@thomas-foley What adds the most time to your renders is having to use noise reduction. If you are still using the Panasonic AG-Hvx200 DVCPro I think investing in a better low light, bigger sensor sized camera would remove the need to use noise reduction, or reduce its usage, still speeding up render times.

Investing in an improved low light camera might be a better investment than computers.

@thomas-foley

It sounds like you are using intense plugins. Try Happy Otter Scripts https://tools4vegas.com/home/ if you need to denoise stuff, maybe its denoiser is faster (its a very good denoiser). Otherwise i fully agree with JN, if you are using such an old cam, an upgrade would make more sense. Maybe try to lend a GH5 or a X1500 if you need something with autozoom.

Thank you for all the responses. I really appreciate it. I didn't know noise reduction and sharpening was so intense. I just did a wedding and church service with 7 cheapo cameras on tripods. After I put the NEAT noise program, enhance the color, level, and sharpen each camera it takes me a week to just get the 7 cameras looking good BEFORE I do the really hard part of syncing them all together. I'd like to have pro equipment like you guys. Am I dreaming getting a good computer for running Vegas in the $3000 range? or do I really need to spend a lot more?

Why do any of that work before syncing? Normal workflow is to lock the edit and then color correct, denoise, etc. I guess you could fix each camera and output to ProRes before syncing but only if you'll definitely use each one.

A new computer will probably slow to a crawl with this workflow as well. Good cameras don't need sharpening and usually not noise reduction either. Maybe get an A cam and fix your workflow before buying a new computer.

I would spend the money on better cameras.

As it was already said, NeatVideo is resource expensive. However, current NeatVideo version can process FullHD on my Ryzen 3700X + old RX 580 with 25+ fps:

With more powerful system it can do way faster (you can use free NeatBench program to evaluate your system).

Sure, if you add more resource expensive plugins it will slow the things down.

I agree with @RogerS that the CC/denoise/sharpening should be added AFTER. No reason to denoise 30 minutes file while you leave only 10 seconds from it later on!

Video has never run smoothly on my i7 computers.

For me it looks like something basic missed in your setup. May be you are using old Neat Video, may be you are still using old GPU drivers, so GPU acceleration does not work in VP/NeatVideo.

If I were you, I would not spent anything until I found what is the bottleneck.

P.S. My workflow with my 1080-60p M2TS footage is mostly as simple as: Mercalli V4 + Pan/Crop + Color Correction + Levels + Sharping (notice no denoise) and I'm having 45+fps on Best | Full Preview on Ryzen 3700X + RX580. May be VP having issues with your source files and you need to disable so4 as I'm doing.

@thomas-foley That's good advice to do your fx after your multicam cuts... and after selecting the option to drop muted frames when expanding the multicam track. Because if you used 7 cameras , you'll be applying that slow fx to only 1/7 of the footage after the cuts and it'll take that that much less time. Keep in mind that the muted clips that are dropped aren't really gone if you change your mind on a cut. You can always grab the end of any cut point and drag the dropped material back into visibility.

Okay, I've had to make the painful acknowledgement that I'm a complete idiot. I wish I would have talked to you guys twenty years ago. Of course, it makes perfect sense to lock and sync all the tracks first, edit it up and THEN color correct, brighten, noise reduce etc...on the footage you're using. I've been doing it wrong for 20 years. I've always found my video played best and in sync if I didn't add any fx to it. These 7 camera angles I'm syncing are in frickin' Vietnamese and if I'm off two frames, the audio won't match the mouth. I'll start enhancing footage AFTER I've edited the tracks from now on. When I first got my Panasonic P2 camera it was expensive, like $6000 but now they're like $600 on Ebay. The camera shot these .mxf files and I had to buy a Raylight codec because they didn't work in Vegas. Vegas then started accepting these Panasonic mxf files and that's what I've been converting things to for 20 years. I'm going to try using the formats RogerS suggested. I'm going to try and get my company I work for to buy me a better camera like JN suggested so I don't even have to use noise reduction, I'm going to try the Happy Otter Scripts that Eikira suggested, I'm going to also start locking down the edit like Roger also said before applying fx, I'll try what Howard says with the muted tracks and I'm going to look on getting a good AMD Ryzen computer like Fifonik has. If Fifonik's AMS Ryzen 3700 works well for him, then I'm going to look on Amazon for something comparable.

I'm going to look on getting a good AMD Ryzen computer like Fifonik has. If Fifonik's AMS Ryzen 3700 works well for him, then I'm going to look on Amazon for something comparable.

NO! My footage is different and it is possible that my specs will not good for your case!

I'm looking at Rizen 7 computers with an AMD video card or graphics on motherboard in the $2000 range on Amazon. I have to believe they're better than my crappy $500 computers

my best, fastest computer I own is an AMD A12-9800 Radeon R7 computer I bought new on Amazon for $500. I have to believe these Rizen 7 computers are better

and I'm gonna get ssd drive instead of my pata and sata drives that's gotta help

Unfortunately, I made mistakes in my life and ended up a poor man with an expensive girlfriend. I really should be spending my money on new tires and dental work.

It's never too late to learn a better way of working! For example, I never tried the Vegas prerender until a month ago and now see benefit for previewing things like denoise.

Anyway here is a link to Vegas render benchmarks with a variety of hardware configurations.
You can also see results here of tests by users in the forum.

You should be able to put together a good quality system for well under $2000. I'd get a fast SSD for the OS and a second one for programs. You can put a working project on that drive and then archive and move the project to regular SATA drives once you're done, for example.

Good luck and I think you'll be much more productive in terms of time!

If I'm reading that link you sent properly, it says Ryzen 5 5600X is great. That's what I'm gonna look to buy. Thanks! I think it should work better than what I got with ssd drives

actually I wasn't reading it right. lower is better

actually I wasn't reading it right. lower is better

If you're referring to the Techgage one, note how the addition of a GPU makes the CPU difference much less significant, at least for this type of render. For other tests Vegas seems to like faster, even if fewer, cores.

I don't think there is a wrong answer and any of them will do far better than your current systems.

There are also other threads on this forum with suggestions for new hardware builds.

I'd like to thank everybody for their help!

There are so many excellent suggestions offered above.

Getting a new camera would help. If you work with manual focusing, heck, an old Panasonic G7 will shoot UHD 4K with no problem, except the 30 minute time limit, and you should be able to get one new with kit lens for well under $1000. Something newer? The G85 with dual IS. Or the Sony A6000 series for a larger sensor.

Here is a video with zero quality, zero content, and shot with the G7 with kit lens in a totally dark moonless night at a home in the middle of the woods, with a bunch of people who had WAY too much to drink.... maybe including me. I left everything on auto so there is focus hunting, and had only a small flashlight for lighting. No noise reduction and no effects.... It was originally shot in 4K. Oh, it's in Polish.... Please, no comments on how it could have been made better.... under the circumstances, it was fortunate to even have been recorded by me. And turn the volume down or off if you don't want your ears assaulted by the HORRIBLE singing. But yes... we had a blast....

You have the right plugin for noise reduction (Neat) and it will give you the best setting using your GPU and CPU. And with "more" computer hardware, it will work faster. In my sig, you can see my current computer build. Most of what I export is with AMD VCE, and the GPU gets a real workout. In addition, if I want to see what the effects on my video looks like, I am another fan of HOS Kwik Preview.

yeah, if I shot at night like that with my camera, they're would be a lot of noise. However, you gave me an idea to see how my Sony DSLR shoots video. I never use it cuz it stops after 30 minutes. My work has me video boxes and cartons running down conveyors for 4 hours at a time so I never tried the camera for video before.

Since you already have the camera, why not give it a go? It's already there and paid for I assume.

If I'm reading that link you sent properly, it says Ryzen 5 5600X is great. That's what I'm gonna look to buy. Thanks! I think it should work better than what I got with ssd drives

@thomas-foley Do you have the ability to upgrade any of your existing desktops? If you have decent power supplies in your desktops, and 2.5" SSDs for your OS, etc. you might be able to upgrade (2) older computers for the price of buying one totally new one...

Like you, I use multiple workstations to maximize my workflow. Sometimes I use one system for importing from tape, one for running NEAT and/or Mercalli stand-alone templates, one for editing, and one for final renders.... In the case of Mercalli, I might use a 2nd system to render-out the same shaky (drone, etc.) camera using 4-5 different templates and then just pick the best one vs. trying to solve the problem in Vegas...

IMO, currently the best bang/buck CPU in the 5600X price range is the Intel 11700K... It overclocks all cores to 5 ghz on cheap air, has built-in UHD 750 iGPU that works alongside your PCIe GPU to decode/encode, and can be paired with affordable motherboards that come with a lot of onboard features like TB3 & 10G networking...

Recently for $850 I upgraded an old Xeon desktop with an 11700K ($350-Microcenter), ASRock W48 Creator motherboard ($200-Newegg sale), 32 GB of DDR4 ($110-already had), $8 Noctua adapter to reuse the CPU cooler from my Xeon, and VEGA 56 GPU ($200 on eBay before the mining craze...) The ASRock W48 comes with built-in Thunderbolt 3, 10G networking, (3) M.2 ports or (8) SATA ports, lots of USB 3.2, USB-C, etc. and runs super-stable with all cores at 5 ghz since it is a workstation-class motherboard. IMO this is a great bang/buck setup considering that the AMD 5950X CPU alone cost $800 and really only performs 10%-15% better on most apps I use... Likewise the new $1500 GPUs do not run Vegas much faster than my used $200 VEGA 56...

For both my 11700K upgrade and an earlier 9900K upgrade I re-used my old cases, OS SSDs, Blu-ray burners, 750W+ power supplies, and LSI hardware RAID0 PCIe cards I had in my Xeons which provide about 600 Mb/s speeds across 6-8 older SATA drives. I keep my OS on single 2.5" 1TB SSD drives because once my apps load, I cannot tell the difference between a fast SSD and a faster M.2... I then fill my M.2 slots with $180 2TB M.2 drives placed in RAID0 so I have more room.

Having the source video on extremely fast M.2 RAID0's seems to speed-up how fast I can start editing after dropping a bunch of footage onto the timeline since the audio peaks build faster, etc.. Also I can transfer my source video to my render-only machine across my 10G network while I immediately start editing - all without any slow-downs within Vegas since the M.2's are so fast...

@thomas-foley since you are already using multiple computers to maximize your workflow, I think you would benefit more than most from being able to upgrade 2 vs. just buying a single new one... Watch for deals. You could get the first upgrade done using August back-to-school deals and the 2nd one using Black Friday deals...