Slow renders...

Cosmichrist wrote on 6/26/2015, 1:02 PM
I'm having a lot of problems with slow render speeds. I'm currently working on a project that is a 3:30 minute nested file that I'm rendering to a mp4 at 6mbps that is taking me almost 45 minutes to render. It's a very simple two clip project. I routinely have problems with very slow renders with my MXF files. I'm assuming Vegas has a very hard time with my MXF files from my Canon XF300s. This machine is only a year old. I would appreciate a phone conversation with someone. There is a lot of discussion about slow vegas renders on the internet and I've read just about every one. I've been with Vegas before Sony bought it, but in my professional business, these renders will really hurt my business productivity.

I did download Vegas 13 and didn't see any difference.

My specs are i7 CPU 950 @ 3.07ghz
12 gb of ram
and my video card is a GeForce GTX 460.

Comments

dxdy wrote on 6/26/2015, 1:19 PM
I also use Canon XF 300 MXF files, always at 50Mbps, for input. I have no complaints about render speed, although I have an i7 5960 overclocked to 4GHz with the AMD R9 290x.

I really believe that the size of the files (they are huge, although not as big as 4K files) is a factor. For example, when I render from a XF300 file to .ac3 file for BR audio, it is very slow even on the 5960. The audio from ordinary AVCHD files (12 Mbps) are way faster.

It has been my experience that nesting really slows things down. As I recall, if you look at the performance tab in Windows Task Manager, you will see that only one thread is working hard when rendering a nested project. If there is no nesting, all 8 of your threads should be working hard.

As an experiment, try rendering a XF300 project without any nesting, and see what the difference is.

Also, the 950 was a great CPU, but is a little long-of-tooth at this point - there have been 3 generations of Intel CPU since then.
john_dennis wrote on 6/26/2015, 1:46 PM
"[I]I would appreciate a phone conversation with someone.[/I]"

Are you in the United States? Since doing video I have talked to two other people on the phone, but it could happen. Send me an email.
Cosmichrist wrote on 6/26/2015, 1:50 PM
Hey John,

When I tried to email support today, my post was my message to Sony, but I think they disabled the submit button so I wasn't able to send it to them. I forgot I left the phone call request in there, sorry if that was awkward.

I think it's probably true that my machine just may not be up to handling my MXF files. Sigh, another 1k here we come.
Cosmichrist wrote on 6/26/2015, 1:56 PM
Hey DXDY,

Do you think it would make a huge difference if I just drop another processor in, or should I just start a new build?
BruceUSA wrote on 6/26/2015, 2:24 PM
Try to update your video card's driver and try to render again. 3 minute video should not take 45 minute to render. Heck, I still have a old system with i7 920 @2.66ghz with GTX260 can render 3 minute video in 12-15 minutes, your i7 950 @3.0ghz should do better then that. PS your PC maybe a yrs old but by today standard it is old cpu and is slow. Just a thought

Intel i9 Core Ultra 285K Overclocked all P Cores @5.6, all E-Cores @5ghz               

MSI MEG Z890 ACE Gaming Wifi 7 10G Super Lan, thunderbolt 4                                

48GB DDR5 -8200mhz Overclocked @8800mhz                  

Crucial T705 nvme .M2 2TB Gen 5  OS. 4TB  gen 4 storage                    

RTX 5080 16GB  Overclocked 3.1ghz, Memory Bandwidth increased from 960 GB/s to 1152 GB/s                                                            

Custom built hard tube watercooling.                            

MSI PSU 1250W, Windows 11 Pro

 

astar wrote on 6/26/2015, 3:18 PM
There have been so many threads on this topic.

I would replace that 460 GPU with 7970 or r9 270x, or r9 290x(for future upgrade path only.) See some of my other posts detailing steps to test vegas with new card.

My 870 system with an AMD 5770, will render Sony AVC from XDCAM in just under real time. The correct GPU matters that much, NVidia just blows with respects to how Vegas actually works.

Your source codec could be holding you back too, try some renders with source media converted to XDCAM, HD-CAM-SR-lite, even XAVC. Render to Sony AVC .mp4. Although in my tests of camera footage, the .mxf codec from that canon is pretty much XDCAM 422 already.

Rendering in 32-bit mode is also way slower.

Rendering in Best vs Good is slower, test the difference in what you are working on.


Cosmichrist wrote on 6/26/2015, 3:34 PM
Astar,

Are you saying go with a non-Nvidia card? What do you have? Thanks in advance.
NormanPCN wrote on 6/26/2015, 3:49 PM
I very much doubt the XDCAM mpeg-2 source files you have has anything to do with your render speeds. mpeg-2 is super easy and fast to decode. If you can playback fine then the source format is not the problem.

There are three encoders in Vegas that can render an MP4 file.

Mainconcept AVC is a pretty slow encoder in CPU mode, and two pass mode is twice the time of single pass. Your 460 is Nvidia Fermi so the Mainconcept AVC encoder should support your card if you enable CUDA in the render as template.

In CPU mode the Sony AVC encoder is close to twice as fast MC AVC. Sony AVC can use GPU but does not get much of a performance boost since it uses the GPU very little.

Note: When I talk of "cpu mode" in reference to the file encoder, I mean the options in the render as template which is independent of the Vegas video engine GPU option in preferences. One controls the video engine use of GPU (preferences) and the other controls the file encoder.
astar wrote on 6/26/2015, 3:52 PM
AMD 5770, but recommending a AMD R9 270x for your gen1 i7, or an AMD r9 290x if you plan on updating your motherboard. The 7970 will likely perform better than the R9 270x, but you will need to EBay a used card, vs the new r9 cards.

You would need to make sure your system has the power supply to run the card you choose.

Also completely uninstall your NVidia card drivers before removing the NV card. Then install the AMD card, and load the AMD drivers.

Verify your GPU is interfacing at 16X speed with GPU-z.

Verify OpenCL operation is good with Luxmark v2.

Enable GPU in Vegas preferences, and use only GPU enabled effects and plugins.
astar wrote on 6/26/2015, 3:57 PM
Source codec does matter, as certain codecs in Vegas are highly optimized. While vegas will play back almost anything, Vegas works best with certain codecs.

Do your own scrub tests and playback on the timeline with various codecs. If you are seeing ... after frame counter while scrubbing quickly on source material, you have an optimization problem.
john_dennis wrote on 6/26/2015, 4:00 PM
"[I]...should I just start a new build?[/I]"

Yes!

The 1 K solution would be built around an i7-4790(k).


The greater than 1 K solution would be built around an i7-5960. Here's a thread that will be a jumping-off point for what others have done.

You're likely looking at motherboard, CPU, memory, power supply and video card at a minimum. It's probably best to leave your current system intact and just build a completely new one.
astar wrote on 6/26/2015, 4:14 PM
+1 to Dennis's suggestion if you have the budget to do that. But include an R9-290x into the configuration.

The problem with upgrades at the moment I see is Skylake CPU. Also the new AMD cards should be down in price by the time Skylake gets here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)

I think DDR4 is where you will want to be for really smooth 4k playback, plus one of the new AMD 390x cards.
dxdy wrote on 6/27/2015, 7:39 AM
@Cosmichrist:

It would cost you USD 300 - 400 to buy a used 980x from ebay. I wouldn't try for anything less than the 980x.

OTOH, for about USD 1000, you could get a whole new machine with high power graphics.
astar wrote on 6/27/2015, 11:44 AM
980 is not a good choice for vegas. Nvidias current gpu trails behind even the old amd 7970. Gpu performance has more to do with software and driver optimization. Nvidia has always failed in the OpenCL compute stats which is how vegas works. The luxmark stats and Vegas stats show actual OpenCL performance, and not benchmarks geared towards Cuda accelleration.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/15