Maybe better to ask your questions one by one?

What's your logic for that? All of the questions asked here are related and have the same end goal, trying to figure out the best computer configuration for VEGAS Pro. In fact, I would say the main reason I'm here making a post asking multiple questions that have already been asked is the fact that the responses to the other posts were simply answering a single question without taking everything else that could also affect the performance into consideration. So far everything I've read so far seemed to answer one question only to leave me asking another one. For some reason the answers to these questions don't seem to be as black and white as I would like them to be and vary wildly so I figured by putting it all in one place I'm opening this up to responses that might actually provide some clarity to the whole picture instead of just one part of the puzzle.

Because I think there are a lot of users who cannot answer to your questions 1 and 2 because they have only their own hardware and not all available possibilities. How do you compare things?

I only can give an answer to your question 3 depending my Intel Grafics 6300 (sometimes made possible by a lot of tricks to show up) for the new render options of Pro 15 and 16.
Depending on the used footage those options give sometimes faults as blurry, black frames, distorted views a.s.o but is the fastest option I have.

Hi TeraBrite,

I am going to "assume" you have the YouTube Channel that does all the cover music? Yes, I have watched some of your videos if you are that particular channel, including your past couple on "reviewing" Vegas Pro 14 & 15.

To answer a couple of your questions, I hope:

1. Your actual CPU is one that is actually highly recommended by Puget Systems from all their testing of the higher end CPU segment, both Intel and AMD. So I would consider that as a plus.

2. Your current RAM of 64Gb is plenty, though not sure what the speed is. So much on the web concerning speed for the various platforms, but to me, if you stay with what the particular motherboard manufacturer has specified or use what is on the QVL list, you can't go wrong.

3. You did not mention anything about your storage.

4. Windows 10 is fine, as a lot of forum members use that, or Windows 7.

5. The biggest concern I see, is your Dual 1080Ti's is SLI. That is probably why you may be experiencing problems in preview, playback, and/or rendering. (Though, item #3 is also a possibility). Since nVidia has not really provided great driver support for SLI lately, including gaming devs, Vegas Pro/Vegas Movie Studio from what I have seen, do not support "Dual" graphics, especially SLI (or CrossFire for AMD). Possibly some others here on the forum can assist if they use "dual" graphics cards sans SLI (not talking the iGPU stuff of Intel or AMD with a PEG card installed - sort of like the ongoing thread for the i9-9900K - different altogether). I would say, just try and disable SLI first, then try with SLI disabled and remove one of your 1080Ti's and try. Yes, again if you are the TeraBrite I believe you are, I also know you have a gaming centric channel as well.

Let the community know about the above, and I'm it will get sorted out. Oh, and keep up the great work on your cover music!

Hi TeraBrite,

I am going to "assume" you have the YouTube Channel that does all the cover music? Yes, I have watched some of your videos if you are that particular channel, including your past couple on "reviewing" Vegas Pro 14 & 15.

To answer a couple of your questions, I hope:

1. Your actual CPU is one that is actually highly recommended by Puget Systems from all their testing of the higher end CPU segment, both Intel and AMD. So I would consider that as a plus.

2. Your current RAM of 64Gb is plenty, though not sure what the speed is. So much on the web concerning speed for the various platforms, but to me, if you stay with what the particular motherboard manufacturer has specified or use what is on the QVL list, you can't go wrong.

3. You did not mention anything about your storage.

4. Windows 10 is fine, as a lot of forum members use that, or Windows 7.

5. The biggest concern I see, is your Dual 1080Ti's is SLI. That is probably why you may be experiencing problems in preview, playback, and/or rendering. (Though, item #3 is also a possibility). Since nVidia has not really provided great driver support for SLI lately, including gaming devs, Vegas Pro/Vegas Movie Studio from what I have seen, do not support "Dual" graphics, especially SLI (or CrossFire for AMD). Possibly some others here on the forum can assist if they use "dual" graphics cards sans SLI (not talking the iGPU stuff of Intel or AMD with a PEG card installed - sort of like the ongoing thread for the i9-9900K - different altogether). I would say, just try and disable SLI first, then try with SLI disabled and remove one of your 1080Ti's and try. Yes, again if you are the TeraBrite I believe you are, I also know you have a gaming centric channel as well.

Let the community know about the above, and I'm it will get sorted out. Oh, and keep up the great work on your cover music!

Yep that's us! Thanks for watching our videos I really appreciate it!

1. I realize it's definitely a top contender as far as processing power goes, but I just recently realized that none of the processors in that CPU line have integrated graphics therefore I don't have the option to use QSV inside VEGAS which apparently is supposed perform pretty well. I haven't really seen anyone compare it against CUDA or OpenCL but from what I read it definitely seems like it might be the best bet.

2. The RAM is DDR4 3200MHz Corsair Dominator Platinum DHX. Either way I'm not really concerned much about that, any form of DDR4 should be more than enough especially considering I used to edit on a PC with DDR3 when I had the GTX580's and playback was like butter in the timeline even when set to best quality.

3. I didn't mention my storage because again I don't feel like this is the bottleneck here, I'm convinced the one and only reason I'm having trouble is the lack of GPU acceleration. Referring to my old computer with the 580's again, I had cheap 7200 RPM hard drives in that computer and it edited amazingly. That said, our OS and applications drive is a 1TB Samsung 960 PRO M.2 SSD, and I have a second one for media which is pretty much top of the line.

4. I love Windows 10!

5. You are right that VEGAS doesn't support SLI, however I don't believe there is a problem directly related to having the GPU's in SLI. When you choose your graphics card in the preferences you have the option to choose which GPU to use so it's not like the application attempts to use both at once. I've also tried turning off SLI and it didn't make a difference. Another reason I'm sure this isn't the issue is because again that system that I keep referring to that edited amazingly back in the day had dual GTX 580's in SLI. Also, I have another computer with a single GTX 970 that has the same issue as my main computer. That said, both of these computers definitely benefit from reduced exporting times when using the GPU for exporting, but the GPU's seem to do absolutely nothing for timeline performance and sometimes even make things worse.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to respond! I really appreciate the detailed responses and support on our music as well! Thanks!!

-DJ

My current computer is a 14 core i9-7940X, with 64GB of RAM in quad channel, and dual GTX 1080ti's in SLI in Windows 10.

If that spec doesn’t do what you want, then there is something wrong in your system or settings. FYI, SLI is not supported and will slow you down; I know that from my old dual GTX580 setup. Set the lower (PCIe Slot 2) GPU for timeline acceleration and if you are lucky, Vegas will use both. If your OBS 1080 60p files don’t playback it edit well, check your capture settings.

No new system will make a difference until you figure out what is wrong with yours.

My current computer is a 14 core i9-7940X, with 64GB of RAM in quad channel, and dual GTX 1080ti's in SLI in Windows 10, and I have to say this particular PC struggles editing even 1080p 60fps mp4's recorded from OBS when VEGAS is set to draft auto

+1. Something is not right here. Should be able to burn though 1080p footage! Time for some methodical troubleshooting rather than casting a wide net on the interweb. I would start with trying different media types (transcode some of that OBS footage to something like cineform, XAVC-intra, MagicYUV, ….) and get rid of the SLI setup. The answer is in front of you somewhere :)

How is your other software performing?

My current computer is a 14 core i9-7940X, with 64GB of RAM in quad channel, and dual GTX 1080ti's in SLI in Windows 10.

If that spec doesn’t do what you want, then there is something wrong in your system or settings. FYI, SLI is not supported and will slow you down; I know that from my old dual GTX580 setup. Set the lower (PCIe Slot 2) GPU for timeline acceleration and if you are lucky, Vegas will use both. If your OBS 1080 60p files don’t playback it edit well, check your capture settings.

No new system will make a difference until you figure out what is wrong with yours.

I realize it's a very high end system and would seem like it should fly through anything (and it does) but that unfortunately isn't the case for VEGAS. I know VEGAS doesn't support SLI but it doesn't really cause any issues because as I said in the original post, I too had a system back in the day with dual GTX 580's in SLI and it worked just fine choosing one of the cards. My current setup definitely benefits from reduced exporting time when using GPU acceleration but the GPU does nothing for timeline preview performance. From what I understand, the CUDA architecture changed starting at the 6 series and up and the GTX580 remained the best card for VEGAS for a while. I'm also positive there is nothing wrong with my system or settings (believe me I've extensively tested every possible combination of settings, I've been dealing with these issues for years). I also have another PC with a single GTX 970 and a new laptop with a GTX 980M both with quad core processors and honestly the timeline performance on both of the computers is just as good as my new computer which tells me the bottleneck isn't the processor, RAM, or hard drive and my issue with timeline performance is directly related to a lack of support for GPU acceleration in VEGAS. I'm not the only person on here with a high end PC having trouble with timeline performance. Like I said, what works well with VEGAS isn't as black and white as you might think. This is why I posted this, to figure out what works for others because there's no documentation available anywhere that confirms anything.

Still... you need to do something, yes? What's the big deal to disable SLI and try some other media types as suggested? Would take all of 10 minutes. Humour us.

@TeraBrite The change of the CUDA architecture only affected the Mainconcept encoder, nothing else. Vegas always used OpenCL for timeline acceleration since SVP11. A single 1080Ti should be sufficient for good 1080 60p editing. I know that for a fact because I tested such a card in my system but since it wasn’t any faster than my Fury X and VCE encoding was around the corner, I returned it.

But, if you want to throw money into the wind, BruceUSA has a fantastic system and one that I would build myself if mine wasn’t sufficient anymore.

My current computer is a 14 core i9-7940X, with 64GB of RAM in quad channel, and dual GTX 1080ti's in SLI in Windows 10, and I have to say this particular PC struggles editing even 1080p 60fps mp4's recorded from OBS when VEGAS is set to draft auto

+1. Something is not right here. Should be able to burn though 1080p footage! Time for some methodical troubleshooting rather than casting a wide net on the interweb. I would start with trying different media types (transcode some of that OBS footage to something like cineform, XAVC-intra, MagicYUV, ….) and get rid of the SLI setup. The answer is in front of you somewhere :)

How is your other software performing?

 

Exactly! I assumed the same, but it's simply not the case. I'm 99.9% convinced my issue with performance in the timeline has nothing to do with SLI or hardware and is simply related to a lack of GPU acceleration support in VEGAS because I've had these same exact issues on multiple computers: A desktop with a quad core i7 with a single GTX 970 and a laptop with a quad core i7 and a single GTX 980M. In the timeline, all of these PC's behave very similarly and also export relatively fast using NVENC (except the laptop is a little bit slower and also exports way slower as expected since it's a mobile GPU). Like I said, the last time my editing performance was any good was back when I was editing on a computer that had dual GTX 580's in SLI (had no issues with SLI enabled back then) and a 6 core i7 but from what I understand the GTX580 was the last NVIDIA graphics card to be fully supported by VEGAS which I believe was randomly lost in an update near the end of VEGAS Pro 12's update cycle, because NVIDIA switched to a different CUDA architecture or something starting with the 6 series. I've tried disabling SLI on this computer as well and nothing changed.

Regarding transcoding, that is definitely something that I've been wanting to try. A few times I did some research to figure out what the best format to edit in VEGAS was but I didn't really have any concrete answers so I sort of gave up on that. The thing is, these OBS files are the same files I've been editing since 2011 (back when I had the GTX 580's that worked amazingly) so I find it hard to believe that's the issue. I've also had similar issues with 4k 24/30 fps XAVC S footage from my Sony a7S II which leads me to believe the file type isn't as much of a factor here. That said, I'm definitely going to give it a shot because I'm willing to try anything at this point!

My other software performs amazingly. I've even done some edits in Premiere and After Effects and they worked perfectly... but I'll never switch to Premiere. No matter how hard I try I can never edit quickly in it with that clunky workflow.

At the end of the day I'm convinced it's a lack of support for my GPU. I think I've even asked MAGIX at one point and they told me that VEGAS doesn't really offer GPU acceleration in the timeline using CUDA cores and it doesn't help that none of my CPU's have a newer version of Intel integrated graphics to allow me to see how Quick Sync performs.

I guess what I'm really trying to get out of this is find out if anyone is seeing increased timeline performance with newer AMD GPU's, if anyone's seeing increased timeline performance with newer versions of Intel Quick Sync (since I somehow chose the only line of Intel processors that doesn't offer Quick Sync), and also how those 2 compare to using CUDA for exporting. I generally never buy AMD, but if it means better timeline and/or exporting performance than both NVIDIA and Intel Quick Sync, I would be glad to give in because I've been dealing with sluggish timeline performance for some time now and I'm so used to VEGAS and the workflow that I refuse to use anything else to edit.

Anyway, I really appreciate the response and I'm going to attempt transcoding right now!

Still... you need to do something, yes? What's the big deal to disable SLI and try some other media types as suggested? Would take all of 10 minutes. Humour us.

Of course I do, and I have tried everything and on multiple systems with the same results every time which leads me to believe I'm making the wrong hardware choices (lack of CUDA support from NVIDIA cards and Intel Processors that don't have new versions of Quick Sync). If I didn't already try to do something about it I wouldn't be here asking which hardware works best. As I said, I did disable SLI and had the same issues. I'm definitely down to try other media types and am going to now but I don't just edit OBS footage, that was just a quick example of 1080p footage I edit on VEGAS every single day. We also edit 4k XAVC S videos from a Sony a7S II as well as 1080p 60fps AVC footage from a Sony a5100 and literally everything we've ever edited has the same issues. To be clear, generally it runs smoothly at first (even at best preview) but once a lot of cuts are added it starts to lag like crazy and eventually gets to the point where you see a frame every few seconds.

@TeraBrite The change of the CUDA architecture only affected the Mainconcept encoder, nothing else. Vegas always used OpenCL for timeline acceleration since SVP11. A single 1080Ti should be sufficient for good 1080 60p editing. I know that for a fact because I tested such a card in my system but since it wasn’t any faster than my Fury X and VCE encoding was around the corner, I returned it.

But, if you want to throw money into the wind, BruceUSA has a fantastic system and one that I would build myself if mine wasn’t sufficient anymore.

(sorry I just said something similar to this to Kinvermark, but I'm trying to be organized with my responses)

I'm not sure how much editing or cuts you did when you tested the GTX 1080, but just to be clear, it isn't always lagging in the preview for me, just most of the time. It generally has brief moment of playing back very smoothly, especially when I just start editing in a new project, but we do a lot of jump cuts and after a bit of editing it eventually gets to the point where its playing back 1 frame or so every couple seconds. Sometimes it randomly starts playing back smoothly again only to go right back to lagging after a few minutes of more editing.

I'm also curious if the computer you tried with the GTX 1080 happened to have a newer Intel CPU with integrated graphics, because I'm thinking that could be a HUGE factor here.

I'm going to still try transcoding the OBS footage to see if that does anything in my next edit though.

What do you suggest I use, handbrake maybe?

@TeraBrite I see from your previous response that you also edit XAVC-S which is the same as my a6300 and AX700 footage. I use plenty of 1080 60p in that format even with 3-4 camera multicam projects without issue. I also edit 4K 30p but covert it to XAVC-I with Sony Catalyst Browse. At no time have I experienced what you described which again makes me think that you do have an issue with your hardware or Vegas settings. I use Best/Full for preview and all my projects are 8bit.

@TeraBrite

Please slow down a little....I can't keep up. I don't even know what part of your posts to respond to. Remember, we have to THINK about what you are saying to give proper answers.

I'm also curious if the computer you tried with the GTX 1080 happened to have a newer Intel CPU with integrated graphics, because I'm thinking that could be a HUGE factor here.

No, it’s my aging 3930k @4.3GHz.

OK.

1) Vegas TIMELINE, DOES support NVIDA GPU's. Not CUDA, but OPENCL, which has become much better from NVIDIA in the last year or so.

2) It is possible that something has been installed that prevents your GPU's from being used without you knowing it. I had this problem after installing Sony Catalyst Browse. I had to "deep scrub" the drivers to get rid of this thing. (Open Cl emulator.)

3) Transcode using ANYTHING except Handbrake (great software, wrong job.) Use Vegas, Resolve, Premiere, Footage Studio... just go to a nice light "intra" codec. I suggest cineform or XAVC -intra. Keep tack of the settings to report to us later.

4) Benchmark: I have an EIGHT year old system and can work with UHD footage with hundreds of clips on the timeline. It aint fast in best/full mode, but totally workable in preview-auto. If I need better scrubbing I use proxies.

5) QSV will only help with QSV compatible formats (various flavours of h264/265), so this is perhaps not a "robust" solution.

TeraBrite wrote on 11/22/2018, 4:42 PM

"I'm going to still try transcoding the OBS footage to see if that does anything in my next edit though.

What do you suggest I use, handbrake maybe?"

If you are using OBS a lot, I would be inclined to use a capture codec in OBS that is easier to decode in Vegas Pro. I actually do that on a ten year old machine that I use to do captures of other machines via RDP. UTVideo or MagicYUV, though I don't remember using MagicYUV for that purpose. Bring lots of disks.

My OBS Settings for that machine

The resulting file info

Of course, it might also be wise to begin at the beginning...

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/important-information-required-to-help-you--110457/

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-can-i-make-my-video-preview-play-smoothly-in-vegas-pro--104624/

Also, I would like to know how your complicated timelines perform with/without gpu enabled in the Vegas preferences.

… and (sorry, thoughts coming out a little randomly) - what happens to your computer's memory usage as an editing session progresses?

TeraBrite wrote on 11/22/2018, 4:42 PM

"I'm going to still try transcoding the OBS footage to see if that does anything in my next edit though.

What do you suggest I use, handbrake maybe?"

If you are using OBS a lot, I would be inclined to use a capture codec in OBS that is easier to decode in Vegas Pro. I actually do that on a ten year old machine that I use to do captures of other machines via RDP. UTVideo or MagicYUV, though I don't remember using MagicYUV for that purpose. Bring lots of disks.

My OBS Settings for that machine

The resulting file info

Wow! Those are some unique settings. I'm a little confused about some of the choices but I'll take your word for it! This will definitely eat up hard drive space though haha. I'm going to give this a try tomorrow. Thanks!

EDIT: That said, I tend to prefer MKV or FLV and rumuxing to mp4 as they are much easier to recover when there's a crash. But if this helps with editing performance it might be worth it.

Remember, all my advice comes with a money-back guarantee.