This seems like a vary particular set of issues- I'd try a support request.

3 GPUs with 2 of them NVIDIA and one disabled may have some unique conflicts that aren't tested. If you disable the 3060 in device manager does VEGAS work okay?

Most of us use single NVIDIA GPUs without issues as well as iGPU/GPU combinations.

I submitted a support request, but would be happy to hear if more people see this issue or some derivative.
While I agree most people use a single GPU or a combination of internal and PCIe GPUs, the problem of "black preview" is common enough to have many video and text guides about it - going YEARS back - mostly state "disable acceleration" as a solution. I arrived at the conclusions I posted above after diving deeper into this issue. most people don't. "disable acceleration" is the solution I've been using for years, but I had enough.

This is exactly where GPU acceleration is required and having it turned off (for whatever reason) is NOT a solution we as a community should be willing to accept for so many years. This is not a free "best effort" software. They should fix it.

And another issue is the frequent crashing (mitigated by the auto save and immediate save option, but still annoying) - I'm new to ver 21 so I hope it's solved. Its been with us from the happy SONY days!

The program has changed dramatically over the years and almost nobody is disabling their main GPU in 2023!

The crashes today have little to do with issues in the Sony days (many of those bugs are fixed). It's more GPU decoding x video engine x media that VEGAS seems to have trouble with.

@Arik-Drori - I have to admit, I really appreciate your stance. It is both passionate, meaning wanting better for your rig and VP21, and also your impatience with the small team we have to depend on for fixes. I'm in the single RTX3080 GPU Brigade. I don't even have an iGPU.

Tell me, do you have knowledge of any other NLEs successfully running multiple GPUs, like yours? It would be worthwhile to know if this is even doable.

The program has changed dramatically over the years and almost nobody is disabling their main GPU in 2023!

The crashes today have little to do with issues in the Sony days (many of those bugs are fixed). It's more GPU decoding x video engine x media that VEGAS seems to have trouble with.

Well, they certainly look and feel the same! and cause the same amount of damage.

I've been using the same commonly used panasonic cameras for 4K: GH4, GH5 for many years, over many Vegas versions. It's the same codecs, nothing changed. I can edit for 2 hours, no problem, and then the SW will crash repeatedly every 10 minutes or so. Before I turned on the "immediate save" feature, the SW crashed often when I forgot to save, leading me to the conclusion that the crashes are maybe related to "undo" lists - that the SW saves to allow you to undo, until you save. Frequent saving not only prevented the lost work due to the crash, it prevented the frequent crashes themselves. The immediate save function neatly cover it up, but it's not a solution. The crashes still happen on timeline preview playback, usually when making changes to the timeline while playing back.

And as for disabling MAIN GPU? the AMD iGPU is far from the "main" GPU. It's not useful for video, except maybe if your main use for the PC is watching netflix and youtube. I agree I should not be needing to disable it (that's on TOPAZ labs...) but when I do - it should not kill Vegas! :-)

@Arik-Drori - I have to admit, I really appreciate your stance. It is both passionate, meaning wanting better for your rig and VP21, and also your impatience with the small team we have to depend on for fixes. I'm in the single RTX3080 GPU Brigade. I don't even have an iGPU.

Tell me, do you have knowledge of any other NLEs successfully running multiple GPUs, like yours? It would be worthwhile to know if this is even doable.

Regarding my impatience with a small team... I lead a development team in a small startup company. I understand priorities and resources management. But... at some point, when a problem goes unsolved for YEARS... I run out of patience.

I did not test other NLEs in depth, so I cannot comment on that. However, as I mentioned I use Topaz Labs Video AI - this is an AI based software that can upscale and clean footage. It allows you to select what device to use for rendering: CPU, iGPU, and all GPU cards installed. The fact they can correctly detect and provide a list of cards, and allow you to select from them proves it is possible. They also have a function that allows you to span the work on all GPUs - this works if you have 2 or more similar or identical GPUs - but when "all" GPUs include a weak iGPU - "ALL GPU" is slower than running on a single GPU... so I have to disable the iGPU to get the benefit of my 2 powerful GPUs.

What I hope to see one day in Vegas, is an option to choose different cards for different jobs, making it possible to provide fluent preview by avoiding overloading the single GPU. For example: most people have iGPUs that are perfectly capable of decoding 4k footage, so in heavily loaded timeline with 4k footage from multiple cameras they can take on the decoding of some clips - leaving the main GPU for effects and other tasks.

@Arik-Drori: A fix at least for your 1st point (VP not recognizing both of you NVidia Gpus) is scheduled for the next patch. And also fixes for the NVidia path through the VP engine.
So please let's retest with the upcoming patch... ;)

... and as I also use some 4060 Ti in my developer machine I'm quite certain we can work out the black frame issue as well if that still persist after the following patch.

Probaste codificar diferente el video ? Así descartas sea un problema de eso,

@Javadarsena  ... it would be really good if you would translate your comment into English - the basic language of this forum - so that others on the forum will be able to understand your comment without most having to use a translator to work out what you are saying.

@Arik-Drori: A fix at least for your 1st point (VP not recognizing both of you NVidia Gpus) is scheduled for the next patch. And also fixes for the NVidia path through the VP engine.
So please let's retest with the upcoming patch... ;)

That's great news! thanks!

What I hope to see one day in Vegas, is an option to choose different cards for different jobs, making it possible to provide fluent preview by avoiding overloading the single GPU. For example: most people have iGPUs that are perfectly capable of decoding 4k footage, so in heavily loaded timeline with 4k footage from multiple cameras they can take on the decoding of some clips - leaving the main GPU for effects and other tasks.

@Arik-Drori Vegas does let you choose which gpu to use in Video Prefs which seems to control most fx including AI. And in I/O there are specific gpu choices for decoding. There's also a choice for raw which I assume is limited to Braw at the moment.Rendering is a problem for me, however. They have different codecs like Nvenc but I haven't figured out how one can choose for instance between your 2 Nvidia gpus other than disabling one before starting Vegas... hoping that will be addressed in the new update so I don't have to disable my own multiple Intel igpu and gpus before I run Vegas.

Actually that reminds me of another issue with GPU acceleration - in rendering. Several issues in fact.

1. Using NVENC (with Magix AVC MP4, 4k, on Vegas Pro 18) sometimes leads to strange flashing results in the rendered file: I rendered a 90min file, and in two places where I inserted an image for a few seconds over the main clip, the image "flashed" for several seconds until a scene change. I could see the interviewee speaking, then the overlay image appeared as it should, but then after 3 seconds instead of going back to the interviewee, the picture appeared for a few frames, disappeared, reappeared etc. For about 10 seconds. Very strange. Rendering again did not solve the problem - it moved to somewhere else in the file! then I used CPU rendering and the result was perfect.

This problem is intermittent, does not appear in every project, and I could find no logic that would help reproduce it. It just sometimes happens with NVENC, and never with the CPU. It happened with several single & multiple GPU installed: GTX 1050, 1660, RTX 3060, 3060ti. Not tested on my 4060ti yet.

From that point on I only used NVENC for draft renders, rendering final iterations with the CPU. This is obviously very annoying, I have a fast processor but this is still about doubles my rendering time. I hope it's already solved in VP21...

2. While the NVENC is very fast, it renders in bursts, so about half of the time it is not rendering at all. in total it still beats a fast CPU hands down, but it's still slower than it should be. I'm not sure why - is this "dead time" required for transferring data to the GPU? not clear.

For issue 1 and 2, render with Voukoder (NVENC supported) for Vegas.

For issue #1 it was mostly fixed in VP 19. Disabling GPU in preferences/video or putting dynamic ram preview to 0MB may help (I used to have to do this frequently.)

For issue #2 it's not really a problem. VEGAS seems to render in bursts of a second worth of frames or so. If the CPU and GPU are up to it the encoder is waiting on them vs the other way around. See the benchmarks in my signature for times with VCE vs NVENC vs QSV. NVENC holds its own and I have no problem using it in VEGAS.

As 3Point mentioned https://www.voukoder.org/ is a fine option that loads the GPU more evenly and has more control over settings.

As 3Point mentioned https://www.voukoder.org/ is a fine option that loads the GPU more evenly and has more control over settings.

For 1 I never had to change settings when rendering with Voukoder.

For 2 Voukoder renders ( much) faster (with NVENC support) than rendering with Vegas AVC/HEVC (NVENC supported).

3 Also quality of render is much better with Voukoder.

Actually that reminds me of another issue with GPU acceleration - in rendering. Several issues in fact.

1. Using NVENC (with Magix AVC MP4, 4k, on Vegas Pro 18) sometimes leads to strange flashing results in the rendered file: I rendered a 90min file, and in two places where I inserted an image for a few seconds over the main clip, the image "flashed" for several seconds until a scene change.

This problem is intermittent, does not appear in every project, and I could find no logic that would help reproduce it. It just sometimes happens with NVENC, and never with the CPU. It happened with several single & multiple GPU installed: GTX 1050, 1660, RTX 3060, 3060ti. Not tested on my 4060ti yet.

It's a Magix AVC/HEVC problem, it seems easier to trigger with Magix HEVC NVENC, this is 4K 23.976fps VBR average 50mbit, maximum 135mbit. It's fine without the cat, but with added cat....

The fault is identical to VP20 and most likely all Vegas's since hardware encoding was introduced.

Actually that reminds me of another issue with GPU acceleration - in rendering. Several issues in fact.

1. Using NVENC (with Magix AVC MP4, 4k, on Vegas Pro 18) sometimes leads to strange flashing results in the rendered file: I rendered a 90min file, and in two places where I inserted an image for a few seconds over the main clip, the image "flashed" for several seconds until a scene change.

This problem is intermittent, does not appear in every project, and I could find no logic that would help reproduce it. It just sometimes happens with NVENC, and never with the CPU. It happened with several single & multiple GPU installed: GTX 1050, 1660, RTX 3060, 3060ti. Not tested on my 4060ti yet.

It's a Magix AVC/HEVC problem, it seems easier to trigger with Magix HEVC, this is 4K 23.976fps average 50mbit, maximum 135mbit. It's fine without the cat, but with added cat....

The fault is identical to VP20 and most likely all Vegas's since hardware encoding was introduced.

It's very disappointing to read that this is still a problem. it's not exactly the problem I was describing - but I saw this one as well.

I just now ran a test on Vokoder - didn't look for the rendering problem yet, but it runs consistently without the bursts, and it's faster: the render took 58 min compared with 1 hour and 16 minutes in magix AVC mp4.

SO - it is possible to run the GPU more optimally. it's now a proven fact that the "burst" mode in vegas is a sub optimal utilization of the GPU acceleration (it rhymes, so it must be true :-)) and it's been going on for YEARS, causing a huge waste of time for all of us... I didnt check the quirky flashing issue, but if that is solved in Vokoder as well... it only puts an even larger spotlight on this issue!

WHY? Why was this not addressed already? is changing the color and look of the UI really more important than the basic everyday use of the software? more important than RENDERING? the part that takes so much time already and delays our projects?

I ask the Vegas team to solve these basic issues. We are in version 21!!!!!!

The problem with flashing frames you are describing is very uncommon post VP 19, I've only seen it a few times and no longer disable dynamic ram preview. Many of us complained about it at the time, myself included, and they addressed it.

I see about a 10% difference in times between MagixAVC/NVENC and NVENC in Voukoder- do make sure the settings are reasonably matched (check file sizes at the end or you're comparing apples and oranges). Render times are decreasing over the years- see the benchmark in my signature that works on VP 16 to present. VEGAS is faster now than it was when 18 was released and NVENC and QSV aren't so different for render times.

For what the developers have been working on- it's certainly not just the UI (which was dated and inconsistent) but much more fundamental issues, like better support for HEVC decoding, modernizing the audio engine, stability, etc. Here's a comprehensive list: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/vegas-pro-vegas-post-release-history--104998/?page=3

 

The fault is identical to VP20 and most likely all Vegas's since hardware encoding was introduced.

It's very disappointing to read that this is still a problem. it's not exactly the problem I was describing - but I saw this one as well.

This I think it one of the more major problems, because even with VP21b187 people are getting video frames shifted from one section of the timeline to another and you can see that here.

Frame 0 - 59 Looks fine.
Frame 60 is a duplicate of frame 0
frame 61 - 70 are duplicates of frame 0 however they have mild artifacts
frame 71 - 118 are correctly positioned frames but major artifacts.

I noticed from when I first started reading this forum, their unusual hatred of hardware encoding, with stern beratings of people that dared use it over software encoding. The advice being it's only for rush's and if you respect your work final encode must not use hardware encoding.

I thought that was a bit extreme, but actually they were right all along, BUT NOT about hardware encoding, the problem was and still is with Vegas's implementation of it.

I just now ran a test on Vokoder - didn't look for the rendering problem yet, but it runs consistently without the bursts, and it's faster: the render took 58 min compared with 1 hour and 16 minutes in magix AVC mp4.

I think it's every 60 frames it bursts? Something like that, and Vegas has to pause rendering for that to happen.

I see about a 10% difference in times between MagixAVC/NVENC and NVENC in Voukoder- do make sure the settings are reasonably matched

@RogerS How much faster voukoder is depends on resolution, you'll have different speed increases depending on if it's 4K,1440P,1080P,720P

I noticed from when I first started reading this forum, their unusual hatred of hardware encoding, with stern beratings of people that dared use it over software encoding. The advice being it's only for rush's and if you respect your work final encode must not use hardware encoding.
 

I noticed that too which is why I started doing my own performance and quality testing. What I found generally is that final render quality is the most influenced by decoding quality which impacts Hevc much more than Avc. And that Intel hevc decoding is the highest quality. The next biggest influence that affects ultimate render quality is the data-chain, with 32-bit float better than 8-bit. Hardware decoding dramatically increases performance but often yields lower quality... but not if done intelligently rather than as a total hand-off to the gpu. I think the latest build of vp21 pulls it off, but only seems to be the best of all worlds for folks like myself with the latest Intel decoding. Another thing I should mention is that I've been seeing identical Nvidia and Intel metrics fingerprints... but I don't know if they're buying the same fplga's or if that's Vegas' doing.

Rending is the caboose of video chain and hardware generally trades off quality for performance. In terms of quality, I find Nvenc best trailed by Qsv and then Vce. The differences among hardware being small but it's notable that Amd does not render 10-bit... but manages to hold it's own quality-wise at equal bitrates due to being able to squeeze in more 8-bit data elements per frame than a 10-bit render. The quality/performance trade-off between hardware and software rendering is larger but less significant than decoding considerations and seems to be less consequential for 4k hevc 10-bit renders... I often do my test screenings with Qsv and switch to MainConcept for delivery but I really don't actually see the difference anymore, so it's more of a habit now than anything else.

Regarding Voukoder, it's severely constrained by the Vegas data-chain which is such a shame... does not seem to benefit at all from 32-bit mode in Vegas. I really hope that gets fixed because I absolutely love Voukoder Pro and right now it's vp9 and av1 are way ahead of everyone including Vegas.

What I found generally is that final render quality is the most influenced by decoding quality which impacts Hevc much more than Avc. And that Intel hevc decoding is the highest quality. The next biggest influence that affects ultimate render quality is the data-chain, with 32-bit float better than 8-bit. Hardware decoding dramatically increases performance but often yields lower quality..

@Howard-Vigorita Is the low quality hardware decoding a Vegas problem or when you test outside of Vegas you see the same?

With the new render engine it will default to 32bitFP like every other modern NLE and that will be a great day because we won't have to make the decision between highest quality but slow, or good performance but lower quality.

The quality/performance trade-off between hardware and software rendering is larger but less significant than decoding considerations and seems to be less consequential for 4k hevc 10-bit renders... I often do my test screenings with Qsv and switch to MainConcept for delivery but I really don't actually see the difference anymore, so it's more of a habit now than anything else.

I've asked many large youtubers hardware or software encoding?

All the ones that upload at 4K use hardware encoding, there was a time they would bother with thread rippers etc for maximum theoretical quality, but not now. Linus Tech tips might be a holdout, and still use software encoding, but it's probably just because they can with so much power the performance difference isn't so much.

Regarding Voukoder, it's severely constrained by the Vegas data-chain which is such a shame... does not seem to benefit at all from 32-bit mode in Vegas

Can that be seen with normal sort of encoding to 8bit or 10bit 420 or are you speaking more of theoretical limitations such as encoding 444 12bit etc.I think you do have the studio version of Resolve, do you see the same problems with voukoder?

What does it mean, Voukoder not benefiting from 32-bit mode in Vegas?