and I export it to my HDD, then it will be much lower (expected). Again, no editing or effects were done, so I figure it could be longer.

As far as copying from the SSD to the HDD, the 10min video (~900mb) was nearly instant. The transfer window seemed like it just flashed. So I took a 45min video (~3gb) and that took around 10-15secs. I also assume that speeds are fast because they are optimized (thanks to Smasung Magician), and they are not full, so the HDD has quicker faster speeds. I forgot to mention that is is 7200 RPM, but from what I read, RPM does play a major role.

 
Oh, the raw video needs to be on the SSD, absolutely.

I was just asking as, if you were looking at ~30seconds to transfer the rendered output to your HDD, you may aswell render straight there. If your transfer is near instant, then no big deal. Render to the SSD & then transfer.
 
Solution

Herc08

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Aug 6, 2016
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It would seem so. When I have time on my hands, I will take a real video (~10min) put some effects, text, color correction into it, and export it. I expect it to be no longer than 5mins to export since it is 1080p. And the transfer speed should be under 10 secs. Even with the highest bitrate, I susepct that the file would be no bigger than 1.5gb. Again, just a theory.

I will report back sometime later this week.