Custom CBR in MAGIX?

Resoula wrote on 10/9/2025, 12:53 PM

Hello all, I come with a question. I am using Vegas Pro 21 and I have a dilemma. I wish to be able to render in the MAGIX HEVC codec @ exactly 30 megabits CBR to meet youtube's upper limit for a 1440p 60fps HEVC file. However I cannot seem to type in a number like with other codecs. I can select 28, or 50 from presets. Those are the closest options in either direction.

Is there some way for me to be able to specify the CBR to render @ 30, or would I need to swap over to VBR and set the average and maximum both to 30 instead? Thanks in advance.

Comments

john_dennis wrote on 10/9/2025, 2:44 PM

@Resoula

These settings come close to meeting your "requirements"...

... however slowly.

Please regale us with your feelings about the need to use HEVC when

 

Resoula wrote on 10/9/2025, 3:22 PM

@Resoula

These settings come close to meeting your "requirements"...

... however slowly.

Please regale us with your feelings about the need to use HEVC when

 

Ahh so the VBR it is then, thanks! I was hoping I was missing some toggle to make the CBR section customizable like the VBR section. I've mostly used the old Sony encoder which lets you just type in any value no matter what.

I use AMD VCE so the render is much faster than without so no worries on speed. I have a dedicated render PC too made up of old parts that would have no other use so there is zero wear and tear on any parts of any future worth and I always have something productive to do given my multi-pc arrangement.

Since you asked, I swapped from AVC to HEVC for livestreaming first (Via Youtube's HLS ingest). I felt the need to do so because AMD's AVC encoder was making my streams look awful. I noticed a big quality improvement at the same bitrate (even though youtube re-encodes 1080p back to AVC). Once I purchased Vegas 21 (up from 16) and saw I could now use GPU decoding, I started recording, editing, and rendering in HEVC too. This made it easier to record what I was streaming, and just have a consistent quality overall in my content (I like consistency). Now my entire workflow is 100% HEVC. It has been since sometime last year. I am now upping from 1080p to 1440p (where youtube tends to re-encode into VP9 instead of AVC) so I expect the quality difference will be more apparent, but I was not thinking about that really since HEVC is already ingrained into my workflow. If Vegas 21 had integrated hardware AV1 encoding, I would probably just use that instead for everything since this new resolution enables me to stream w/ AV1 on youtube, but HEVC has been working well for me.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 10/10/2025, 12:42 PM

I just tried it with vp23 on an hevc test clip I shot a few years ago on a vp20 project (see: youtu.be/ct6_u7BgAuY) at 10bit 60p 162 mbps trying out a panning slider which I just re-rendered 4k nvenc in 3 different ways and got:

cbr50: 50.4 mbps vbr; vbr 50/50: 50.4 mbps vbr ; and vbr 50/100: 52.7 mbps vbr

Looks like I got vbr all the time, even when I set Vegas to cbr. As I recall, I noticed the same thing when I 1st did the project. Personally I wouldn't bother trying to force cbr with this kind of footage. And just set vbr to double the max for only a small increase in bitrate & render-size. The closer you get to rendering at the full bitrate of the source clip, the less of a difference you'll get in render size. Setting the max to double the avg is generally recommended for a more efficient vbr rate-control render buffer.

Resoula wrote on 10/10/2025, 1:02 PM

I just tried it with vp23 on an hevc test clip I shot a few years ago on a vp20 project (see: youtu.be/ct6_u7BgAuY) at 10bit 60p 162 mbps trying out a panning slider which I just re-rendered 4k nvenc in 3 different ways and got:

cbr50: 50.4 mbps vbr; vbr 50/50: 50.4 mbps vbr ; and vbr 50/100: 52.7 mbps vbr

Looks like I got vbr all the time, even when I set Vegas to cbr. As I recall, I noticed the same thing when I 1st did the project. Personally I wouldn't bother trying to force cbr with this kind of footage. And just set vbr to double the max for only a small increase in bitrate & render-size. The closer you get to rendering at the full bitrate of the source clip, the less of a difference you'll get in render size. Setting the max to double the avg is generally recommended for a more efficient vbr rate-control render buffer.

Thanks for that info! I record in CBR. Does that mean 50/100 would still be better than 50/50 in vegas? (Assuming I was recording @ 50 CBR) My recording software is more based around CBR or CQP usage than VBR.

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 10/10/2025, 1:23 PM

Thanks for that info! I record in CBR. Does that mean 50/100 would still be better than 50/50 in vegas? (Assuming I was recording @ 50 CBR) My recording software is more based around CBR or CQP usage than VBR.

I wouldn't think that allowing a burst above the recorded bitrate would do anything beneficial but maybe fx, titles, or cross-fades might add more content. I would just try it on a busy section of a project and see if the bitrate goes up.