Vegas 11 / 12 HD Render test

Birk Binnard wrote on 8/10/2012, 4:36 PM
Render times for same 5:15 input on same system with same conditions using the Sony AVC/MVC default (HD video/stereo audio) template:

VMS 11: 11:25
VMS 12: 10:21

I had expected a larger improvement with VMS 12. My input is a combination of 1920x1080 MTS video files and some full-frame JPG files, all from my Panasonic GH1. I use a plain 2 sec. fade between clips & stills.

My system is Win7-64 SP1 running on an i7/920 with 6GB RAM, nVidia 9600GT graphics, SSD boot drive, 500GB internal HDD and 1 TB external FireWire HDD. Both versions of Vegas are installed on the SSD; all input files are on the internal HDD and rendered output goes on the external HDD.

Both versions of VMS are set up with their Temp files on the HDD (to minimize SSD writes.) Out of curiosity I reset VMS12 to put Temp on the SSD, but this made no significant difference.

Also, I made a mistake when setting up the first VMS12 render and ended up rendering to the internal HDD (which is were the input files are.) I thought this would elongate the render time but it was almost exactly the same. So I'm now thinking the concept of separating input and output onto different drives is really not all that important.

Based on these results I will be re-thinking whether or not to buy the VMS12 upgrade. It's not at all clear to me there is enough difference/improvement between 11 and 12 to justify the cost. But maybe I am missing something.

Comments

videoITguy wrote on 8/10/2012, 7:27 PM
These questions popping about render times and speed improvements in the VMS12 package over those of prior versions seem to be all over the place. So very many variables to consider. It also seems reasonable to expect that if a new piece of software code were truly optimized for hardware that is not on or newer than your original system - then you cannot get to the "improved".

Here is quote taken from another thread in this forum about this topic:
"On a fairly complex 3:15 minute video the version 11 took about 11 1/2 minutes on my machine, the version 12 took only 2:55 minutes. Wow. ! ? ?
Message last edited on 8/6/2012 5:32:22 PM, by D7K."


HMMMMMM?
Markk655 wrote on 8/10/2012, 8:34 PM
So far, i think that is the only evidence we have heard about in terms of faster rendering...

Comparing 32 bit installs of V11 and V12 yielded no difference on my machine (Win Vista 32 bit, C2D 2.66 GHz, GT240) going from AVCHD to m2TS (Sony AVC template).

I was hopeful when I read that initial post that perhaps the magic of 64 bit was at work...Now, I'm not so sure...Has anyone else seen huge acceleration in rendering speed?

I would imagine if this was a possibility that the new MS Plat was capable of, Sony would have trumpeted it and marketed it accordingly. I don't see anything about in the description....

D7K wrote on 8/11/2012, 10:10 AM
I used to get 3 to 4 times profject length for render times, now I'm getting 1 to 2 times length of video render times. My projects have lots of GPU stuff in them and mixes of stills, 720, 1080i and 1080P.

For my system (AMD 6 core, ATI video with 1 gig of memory, 16 gigs ram, and using different drives for temp, source, and output) on the 4 videos I've rendered I'm seeing increased performance.

I just opened a 4 minute video that has 9 tracks in it, and a mix of media. It tooks 5 minutes 40 seconds in 64 Bit 12 and estimated 22 minutes in 11 before I stopped it. This again is consistant with what I'm getting with all of my renders.
Birk Binnard wrote on 8/11/2012, 11:59 AM
D7K:

Is an AMD 6 core really a 12 thread processor? If it is then you'd have 4 more rendering threads going than I had with my i7/920. Perhaps this could be the reason for your improved render times.

When my system was rendering I saw that all 8 threads were running all the time, but on at about 30 - 50% usage each (it bounces around a lot.) MY system's RAM (half of yours) was only about 30% used, which suggests that adding more RAM is not much of a help.

It is curious indeed why some people are experiencing much improved render times with VMS 12 and others (like me) are not. I wonder if my current times are just the best my system can achieve, or if there is some tweak or something that I could do that gets me significantly improved times.
D7K wrote on 8/11/2012, 3:01 PM
I render at 90 to 100% on all of my cores, perhaps that's the difference.
Birk Binnard wrote on 8/11/2012, 4:01 PM
That is interesting. Considering the software has the same instruction stream I wonder why it is that your CPU usage is so much higher. Perhaps I have some parameter set incorrectly. But if so, what could it be?
number six wrote on 8/11/2012, 5:03 PM
I am currently running version 10 on a system using a quad core i7 processor. VMS 10 can only use 4 of the 8 threads. Has this limitation been fixed in versions11/12? Presumably this would make a big improvement in rendering times.
Birk Binnard wrote on 8/11/2012, 5:10 PM
# 6

That is an old problem. The default # threads n VMS10 is 4. You have to change that to 8. How to do this (to the best of my recollection):

1. Click Options
2. While depressing Shift key, click Preferences. This adds the Internal tab to the Preferences dialog.
3. Click Internal and in the Show only... box enter "threads" 9no quote marks)
4. Change all values of 4 to 8.
5. Click OK.

That should get all your CPUs working.

Edit: Note that the above applies only if you are running a 32-bit version of Windows. VMS12 has 2 values for processing threads defaults & max threads: 4 for 32-bit systems and 16 for 64-bit systems. So if you are running a 64-bit version of Windows VMS12 will use up to 16 threads.
Birk Binnard wrote on 8/11/2012, 5:17 PM
I can't believe it, but VMS12 still defaults to 4 rendering threads. So I used the Internal tab to up this to 8 and my render time came down to 9:37. Not a huge improvement, but worthwhile.
D7K wrote on 8/11/2012, 6:23 PM
Interesting thread. I see that the maximum for 64 Bit is 16 threads....
ritsmer wrote on 8/12/2012, 2:20 AM
From the Vegas Pro forum - and might apply for VMS too:

Often you might improve the CPU usage to nearly 100% by adjusting Number of render threads and also Preview RAM.

On my machine (2 x Xeon quad = 8 physical cores) the "best" setting is about 10 render threads and about 600 MB preview RAM.

This is with Vegas 10.0e and rendering from 1080i AVCHD to mpeg-2 1080i at some 25 Mbps.
Other settings may reduce the CPU usage to about 50%on all 8 CPUs and so nearly double the render time.

It seems that the "peak" values vary depending on the Vegas version - and media in and out.

For Vegas 11/511 with GPU assisted rendering the optimum values are some 2-3 threads and about 60-70 MB RAM - this again on my machine - and might vary for other hardware.
number six wrote on 8/12/2012, 4:41 PM
Birk Binnard:

Many thanks for the tip about the internal tab.
I had no idea it was available - and all those options!! Have now set program to use all 8 threads.