@BobN2Tech In your signature it says 'I am an Electronics Engineer, designing hardware and software' , so If you were to ask someone for detailed info on something & they replied 'nothing unusual about it' you wouldn't have the information you asked for to put in your head, it may well be 'nothing unusual' but sometimes you need to see it for yourself, I'm sure you understand so thankyou for adding that, 👍

@Former user I understand where you're are coming from. And I did provide the information you requested, but I see no need for you to follow that up with such a "didactic" comment you just made, especially since you had already made your point earlier. I hope we can focus on the issue at hand - which primarily is the render templates.

@BobN2Tech You put the info in Bold so my comment was about explaining myself & maybe looking for a bit of empathy but yeah lets move on.

@Former user Agree 100%

@BobN2Tech VEGAS tries to automatically detect the available GPU hardware for encoding and decoding, and runs some tests before allowing them for use for stability reasons. The results of these tests are used in the File I/O preferences "Hardware Decoder To Use", and also to filter out render templates in MAGIX AVC/AAC and MAGIX HEVC/AAC. Your screenshot of the File I/O preferences indicates that VP19 could not find any suitable hardware; usually this means either that the drivers are an issue, or the hardware is not supported (for example, we blacklist older Intel GPUs). But the hardware listed in your signature should be supported, so this may be related to some other problem.

Can you share the contents of the files in the following folder (replace "<USERNAME>" with your Windows user id):

C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Local\MAGIX\FileIO\1.0?

Under normal circumstances, there will be a file called "So4HardwareDetectionOutput.xml". But if an error is encountered, there will be a file called "So4HardwareDetectionError.log".

Alternately, if you are comfortable with the command console, please type in the following commands into it, and send us the output:

"\Program Files\VEGAS\VEGAS Pro 19.0\So4HardwareDetection.exe"

Here are the 2 files from the Local\MAGIX\FileIO\1.0 folder contents

So4HardwareDetectionError.log file

[SO4READER_FILEMNG] Exception parsing hardware detection cache file 'C:\Users\VSHD-USER\AppData\Local\MAGIX\FileIO\1.0\So4HardwareDetectionOutput.xml'

So4HardwareDetectionOutput.xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<hardware_detection>
    <operating_system>
        <version>2009</version>
        <build_number>19042</build_number>
        <updated_build_revision>985</updated_build_revision>
    </operating_system>
    <compute>
        <num_platforms>2</num_platforms>
        <platform_0>
            <name>Intel(R) OpenCL HD Graphics</name>
            <vendor>Intel(R) Corporation</vendor>
            <version>OpenCL 2.1 </version>
            <num_devices>1</num_devices>
            <device_0>
                <name>Intel(R) HD Graphics 630</name>
                <version>OpenCL 2.1 NEO </version>
                <driver_version>27.20.100.8280</driver_version>
            </device_0>
        </platform_0>
        <platform_1>
            <name>AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing</name>
            <vendor>Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.</vendor>
            <version>OpenCL 2.1 AMD-APP (3380.6)</version>
            <num_devices>1</num_devices>
            <device_0>
                <name>Ellesmere</name>
                <version>OpenCL 2.0 AMD-APP (3380.6)</version>
                <driver_version>3380.6 (PAL,HSAIL)</driver_version>
            </device_0>
        </platform_1>
    </compute>
    <hardware_decoders>
        <num_decoders>1</num_decoders>
        <preferred_decoder_0>
            <vendor_id>3</vendor_id>
            <vendor_name>AMD UVD/VCN</vendor_name>
        </preferred_decoder_0>
    </hardware_decoders>
</hardware_detection>
_id>
            <vendor_name>AMD UVD/VCN</vendor_name>
        </preferred_decoder_1>
    </hardware_decoders>
</hardware_detection>

@BobN2Tech : Thank you for sharing the log outputs. It shows two things:

1. Intel QSV encode/decode capabilities are not available on your system, most likely because of the older drivers. The latest HD 630 drivers are 30.0.101.1960, and yours are old (from May of 2020).

2. For some reason, VEGAS cannot correctly read the XML file (So4HardwareDetectionOutput.xml in the path I mentioned above) created by the hardware detection process (So4HardwareDetection.exe).

I will reach out to you directly to assist in this matter further (via a direct message).

I was able to get the render templates to now show by disabling the automatic encoder/decoder detection (on the preferences.. Internals. I now see these templates for both AVC and HEVC. But when I try to render AVC (have not tried HEVC) with or without AMD VCE, the render just stops 49% (AMD) and 54% (no GPU) see screen shots. If I cancel then, after confirmation that the mp4 won't be made, and click ok, VP just hangs with a busy cursor. I have to kill the application with Task Manager. I copied the timeline to VMS 17Platinum, and was able to render in AVC UHD (@ 29.97) using the AMD VCE without it stopping. It was very slow though, as if it were not using the GPU at all. Not real happy with my upgrade from VMS 17 to VP 19!

I was not sure if the freeze during editing and freeze during render was the Radeon RX 570 Graphics card, so I removed it, and upgraded to the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super. I went under options. .preferences.. video tab, set the GPU Acceleration to Nvidia, set the dynamic ram to 7%. I went to File I/O and set the Decoder to Nvidia NVDEC. Now if I try to render anything, the entire program crashes. I am not gaining any ground here!

** EDIT ** Ok I did a RESET of Vegas Edit and that seemed to solve the Render as crashing.

However, I am a bit disappointed in the render speed. I am rendering in AVC UHD 29.97 fps using the Nvidia template (same as source). I was coming from a AMD Radeon RX 570 to this newer and faster Nvidia Geforce RXT 2060 Super, and rendering the same project with the RX 570 I was getting an average render speed of ~24 fps, and on the faster RXT 2060 I am only getting 26.7 fps average. But what's strange is the current speed changes rapidly from ~30 to 60 fps then render pauses for a second or 2 then continues this pattern every few seconds, which of course throws off the average. Why is it pausing and is there perhaps a buffer setting that I can increase??