<p>I've never heard that term used for rendering before, but it is most likely referring to the number of hours of computation needed for a single CPU or GPU to process it.  In most video and 3d applications, it is possible to parallelize the rendering of the video itself (though not necessarily the encoding.</p>

<p>Thus, a job that would take 200 "man hours" (more often called CPU hours when I've heard it used) would only take 20 hours if you had 10 CPUs working on it.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-19T14:44:23.927Z
CPU hours is metric.  Man hours is imperial.  ;)
Jason Conrad
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-09-18T16:56:05.490Z
2014-09-18T16:56:05.490Z
AJ Henderson
<p>I know that man-hours are used as a unit to measure time in things like modelling and other work actually done by people, but I also hear man-hours used to refer to graphics rendering time.  How is that measured?  If a video takes 200 man-hours to render, for example, what is that measured against?  Obviously a person could not be expected to perform the mathematics necessary for rendering an image, but all definitions of 'man-hours' that I've been able to find refer to expected output of a human worker in an hour.  How is that measured for things like video rendering which simply can't be done by a human?</p>

<video><animation-rendering>
Video rendering time is measured in man-hours. How is that calculated?
otakucode
# Video rendering time is measured in man-hours. How is that calculated?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2014-09-18)

I know that man-hours are used as a unit to measure time in things like modelling and other work actually done by people, but I also hear man-hours used to refer to graphics rendering time. How is that measured? If a video takes 200 man-hours to render, for example, what is that measured against? Obviously a person could not be expected to perform the mathematics necessary for rendering an image, but all definitions of 'man-hours' that I've been able to find refer to expected output of a human worker in an hour. How is that measured for things like video rendering which simply can't be done by a human?

**Tags:** video, animation-rendering


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2014-09-18. Score: 1

I've never heard that term used for rendering before, but it is most likely referring to the number of hours of computation needed for a single CPU or GPU to process it. In most video and 3d applications, it is possible to parallelize the rendering of the video itself (though not necessarily the encoding.

Thus, a job that would take 200 "man hours" (more often called CPU hours when I've heard it used) would only take 20 hours if you had 10 CPUs working on it.

> **Comments:**
> **username_2**: CPU hours is metric.  Man hours is imperial.  ;)  

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