@Mike_S I seem to be a bit late to this post? If not already suggested, I would make some changes to your project settings; untick "Adjust source media..." check box and disable resample. I would also check if the source media is actual 60fps or 59.94fps and also not a variable frame rate; MediaInfo is a good tool for that.

I would also change the render template just a little bit. While I am ok with the higher end setting for VBR encoding, I would lower the average setting to 80 or even 60 or just go with CBR.

Also keep in mind that VP14 is based on Sony Vegas Pro 13, I would actually call SVP13.2 and VP15 is a "more" redesigned version but still with the same core. GPU acceleration has changed quite a bit between the two versions.

I assume the pixelation is not in the source file; any chance you could post that section at a download site so that others can test it?

NVENC encoding should be as good as CPU encoding at such high bit rates. I also only partially agree with Musicvid, I would leave the 150 or go higher, after all this is 4K 60p. You may also try and render to XAVC-I, provided it does 4K 60p, I am not at my editing machine at the moment. That will render at a high bit rate and YT has no problem accepting the file. You could just test render the section in question and upload it.

Hey thanks for the recommendations! I'm not at my editing machine but I'll surely check out your suggestions when I get home from work. I do already disable resampling per video but it does make sense to make that my default in the project settings. I'll also double check the frame rate, though I'm rather confident on that front.

I tried to enable CBR but couldn't and haven't had the chance to figure out why. I plan to play with it more when I get home. Any ideas why the option for CBR is grayed out for me?

Also what you're saying about VP14 makes sense. I started with Vegas 13 and upgraded to 14 and the differences is nowhere near as large as I'm seeing with VP16.

You are correct that the source file does not have any issues. I'll have to see when I get home but I'm not sure if I have the cloud storage large enough to store the source file.

Last, are you suggesting I use 150 mbps or go higher? I'm not sure if I'm reading the last part of your post correctly. I have run multiple tests with the original project and the problem areas were fine at lower bit rates. The highest I could render with my previously posted settings has been 50 Mbps. I'm seeing if I can go higher with mainconcept encoding. Assuming this is encoding with just the CPU? When I started it before leaving for work, my CPU was being utilized much better and higher than NVENC encoding while my GPU was just sitting idle. I thought my GPU could assist even when I wasn't using NVidia's encoding but maybe not. Or maybe I still had GPU acceleration turned off. Not sure but I plan to play around more tonight. I have some projects in the back burner so the sooner I get this all figured out, the better.

Will keep you posted after I test it all out. Appreciate the response!

The "old" Mainconcept AVC encoder, like you see in SVP13 and had to enable in VP14 and 16, was written by Mainconcept for the older CUDA architecture which ended with the FERMI based Nvidia cards, GTX5xx series. While you can still use it in later versions of Vegas, it will be CPU only.

Not sure why the CBR is greyed out, maybe it makes no sense for this type of codec. Keep in mind that such codecs x264 and 265 are meant for high compression with good image quality. As such, using such a codec with high bit rates, beyond 100Mbps makes no sense to me and I would rater render to Sony XAVC-I or XAVC-S, again provided 4K 60p is possible.

Edit: I just checked and XAVC-I as well as XAVC-S Long offer 4k 59.94p.

Last, are you suggesting I use 150 mbps or go higher?

If YT is recommending 85Mbps then uploading 100 is not far off and since you still get issues, try increasing it.

I also checked bit rates with XAVC-S and XAVC-I. XAVC-S will give around 200Mbps and XAVC-I around 500Mbps; might be a bit high and make for long uploads?

I'll have to see when I get home but I'm not sure if I have the cloud storage large enough to store the source file.

Can you just upload the section in question?

Sorry for the late reply, it took three attempts before I was able to render a video using Mainconcept encoder. For some reason VP16 was dumping a 50+GB temp file in my appdata local temp folder and locking up when I ran out of HDD space on my home drive. Unfortunately the mainconcept encoded video seems to run the worst so far.

As for your suggestions, problem is if I'm running into issues at 100 mbps, I don't think going higher would work out so well.

Also I'm happy to upload just one of the sections in question but since the whole video source video is one long video, wouldn't I have to edit it to trim or cut it down anyways? Sorry if that's a stupid question.

Mike, I suggest you try installing HappyOtterScripts and use its RenderPlus feature to render x264/AAC. I do my UHD YouTube uploads at crf 18 / AAC 320, for which there is an included template within the "Simple" render mode. Here's a UHD video I did with it the other day. MediaInfo reports the video bitrate of the uploaded file as 66.5 Mb/s.

The "medium" template (which uses crf 23) may be sufficient. I use the higher quality one because I'm not in a hurry and I like to give YouTube uploads the best chance of looking their best. You can also access hardware encoding with RenderPlus, but I haven't tried it myself.

Also, I'd be interested to hear what MediaInfo reports the bitrate of your uploaded file to be, when you've used NV Encoder with max & ave both 100,000,000.

I'm looking into that otter script now. Unfortunately I've deleted the original 100mbps file but right after running into the issue I did the same video at 80mbps, still has the same issues, and still have that file. The mediainfo report can be found below.

General
Complete name                            : F:\VEGAS Pro 14 Renders\RDR Online Impressions.mp4
Format                                   : MPEG-4
Format profile                           : Base Media / Version 2
Codec ID                                 : mp42 (isom/mp42)
File size                                : 35.8 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 10 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 72.3 Mb/s
Encoded date                             : UTC 2018-11-30 04:12:31
Tagged date                              : UTC 2018-11-30 04:12:31

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : HEVC
Format/Info                              : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile                           : Main@L5@High
Codec ID                                 : hvc1
Codec ID/Info                            : High Efficiency Video Coding
Duration                                 : 1 h 10 min
Bit rate                                 : 72.1 Mb/s
Width                                    : 3 840 pixels
Height                                   : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 59.940 (60000/1001) FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.145
Stream size                              : 35.7 GiB (100%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2018-11-30 04:12:34
Tagged date                              : UTC 2018-11-30 04:12:34
Codec configuration box                  : hvcC

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : AAC LC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec Low Complexity
Codec ID                                 : mp4a-40-2
Duration                                 : 1 h 10 min
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 325 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 96.1 MiB (0%)
Language                                 : English
Encoded date                             : UTC 2018-11-30 04:12:34
Tagged date                              : UTC 2018-11-30 04:12:34

Thanks. So you ordered 80Mb/s and got 72.1Mb/s. That's not far off. I asked because I wanted to check that your use of hardware encoding didn't lock you into a lower fixed bit rate despite what bit rate you set.

If you get HappyOtterScripts running, you could of course try HEVC (H.265) as well as AVC (H.264). As this is important to you, I suggest a quality comparison of your various encoding options: Vegas-native / HappyOtterScripts / HEVC / AVC / CPU-encoding / GPU-encoding. Besides using your eyes, you can crudely measure lossiness by placing the rendered file above the original on the Vegas timeline, set the preview mode to "Best (Full)", set the compositing mode of the top track to "Difference", and see the size of the dot in the centre of the vectorscope. Smaller dot = less lossy. If you're undecided between AVC and HEVC, I feel YouTube is less likely to introduce unexpected artifacts from an AVC source.