While I am sold on Oldsmoke's assessment of AMD cards (and thus I have discontinued my plan to buy a GTX 970 in favor of going with an AMD card in a couple of months even though Nvidia cards are better for some of my other applications), I do expect a new version or build of Vegas soon.

The nightmare scenario for SCS and an unnecessary high risk market strategy would be dropping the full Vegas line up (i.e. the "complete Vegas family of applications" listed on the SCS website including Pro and Movie Studio) now and then finding out that Catalyst is a sales dud. Given that Catalyst is not a direct replacement for the various Vegas products especially for the lower end Vegas product such as Movie Studio, the low risk strategy would be to keep both Catalyst and Vegas active. It would be interesting to know the contribution of each product to SCS's revenue; could it be that the Vegas line up including Movie Studio still contributes 80 percent to sales figures even though the software developers seem to be focusing strictly on Catalyst? Will Catalyst eventually be positioned as a broadcast industry product to support Sony's cameras? Will Vegas will be developed around its strengths for a separate market?

In the ideal world, SCS will update Vegas to work properly with the newest video cards from AMD and Nvidia for both previewing and rendering. There are many excellent threads in this forum elaborating on Vegas' shortfalls with respect to newer video cards. The other components of Vegas Pro such as DVDA also require refreshing.

In regards to Vegas Pro Suite (which I have), I'd also like to see it include the latest versions of Hitfilm, NB plugins, and NB Titler and/or a Vegas Pro Suite that included Boris Continuum Complete 10 (Boris fx advised me via email that they do plan a BBC 10 for Vegas).

I am optimistic about the future of Vegas long term and am willing to buy a meaningful update; I hope that SCS will continue on with Vegas!

Jamon,

So after downloading the video benchmark test link you posted and giving it a try, here's what the results were:

First, my system.
Intel Core i7-3770K 3.5 GHz
Windows 7 Professional (64bit)
16 GB RAM
Upgraded to NVIDIA Quadro M5000 from GForce GTX 670

Driver version 354.56

Playback framerate was 29.9 pretty steadily in high quality preview window, with occasional stutters in playback during transitions but no significant drop in framerate.

Adding any one plugin from the BCC suite to the timeline practically brought the framerate to its knees, and suddenly I was at 5-10 fps. I removed that and playback got smooth again.

When rendering with "HD Internet" settings I got the following times:

- Main Concept MP4 CPU, CUDA, and OpenCL renders all took 2:35 to complete
- Sony AVC CPU and GPU renders took 1:44 to complete

Interestingly it didn't seem to matter what I used to process the video (CPU, CUDA, or OpenCL) as all times were pretty much the same.

Have you tried switching off GPU acceleration in Vegas but keeping it on for the plugins? I have an NVidia 760 4GB, I don't use Vegas GPU acceleration but do switch it on in BCC 9 and other plugins. For example, even with Vegas GPU switched off if GPU is switch on in Twixtor a render will be much faster than when it's switched off. A one hour CPU Twixtor render takes about 15 mins with GPU switched on. It's worth a try.

A bit late to the party here: I switched to an AMD card (R290x; specs in my profile) earlier this year and I couldn't be happier. It's a fire-breathing system even without GPU enabled, but with GPU enabled, renders scream through 1920x1080 Cineform avi's even with Magic Bullet in a 32-bit floating point project. Timeline playback at best/full is real-time in 8-bit, around 12-13 fps in 32-bit. Doesn't help the OP or his bank account, I know, but the experience certainly validates home the oft-repeated advice here to splash out for an AMD card.

The render times in the included PDF show as low as around a minute. But your render times are less than mine, and your CPU and GPU are faster than mine, so we seem to have similar performance. I didn't let the CPU MC finish, but it looked like it'd be around the same as the OpenCL on mine too.

It sounds like your main problem is with BCC. Maybe it doesn't utilize the GPU much? In the NVIDIA Control Panel under Manage GPU Utilization is a graph of usage. With the benchmark project while playing mine shows a peak of around 30%.

If I drag the Starburst plugin to the 8th track, and select the Simple 4 Point preset, the GPU utilization goes up to 50-60%, and it still plays back at 29.97 FPS. So some FX do use the GPU and it doesn't drop to 10 FPS like you say BCC does.

[I]Interestingly it didn't seem to matter what I used to process the video (CPU, CUDA, or OpenCL) as all times were pretty much the same.[/I]

No surprise there. The last Nvidia card that worked with CUDA was the GTX580 and Fermi based Quadro cards. The same is true for AMD, my R9 290 is not supported by SONY AVC and MC AVC when set to use OpenCL; I think the last card was the HD7950 with a Tahiti chip.
Try and encode with XDCAM to 1080i as SCS did, that is where the major difference between AMD and Nvidia is. BCC plugins are "monsters" and you will need a 290X or higher to good performance.

I just ran a benchmark test on my CPU and it came back as overclocked to 4.1 GHz.

I just wanted to be sure.

I did as you suggested and added Sony's Simple 4 Point preset from the Starburst plugin to the 8th track and got a miserable 0.7 FPS. Yes, you read that correctly. This is supposed to be a GPU accelerated plug-in and looking at the GPU meter in NVIDIA's control panel, I'm hitting 30 percent.

This is just crazy. I'm going to download Adobe Premier and see if that behaves better.

It must be this:

Options > Preferences > Video > GPU acceleration of video processing
[B]NVIDIA Corporation (Quadro M5000)[/B]

When I set mine to "Off", it also plays under 0.7 FPS with that Starburst preset.
Which means, your Vegas is not utilizing GPU acceleration.
Make sure it is selected for the Quadro, then restart.

If it already was by some strange chance, then uninstall and reinstall Vegas, then enable GPU acceleration again.

Yes, I did have GPU acceleration selected for the Quadro so I took your advice and uninstalled Vegas and reinstalled it. Lo and behold my FPS hovered around 15.0 afterward with the GPU processor measuring a 70% use in NVIDIA's control panel view.

Out of curiosity, I rendered with the Sony AVC codec again and got the same time results using the GPU, so that didn't change.

Can you tell me your system specs, Jamon since they aren't in your user profile?

Thank you so much for your help.

Now it sounds like if you right-click the preview window, "Adjust Size and Quality for Optimal Playback" is disabled. When that option is unchecked for me, with Best Full at 1080p that Starburst clip previews around 12 FPS. When it's enabled, it drops to single digits during the parts with other layers and transitions, but it previews at 29.97 FPS for the parts with just that track and the Starburst. With Preview (Auto) it plays mostly smoothly throughout, with small dips in framerate during those heavy regions. That's with the M5000 and Xeon 1245, both of which are slower than yours. With Preview, and Adjust Quality enabled, you should be able to preview the PressReleaseProject.veg with a Starburst and the display framerate saying 29.970. In Catalyst Edit I recreated that benchmark project, and it cannot play smoothly during the transitions, and at a quick glance appears to perform worse than Vegas, although maybe it's trying to display at higher quality so I don't know.