I found that Magix AVC/AAC render some videos with low light very bad in Vegas Pro 15. When I use Sony AVC/MVC in VP15 or Main Concept AVC/AAC in Movie studio 13 it´s not at all that bad. Look at the brown porch in left bottom corner.
Original file
Magix AVC/AAC
Sony AVC/MVC in VP15
Main Concept AVC/AAC in MS 13
Edit: All files actually look even a bit worse after uploading to this post.
Link to video files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j8hjzjxttnfn7uo/AACNLjU1HPVDvBsUiqxdOdJta?dl=0
"All files actually look even a bit worse after uploading to this post."
I'm fairly certain that this Magix site re-encodes the video files that you upload. They probably do look a little worse than your files. The best way to do these kinds of comparisons is to upload the files to a cloud share site and post the download links here. It's too late in the day for me to peek at pixels. It appears that Vegas 15 has encoders for different use cases. At least you have options along with rendering to an uncompressed format and encoding outside of Vegas.
For me, the Sony AVC is still the favourite AVC codec, good quality also at low bitrates, with fast and single pass encoding.
I have to agree with the points that 3point made. In the end Magix AVC is too slow and isn't as good as Sony AVC.
I used to use Sony AVC, but at some point this output filter started acting weird and rendered every single MP4 file as Video.MP4.tmp instead of just Video.MP4, it does work however but I have to rename it first.... This started back in Vegas 14 but is also the case in Vegas 15. The Magix AVC filter doesn't do this, so I'm really wondering: does anybody have a clue how to re-install this filter in any way or what the hell could have changed in my configuration that caused this?
Hmmm...........I thought I was the only one who was getting those temp files........kinda frustrating to have to rename to view it. Anyone no why this is ? It only happens on the PC I have VP14 installed on.
For me, the Sony AVC is still the favourite AVC codec, good quality also at low bitrates, with fast and single pass encoding.
how its faster and low bitrates than magix?
for me , magix - qsv intel is best -for quality/size=less time
For me, the Sony AVC is still the favourite AVC codec, good quality also at low bitrates, with fast and single pass encoding.
how its faster and low bitrates than magix?
It's faster than Magix without support of GPU. Magix is only faster when it can benefit from the graphics card. How much faster depends on the type of graphics card. On my workstation it's just 10-15% faster than rendering with SAVC. On my laptop MAVC is 25-30% slower than SAVC because it has no advantage at all from the graphics card.
Quality, at low bitrates I see with MAVC more and earlier blocking artifacts than with SAVC.
Hmmm...........I thought I was the only one who was getting those temp files........kinda frustrating to have to rename to view it. Anyone no why this is ? It only happens on the PC I have VP14 installed on.
It is comforting to see I'm not the only one too...so this must be some kind of bug in Vegas or a combination of Vegas with other software? You wouldn't happen to have Cyberlink PowerDVD 17 installed? I think it started around the time I installed this on my PC.
As a test, I've just rendered a 4K mp4 video event (from a Sony FDR-AX100) using the Sony AVC 1920x1080 25fps render template. The resulting render was .avc. Source video on the D drive and rendered to the E drive. Cyberlink PowerDVD17 is installed on the C drive.
I'm using MP4 as output format for the Magix and Sony AVC filters, so maybe it will work better with AVC formats...
What's also very weird is that the Magix AVC/AAC filter disappears and re-appears all the time when I re-start Vegas. As you can see in the screenshots below, I have selected the Magix output filter as a favourite and it's often just MISSING, and when I just close Vegas and open it again, it is back, it seems this is just a giant bug in Vegas and it's driving me pretty mad...when I want to use Sony AVC I have to rename every single rendered file, and when i want to use Magix AVC I have to be lucky enough to find it in the output formats or else restart the whole program every time...it doesn't make any sense.
WTF Magix, can't you make an output filter that I'm not actually using disappear all the time if you want to play Houdini jokes on your customers? :D
Marcel
Comparing either quality or speed between two encoders, one using hardware and one not, is too many moving targets for a sensible discussion.
Two encoders can each only be "best" on a level playing field.
I have a slight feeling that this thread has been seized by some nearby other questions ;-)
My original question at the top of the page was: if anyone else have seen difference in quality between rendered files from Magix AVC/AAC vs Sony AVC/MVC. Especially in low light.
I believe I have about the same render settings in all examples. Or have I overlooked something?
It is comforting to see I'm not the only one too...so this must be some kind of bug in Vegas or a combination of Vegas with other software? You wouldn't happen to have Cyberlink PowerDVD 17 installed? I think it started around the time I installed this on my PC.
Marcell....
No, PowerDVD not installed on that PC. Wish I knew what was causing it.
robert
My original question at the top of the page was: if anyone else have seen difference in quality between rendered files from Magix AVC/AAC vs Sony AVC/MVC. Especially in low light.
I believe I have about the same render settings in all examples. Or have I overlooked something?
Yes I see the extra noise. it gets worse when you turn on the Nvidia hardware encoding. It's the same sort of noise just amplified more. So it's a fake mainconcept codec then? The noise it produces is so similar to hardware produced noise it's almost like it's a software version of the the NVENC asic.
Would also make sense as to why Vegas15 mainconcept is slower than previous versions. It's because it's not really mainconcept encoder.
The MainConcept AVC CPU-only encoder used in the MainConcept AVC/AAC renderer in VP12-14 is still in VP15 at C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 15.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\mcmp4plug2\mc_cpu\mc_enc_avc.dll. It is version 9.7.9.5738 (found by right-clicking on the file in Windows Explorer then choosing Properties > Details).
The MainConcept AVC CPU-only encoder used in the Magix AVC/AAC renderer in VP15 is at C:\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 15.0\FileIO Plug-Ins\mxavcaacplug\mc_cpu\mc_enc_avc.dll. It is version 10.0.14.2531.
I very much doubt it's a "fake" as it's "Copyright 2015 MainConcept GmbH" and the version numbering appears logical. Maybe they messed it up, or maybe it's not implemented optimally in Vegas somehow, or maybe it's better in some ways and worse in others.
You can enable the older MainConcept AVC/AAC renderer in the internal preferences (accessed by holding SHIFT while clicking "Preferences"):
If you really wanted, you could replace the latter dll file with the former dll file, so you have the older quality within the Magix renderer, but rename the latter first so you can change back.
You can enable the older MainConcept AVC/AAC renderer in the internal preferences (accessed by holding SHIFT while clicking "Preferences"):
Thank you Nick!