NVENC render does not seem to use my GPU

SammoBam wrote on 4/15/2020, 2:06 PM

I've spent several days trying to figure out why videos are rendering so slowly, and my patience has run out. So I'm hoping someone can either enlighten me or tell me what I'm doing wrong.

I was initially using Vegas Pro 14 (bought many years ago), and it does not allow for GPU acceleration or rendering with my Nvidia GTX760 (old card, I know). I was trying to render some longer videos (about 30 minutes in length), and it was taking roughly 3 times longer than the video length to render at 1080p/60fps (so a 30 minute video took 90-100 minutes to render). The rendered file was also roughly 4x larger i file size than the raw video footage (which was recorded in 1080p/60fps through OBS, a video streaming/recording application). The only things I've added to this video footage is an audio commentary track and a couple of text cards here and there. No fancy FX or anything.

I spent a day reading about how Vegas Pro 14 has terrible rendering times and newer versions of Vegas applications have the option of rendering using Nvidia GPUs, so I took the plunge and bought Vegas Movie Studio 16 Platinum (because I am not rich and can't really spend a large amount of money on Vegas Pro 17). My GTX760 appears in Options>Preferences>Video>GPU Acceleration, and I can select the NVENC options when rendering these videos, so I know Movie Studio 16 can detect my GPU. However, rendering STILL takes roughly 3 times longer than the length of the video being rendered, even when using the NVENC rendering options.

I did some tests with a 35-second clip using various GPU acceleration options and rendering methods, and all of them rendered this 35-second clip in about 1 minute 50 seconds (give or take 5 seconds). So again, roughtly 3 times longer to render than the length of the clip. I tried NVENC encoding, Intel QSV encoding, and CPU encoding; all had about the same results.

I did notice that even when I use the NVENC encoder to render the clips, my CPU usage is around 85-90%. I don't know if this means my GPU isn't actually helping in the rendering process, but it's really frustrating when I spend $60 to upgrade to a new version of Vegas only to find out that it doesn't help at all with rendering speed. I feel like I wasted my money.

If anyone has any ideas on how to speed up rendering, I would greatly appreciate it.

Specs (let me know if you need more than this):

CPU: Intel i7-4790

GPU: Nvidia GTX760 (latest driver was installed a couple of days ago)

RAM: 8 GB DDR3 (again, not a lot, I know, but the memory usage never goes above 80% when rendering)

OS: Windows 10 64-bit

Vegas Movie Studio 16, latest build

Thank you in advance for any help.

Comments

j-v wrote on 4/15/2020, 2:37 PM

Not a new version of Vegas is needed but your GPU cannot use NVenc, also not if you choose that option because VMS 16 is able to use NVENC only if your GPU is a right one as stated in the screenshot, but yours is not.

SammoBam wrote on 4/15/2020, 3:01 PM

Not a new version of Vegas is needed but your GPU cannot use NVenc, also not if you choose that option because VMS 16 is able to use NVENC only if your GPU is a right one as stated in the screenshot, but yours is not.

So it sounds like I'm stuck using CPU rendering unless I upgrade my GPU.

VEGASDerek wrote on 4/15/2020, 3:18 PM

NVENC support is the GTX760 is extremely limited and will only work for a subset of AVC files. It is not officially supported by the VEGAS products for this feature. It is recommended a GTX1xxx series or greater to get the full NVENC features in the VEGAS products. The GTX900 (Maxwell) series does have full AVC support, but HEVC support was made available in the GTX1000 (Pascal) series.

KenB wrote on 4/16/2020, 3:53 AM

@SammoBam, my system was almost identical to yours, with a GTX750 instead of GTX760 on VMS 16, and it definitely did render much faster (about 3x faster) using NVENC (MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4). It was great for doing previews or quick renders for sharing. However, that *could* have been before upgrading to latest build 175 (I haven't tried using NVENC for a while, and I have since upgraded to GTX 1660 so can't test anymore).

If you like reading log files, you can find out what VMS has detected regarding your graphics card here:

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Movie Studio Platinum\16.0\gpu_video_x64.log

Ken.

amir-k wrote on 4/27/2020, 6:28 PM

It is recommended a GTX1xxx series or greater to get the full NVENC features in the VEGAS products.

I don't want to call Derek a liar but as a GTX 1070 user, I have noticed the same issue in which my GPU does not get used or improve render times in any way (on Vegas 17-421). I think this is just an Nvidia bug and we just have to hope it gets fixed in the near future!

KenB wrote on 4/28/2020, 2:38 AM

I don't want to call Derek a liar but as a GTX 1070 user, I have noticed the same issue in which my GPU does not get used or improve render times in any way (on Vegas 17-421). I think this is just an Nvidia bug and we just have to hope it gets fixed in the near future!

Do you have the latest GeForce Studio driver installed (442.19)? It has a profile for Vegas Pro 17. See also this article: https://techgage.com/article/magix-vegas-pro-17-cpu-gpu-performance/

I have GTX 1660 and it uses the GPU when I render using a NVENC profile, although it's not as fast as I'd hoped (not quite twice as fast as when using CPU only for MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 profile).

Ken.

Edit: just noticed there is now 442.92 Studio driver

Malix82 wrote on 4/29/2020, 3:40 AM

I don't want to call Derek a liar but as a GTX 1070 user, I have noticed the same issue in which my GPU does not get used or improve render times in any way (on Vegas 17-421). I think this is just an Nvidia bug and we just have to hope it gets fixed in the near future!

Do you have the latest GeForce Studio driver installed (442.19)? It has a profile for Vegas Pro 17. See also this article: https://techgage.com/article/magix-vegas-pro-17-cpu-gpu-performance/

I have GTX 1660 and it uses the GPU when I render using a NVENC profile, although it's not as fast as I'd hoped (not quite twice as fast as when using CPU only for MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 profile).

Ken.

Edit: just noticed there is now 442.92 Studio driver

I did some digging in VMSP17 settings, got a quite noticeable speedboost for my rendering at least.

Basically: hardware decoding for video

and in internal settings (ctrl+shift when opening preferences): "Enable YUV to RGB conversion using OPENCL on NVIDIA" -> TRUE. This alone took ~25% of my rendertime off when rendering with magix hevc/aac nvenc. Seems stable and doesn't seem to lower quality. EDIT: no idea if this applies to VP, or if it's a good idea to do this, but "works for me"

j-v wrote on 4/29/2020, 4:40 AM

@Malix82 Good catch!
I had already pretty fast rendering with my Nvidia encoding and decoding, but your latest option gives me 70% faster rendering for heavy 4K 50p HEVC GoPro files to my usual Magix AVC FHD 50p.😃

Malix82 wrote on 4/29/2020, 4:45 AM

@Malix82 Good catch!
I had already pretty fast rendering with my Nvidia encoding and decoding, but your latest option gives me 70% faster rendering for heavy 4K 50p HEVC GoPro files to my usual Magix AVC FHD 50p.😃

I'd assume the option only really helps if the video is decoded on gpu, so there's less "back and forth" transferring of data. But, ...70%? Thats "quite substantial" :)

j-v wrote on 4/29/2020, 4:57 AM

1 minute 4K HEVC with a little pan/crop without your latest option rendertime is 2 minutes 12 sec.
The same little project with that option rendertime is 1 minute 15 sec.
AVC rendered to AVC gave no difference, both 48 sec.

That is all on my laptop.

I tried also on my desktop and there the figures are even better

Same project without internal change 88 seconds and with the change 50 sec, 76% faster.

ADV-IT wrote on 9/17/2020, 11:39 PM

Same here,
I have Movie Studio Platinum 16, GPU: GTX 1070,
During Rendering it's not using GPU at all. only CPU.
Tried tons of options but no luck.
And if I enable GPU acceleration of video processing under Options -> Preferences -> Video.
Studio crash on start of render. I have latest NVIDIA drivers.
No solution.
I heard that Adobe Premier using GPU on full power during rendering.