You seem to be conflating different things. If a 20 min. video is taking 18 hours it's unlikely the choice of encoder (Mainconcept, NVENC, QSV) or media decoder (QSV, NVDEC) is a significant factor- you have a massive bottleneck somewhere else.

That somewhere else is likely the AI-enabled Fx you are using. I'd run some tests on just that. See if it's making use of your NVIDIA GPU in windows task manager/performance (it may not be).

For NVENC I'd keep it set to default and pick a reasonable variable bitrate for the resolution and framerate of what you're trying to make.

Intel iGPU decoders work well in Vegas so I would recommend setting it to that and keeping it there.

Feel free to run some tests with a standard benchmark to give you an idea of how diff. encoders, etc. impacts performance. You won't have to wait more than a minute or two with this project. https://forms.gle/PCD4TT1ynEXKwpD17

Thank you for the advice. Usually I go for CBR since I've read that works better for most social network uploads . . . but I'll keep your pointers in mind. I did notice in my task manager that NVIDIA GEFORCE was running several processes, and I thought that was odd since I had no dynamic preview running during the render (I had carefully watched the video several times to make sure it looked to my satisfaction). I had no other active processes besides VP 20 running at the time, just background ones.

I notice when I run stable diffusion all the time, I get messages that large resolutions are unavailable because there is only 2Gb or less available for it to use. I wonder if this has to do with having Adobe Creative Cloud on my PC . . .

colorization works on the CPU not GPU, it's very slow, do a test where you have it turned off. as for the adobe crap, I have it also, doesn't seem to cause a problem. You could try deoldify on a google notebook where it will use a server GPU for processing. Problem is mostly can only do short videos, possibly not 4K as if you use too many resources for too long, google will give the GPU to someone else. It's a paid service so it's like they're giving you a trial so understandable.

colorization works on the CPU not GPU, it's very slow, do a test where you have it turned off. as for the adobe crap, I have it also, doesn't seem to cause a problem. You could try deoldify on a google notebook where it will use a server GPU for processing. Problem is mostly can only do short videos, possibly not 4K as if you use too many resources for too long, google will give the GPU to someone else. It's a paid service so it's like they're giving you a trial so understandable.

How can i make Vegas utilize more CPU? It's only ever using like 5% CPU. Up the rendering threads?

Many will find my approach to avoid long renders unacceptable and shouldn’t be necessary – and that is understandable.  But practicality enters the equation.

With many FX such as Colorisation, Neat NR, a whole range of Boris Continuum FX that involve Mocha masking, and so on and so on, I have for a long time created a .veg project specifically to process these FX and render them individually to an .mp4 4K video event that can then be imported onto the main project’s timeline.  The advantage:  the final render on the main project doesn’t have to render ‘intensive’ FX because they’ve already been rendered and are on the timeline as ‘simple’ video events.  The only FX I now use on the main project timeline are basic native Vegas video and audio FX as well as some basic 3rd party FX which are not GPU intensive.

Reasoning:  let’s say that a video event with Neat NR applied takes 2 mins to render, and you’ve got 50 events of around the same length with Neat NR applied – that’s around 100 mins of cumulative rendering time in your main project.  Then if there’s a problem with the project render and it needs to be rendered again – that’s another 100 mins on the re-render due to the Neat NR FX.  But if the Neat NR FX had already been rendered and imported as a ‘clean’ video event, then that’s nearly 100 minutes saved in the re-render.

Much the same with audio FX in that iZotope FX are not backward compatible.  If you need to go back to an older project with an older iZotope FX product – you’ll need to have that older iZ FX product installed in order to get that older VP project to include iZ audio FX.

Again, this approach is not for everybody – but it works for me.

With many FX such as Colorisation, Neat NR, a whole range of Boris Continuum FX that involve Mocha masking, and so on and so on, I have for a long time created a .veg project specifically to process these FX and render them individually to an .mp4 4K video event that can then be imported onto the main project’s timeline.  The advantage:  the final render on the main project doesn’t have to render ‘intensive’ FX because they’ve already been rendered and are on the timeline as ‘simple’ video events.

Isn't easier to use the tool "render to new track" for this purpose? Finished complex parts of a project can be rendered in advance to new tracks (best with an almost lossless codec). Also previewing these prerendered complex parts will benefit.

colorization works on the CPU not GPU, it's very slow, do a test where you have it turned off. as for the adobe crap, I have it also, doesn't seem to cause a problem. You could try deoldify on a google notebook where it will use a server GPU for processing. Problem is mostly can only do short videos, possibly not 4K as if you use too many resources for too long, google will give the GPU to someone else. It's a paid service so it's like they're giving you a trial so understandable.

How can i make Vegas utilize more CPU? It's only ever using like 5% CPU. Up the rendering threads?

For colorization, don't touch the default Vegas settings- there's nothing you can change to affect CPU usage. The bottleneck is in its implementation, which means there's also hope for improvement.

If you have an Intel GPU or iGPU at least in VP 19 I see that colorization is done using that (utilization goes from 25% to 99% when I toggle it on and off). Not sure about 20, need to test it later.

For dynamic ram preview it is a preview buffer that is always active. It's just that throwing lots of GB into it doesn't improve performance past a certain point and takes away ram Vegas can use for other uses.

I also see a few NVIDIA container in the background and think it's normal. I don't have GeForce experience installed FWIW. Vegas uses the GPU to help process the timeline in preferences/video. It also uses it for decoding in preferences, file io. It can use it for encoding if you choose NVENC, etc. Try the sample project and you can see what a Fx-intensive project looks like with GPU on and off in preferences/video.

Isn't easier to use the tool "render to new track" for this purpose?

Absolutely. Without doubt that's another option.

@Crowyote You might try a test render with the colorization fx disabled to verify that's what's slowing things down. I have a Zenbook Pro 16x myself and the colorization ai fx runs in the Intel igpu on mine with the current build 214 of Vegas. I was able to force processing to amd gpus on systems with an Arc but not on my laptop. Odd that the ai fx is powered by Intel OpenVino and runs poorly on my system with an Intel IrisXe. Best I could do was to make sure the Intel graphics driver was up to date. You could try disabling the igpu either in bios or the driver, to force ai processing to the gpu. But if it goes to the cpu that will likely make everything else worse. The cpu is the worst place to run ai because it's so math intensive. Intel has updates to their ai library online but I suggest waiting for a Vegas update to avoid disrupting the implementation.

These videos had 24 bit audio and 60fps but were only 2 mins long, they ended up being about 20GB and rendered in minutes flat.

Yesterday - today, I rendered a 20+ min video with loads of video effects (Colorization being the only Advanced one)

You have already answered your question in your first post.

These videos had 24 bit audio and 60fps but were only 2 mins long, they ended up being about 20GB and rendered in minutes flat.

Yesterday - today, I rendered a 20+ min video with loads of video effects (Colorization being the only Advanced one)

You have already answered your question in your first post.

Not necessarily. I was talking about experience with VP20. I used VP17 extensively with my new computer incorporating loads of effects and had renders in minutes. So, colorization is likely the culprit as many have said.

Isn't easier to use the tool "render to new track" for this purpose?

Absolutely. Without doubt that's another option.

This is likely the answer. I'm going to try it tonight.

Not necessarily. I was talking about experience with VP20. I used VP17 extensively with my new computer incorporating loads of effects and had renders in minutes. So, colorization is likely the culprit as many have said.

You didn't think that is what I said?

Not necessarily. I was talking about experience with VP20. I used VP17 extensively with my new computer incorporating loads of effects and had renders in minutes. So, colorization is likely the culprit as many have said.

You didn't think that is what I said?

I meant that I didn't know that colorization was the culprit per se.

You never said anything directly, btw. I only get the impression that you inferred that my original assumption about colorization slowing down the render was correct.

It's my first time using the AI effects. I came here for advice, not to be glowered upon.

At this point we're all basically agreeing here that the AI effect is likely the reason for the increased time and needs to be tested further.

 

Isn't easier to use the tool "render to new track" for this purpose? Finished complex parts of a project can be rendered in advance to new tracks (best with an almost lossless codec). Also previewing these prerendered complex parts will benefit.

I'm trying to figure out how to do this correctly. I tried "Render to a new track" but it didn't let me select exactly what was being rendered. I started it with a lossless NVENC mp4 with no audio - the goal being to make an AVI with 24-bit audio (might try Voukouder alternatively) at a later stage, but it seemed to hit the bottleneck again and gave a projection of a long render time.

I'm testing out "selectively prerender" now with the main "Colorized" track highlighted. It doesn't give me the option of lossless or not that I could see, but it start rendering things right away. I'm not sure exactly what it's doing tho . . . it seems to be making short snippets where parts of the video (titles) etc overlap . . .

You have to create first a loop region for the part you want to render to a new track. That can be a single clip or just a range on your timeline. If you don't create a loop region, the whole timeline will be rendered to a new track. I would use a codec like Prores or XAVC for this purpose instead of highly compressed HEVC.

AI effects, noise reduction, motion blur, just some examples of effects that will dramatically increase your render times.

The team has been hard at work on improving efficiency of AI effects, so while I can't give details, just know that some changes are in the works that will help you with this issue dramatically.

That said, these super-complex effects can still only be sped up so much... I very much agree with the above suggestions that you render our the sections of your timeline that have these effects applied to a new track, using the prores format (as you'll lost the least amount of quality in the encode process, and ProRes decodes really easy in VEGAS). ProRes 422 is more than sufficient for your needs. Don't waste the hard drive space on the higher quality versions of ProRes, as some of them are so huge that your hard drive won't be able to stream the data fast enough in most cases to play it back smoothly. ProRes 422 works fantastic, and it's why I recommend people who want more performance out of VEGAS to start shooting ProRes using external recorders (if necessary) vs. investing in new hardware when they ask what hardware to buy to get more performance out of VEGAS.

Another thing I've notices about the AI effects, the lower quality settings in the AI effect always render faster, but oddly enough, they always look better too, so be sure to test the low settings first.

I very much agree with the above suggestions that you render out the sections of your timeline that have these effects applied to a new track

@fr0sty  ... As mentioned earlier, I’ve been creating another .veg project just to do those systems intensive FX and render them out for import into the main project.  This way, I can easily go back to the other ‘FX’ project and redo the FX edit if needed, say for example, to adjust the masking in the Mocha usage in a BCC FX. 

Of course that is possible to do on the main project timeline – as 3POINT and you are suggesting - but only if the original event and FX are left on the timeline and presumably muted.  If the original event/FX used for rendering is deleted, then there’s nothing left to go back to re-edit – it will be 'start again' on that event.

If the original event/FX are muted and left on the timeline after the render is done, does muting dozens of events affect timeline or render performance?  It may be just ‘urban myth’ (or better still ‘edit suite myth’) but it was suggested on the forum years ago that Vegas Pro’s rendering process will take into account anything on the timeline even if muted. Any clarification/comment would be much appreciated.

Just an observation – this wouldn’t be a problem if Vegas Pro had multiple timelines available within the one project (like in Resolve and others) because those events with demanding FX applied could be stored on another timeline within that one project.  In a way, I’m doing much the same thing but need to open two instances of Vegas Pro to get that multiple timeline advantage.

Of course that is possible to do on the main project timeline – as 3POINT and you are suggesting - but only if the original event and FX are left on the timeline and presumably muted.  If the original event/FX used for rendering is deleted, then there’s nothing left to go back to re-edit – it will be 'start again' on that event.

If the original event/FX are muted and left on the timeline after the render is done, does muting dozens of events affect timeline or render performance?  It may be just ‘urban myth’ (or better still ‘edit suite myth’) but it was suggested on the forum years ago that Vegas Pro’s rendering process will take into account anything on the timeline even if muted. Any clarification/comment would be much appreciated.

Just an observation – this wouldn’t be a problem if Vegas Pro had multiple timelines available within the one project (like in Resolve and others) because those events with demanding FX applied could be stored on another timeline within that one project.  In a way, I’m doing much the same thing but need to open two instances of Vegas Pro to get that multiple timeline advantage.

No need to mute tracks with original events and FX, the rendered new video tracks overlay those tracks. The only exception are audio tracks.

You have to create first a loop region for the part you want to render to a new track. That can be a single clip or just a range on your timeline. If you don't create a loop region, the whole timeline will be rendered to a new track. I would use a codec like Prores or XAVC for this purpose instead of highly compressed HEVC.

Will VP only render the hightlighted track in that case? I do have the blue brackets around the intended area of the timelines I intend to render and the Colorization track in particular highlighted, but I'm getting the impression that VP's rendering all of the tracks besides the audio because I've selected "No Audio." I just have two extra video tracks for ending and beginning titles with normal effects and animation on them (under normal circumstances these render quickly).
 

Vegas will render all tracks (when not muted or solo-ed) between the blue brackets only (loop region) when in the render dialogue for render options "Render loop region only" is selected:

Vegas will render all tracks (when not muted or solo-ed) between the blue brackets only (loop region) when in the render dialogue for render options "Render loop region only" is selected:

Thank you!!!!

I swear something must be up with my settings. I just tried to render an image sequence to create a title for the video that uses the Colorization effect, and it's projecting hours of render time. I could understand a video taking a while, but jpegs? Something is off.