SSD vs HDD Rendering Times

[MultiMigo]

So yeah, as the title says it. SSD vs HDD in rendering. There's this video that says SSDs are overall better in rendering vs HDDs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7AYtfSkPQw

 

But I've tried a few tests. Upscaling H.264 1080p 120p footage to 4K 24p w/ Magic Bullet Looks (Color Correction and Color Grade)

 

PC Specs

i7 3770 @4.3GHz

GTX 960 2GB

12GB 1600MHz RAM

 

Here are my results

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HDD to HDD

HDD Premiere File
HDD Clips
HDD Render

2 Mins 14 seconds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HDD to SSD(WD green)

HDD Premiere File
HDD Clips
SSD Render(WD Green)

2 Mins 11 seconds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SSD(WD Green) to SSD WD Green)

SSD Premiere File
SSD Clips
SSD Render(WD Green)

2 Mins 20 seconds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SSD(WD Green) to SSD(Samsung 840 EVO)

 

2 Mins 16 seconds

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SSD (Samsung 840 EVO) to SSD (WD Green)

2 Mins 19 Seconds

 

Any answer to this? They are pretty much identical

[Origami Cactus]

Yeah rendering times are identical, but have you tried the difference in timeline scrubbing?

HDD is much more sluggish for that, and that is why people recommend SSD scratch disks.

Explanation:

Spoiler

If you scroll to a specific part of a video, then hdd loads that place for about 1sec, while ssd is pretty much instantaneous. Over the course of a long night of video editing those seconds start to add up fast, and that is why ssd is faster.

 

[MultiMigo]

1 minute ago, Origami Cactus said:

Yeah rendering times are identical, but have you tried the difference in timeline scrubbing?

HDD is much more sluggish for that, and that is why people recommend SSD scratch disks.

Explanation:

  Hide contents

If you scroll to a specific part of a video, then hdd loads that place for about 1sec, while ssd is pretty much insantanious. Over the course of a long night of video editing those seconds start to add up fast, and that is why ssd is faster.

 

So the only difference is timeline scrubbing? I'm wondering why Dave (the video) was getting faster render times when using the SSD vs the HDD

[mariushm]

that's because you're reading ONE file sequentially and rendering it and saving it sequentially

The software buffers a few megabytes of data from the input file (a few dozen frames) , then processes those frames - and the hard drive and OS has the opportunity to cache in background in the hdd cache , those 64/128/256 MB of cache on the hdd pcb - and in RAM in case of Windows while the software crunches through the frames it already received from hdd

When the software renders a bunch of frames, the hard drive or SSD are available to write to them , or the OS caches the write requests and delays them for a bit and later dumps a few tens of megabytes in one shot.

the software requests more frames and they're served straight from caches if you're luckly.

 

the differences come up when you have multiple video files and you overlay one on top of other, or switch between video files during rendering (as if picking scenes from various files) , or when adding audio tracks, background music... and you're also giving the hard drive plenty of time to seek and get the data without the renderingbeing slowed down, because I assume the 4k encoding isn't going at way more than a bit over real time speeds

 

When the hard drive has time to seek data and get it while the rendering software is busy encoding, you won't feel differences between hdd and ssd.

 

[whoisjaya]

3 minutes ago, MultiMigo said:

So the only difference is timeline scrubbing? I'm wondering why Dave (the video) was getting faster render times when using the SSD vs the HDD

I guess you're system might be bottlenecking your SSD, meaning its speed doesn't really matter, as long as it's fast enough to keep up with the rest of your system...

[MultiMigo]

3 minutes ago, mariushm said:

that's because you're reading ONE file sequentially and rendering it and saving it sequentially

The software buffers a few megabytes of data from the input file (a few dozen frames) , then processes those frames - and the hard drive and OS has the opportunity to cache in background in the hdd cache , those 64/128/256 MB of cache on the hdd pcb - and in RAM in case of Windows while the software crunches through the frames it already received from hdd

When the software renders a bunch of frames, the hard drive or SSD are available to write to them , or the OS caches the write requests and delays them for a bit and later dumps a few tens of megabytes in one shot.

the software requests more frames and they're served straight from caches if you're luckly.

 

the differences come up when you have multiple video files and you overlay one on top of other, or switch between video files during rendering (as if picking scenes from various files) , or when adding audio tracks, background music... and you're also giving the hard drive plenty of time to seek and get the data without the renderingbeing slowed down, because I assume the 4k encoding isn't going at way more than a bit over real time speeds

 

When the hard drive has time to seek data and get it while the rendering software is busy encoding, you won't feel differences between hdd and ssd.

 

So what's a better workflow? Put my files on the SSD and render to the HDD or render it to the same SSD? 

[Origami Cactus]

11 minutes ago, MultiMigo said:

So the only difference is timeline scrubbing? I'm wondering why Dave (the video) was getting faster render times when using the SSD vs the HDD

It has to do with the video codec, the gopro footage is encoded in a special way. But if you have 8 video on a timeline open at the same time picture in picture then ssd will also have better performance.

2 minutes ago, MultiMigo said:

So what's a better workflow? Put my files on the SSD and render to the HDD or render it to the same SSD? 

Have the footage on the ssd, and then render to hdd, that way the working files are on the ssd, but the end result will end up on your hdd. Also you are not reading and writing to the same drive at once, but that performance difference should be minescule if at all nonexistant.

 

[MultiMigo]

3 minutes ago, Origami Cactus said:

It has to do with the video codec, the gopro footage is encoded in a special way. But if you have 8 video on a timeline open at the same time picture in picture then ssd will also have better performance.

Have the footage on the ssd, and then render to hdd, that way the working files are on the ssd, but the end result will end up on your hdd. Also you are not reading and writing to the same drive at once, but that performance difference should be minescule if at all nonexistant.

 

Thank you. Would RAID 0 give me better performance? I'm also planning to have my HDDs at a RAID 0 and then render my files there. 

[Origami Cactus]

2 minutes ago, MultiMigo said:

Thank you. Would RAID 0 give me better performance? I'm also planning to have my HDDs at a RAID 0 and then render my files there. 

You have to try, because if you dont get extra performance with ssd, then you also probably wont with a RAID 0 hdd's.

In your workload i would just keep the normal hdds.