@Richard-Green Ok, thank you, have that. Just something to be going on with, using ffmpeg Nvenc encoding it takes about 2m:16s to render a 41MB/s file.

@JN- That's what I'm getting from Resolve. And today I found out that I get the same from Cyberlink Power Director. But not from Vegas 🙁

@Richard-Green Indeed. I have done my best to have the output file sizes and data rates ~ match your davinci resolve clip. I am testing the rendered out quality of three clips, against the original, your Davinci clip, a VP18 clip and an ffmpeg clip. Is running now but may take a while. I am expecting there to be little difference, if so, then we have a good basis of comparison.

@Richard-Green

  Results ...
  -----------

  File sizes, data rates and render times ...
  ---------------------------------------
  Source GOPRO file ................. 3.73 GB ... 44.983 kbps ......................
  Davinci Output file ................... 3.31 Gb ... 40.015 kbps ... Render time 2m:33s on Richards PC   
  VFR2CFR ffmpeg output file ... 3.23 GB ... 39.078 kbps ... Render time 2m:10s
  Vegas Pro 18 output file .......... 3.28 GB ... 39.663 kbps ... Render time 5m:54s

  Render Quality Metrics, higher is better ...
  ----------------------------------------
  Davinci Output file ...................  PSNR 30.143705 .. SSIM 0.944624 (12.566809) .. VMAF 96.661926 
  VFR2CFR ffmpeg output file ...  PSNR 34.732611 .. SSIM 0.938329 (12.099217) .. VMAF 91.093168
  Vegas Pro 18 output file ..........  PSNR 38.368225 .. SSIM 0.969091 (15.099089) .. VMAF 96.890182

The % column is an aggregate of all values to give an easy overall idea of quality.

@JN- Thanks for doing all that, you've gone to so much trouble. I'm not too concerned with the quality, there's not that much in between the three files. What I am interested in, is how you got Vegas to render the clip in just under 6 minutes. The best I can get is around 11 minutes., I'm not the only one to get the same figure if you care to look through earlier posts of today. So if you could give me whatever settings you used to do that render. However it still takes twice the time Davinci takes. Once again thanks for all your help in trying to solve this mystery for me and possibly others.

Tested Vegas encode time on a Xeon machine which yields 5:29 with the AMD 5700xt encoding to Magix avc vce compared to 5:57 using the 1660 to nvenc. Gpu utilization was about 38% encode and 28% decode. Best I got with Voukder was 8:25. Free Resolve (17.2.2.4) was terrible: 17:12.

Little better on a 9900k machine with a Radeon VII... 4:44 on Magix avc vce with decode: 20% and encode: 88%. Handbrake on the same machine got 4:21 if I checked Turbo-1st pass. Resolve on this machine was better than the Xeon but still pretty poor: 10:50. They seem to have the gpu crippled for encoding and decoding in the free version; the highest utilization I saw was 9% and it was all 3d and copy.

On the bright side, however, the latest Resolve update now loads almost as fast as Vegas. I did a Vegas 18 video review last year that happened to show Vegas and Resolve load times back to back and maybe it hit a nerve. I'll have to bring the comparison up to date, perhaps when Vegas v19 lands. And I'm seriously thinking of getting the studio version if it's that much better.

@Richard-Green Hi Richard, these are screenshots of render template used and TM while rendering. Although observing the preview monitor there is a start slow start aspect to the render, its better than some very spikey Nvenc renders I often see, maybe because it's only FHD.

I did this all on my laptop using a laptop RTX 3080, I'll test on my PC and see how that goes.

@Richard-Green I redid the Laptop and PC, the laptop came in at 6m:9s and the PC 6m:02s PC specs in signature. Perhaps the laptop was running cooler earlier, but no doubt it was as reported, 5:54s.

No special VP settings, just stock.

Anyway, my buddy has one of those Helmet cams, not a GOPRO, am sending on your sample for him to check out. Which GOPRO are you using, it's really lovely footage, very clear. I think he will upgrade to a GoPRO, but not on helmet.

The PC was only switched on from cold, so that's as good as it gets for sure.

It's info for you all and pleasure for me alone:

Resolve on this machine was better than the Xeon but still pretty poor: 10:50. They seem to have the gpu crippled for encoding and decoding in the free version; the highest utilization I saw was 9% and it was all 3d and copy.

 

Yes, free version of Resolve does not offer full GPU support. There is no sense to take it as tool to comparisons. Only Studio version.

@JN- I'm going to do another render with Vegas again, just to check the render time again. Your Vegas settings are pretty much the same as mine, I just have my Max bps to 60000. Still not sure why you aree getting a faster time than me. Yes, the footage from the GoPro is really good for what it is. Mine is the GoPro Hero 8 Black. What really makes the GoPro is the incredible image stabilisation, superior to all other action cams. What I don't like about ALL action cams and drone cams is that none of them have an IRIS control in the lens, so all exposure is controlled by shutter speed and ISO which can cause all kinds of problems. But other than that they are brilliant. Footage is split into 3.2gb chunks, so really has to be assembled before you start editing. I have noticed at the end of each clip that audio is missing for about 3-4 frames which if you have a continuous sound at the join there is a dropout, annoying but fixable, the video joins perfectly. Anyway, I'll have another look at Vegas to see if I can get my render time down to at least what you are getting. I have a busy day at Hospital today, just recently been diagnosed with Colon Cancer, today I'm having a CT Scan and Biopsy of my Lung as a previous scan showed something there. Had an MRI Scan on my Liver on Monday and last week a PET scan on my full body. I've have had a colonoscopy and gastroscopy, so they're really putting me through it. Such is Life. Catch you later!

@Richard-Green By the sounds of it, your render times are the least of your worries, sorry to hear what you have to go through. Modern medicine is fantastic though, had 2xc and sorted. Thanks for the GoPro info. I guess you use something like Mp4joiner for putting things back together https://havecamerawilltravel.com/gopro/join-gopro-video-chapters/

RE: missing frames: Would it be of use to ungroup the audio and video, stretch the audio to match the video length then group again?

@JN- Yeah, I know, but focussing on my hobbies helps me through it. Yes, modern medicine and all the fantastic machinery they have is marvellous, so I live in hope. Pleased you got sorted. No, I don't use Mp4joiner I just put on the timeline. Davinci will join clips if required, not sure about Vegas. GoPro is new to me, getting used to it and finding the settings that suit my application. Yes, that's exactly what I do with the missing audio, separate and stretch to fit.

Yeah, I know, but focussing on my hobbies helps me through it. Indeed. Only way to go. I don’t have a use case for a GoPro, but i’d go for the Black if I had, my buddy is thinking of moving up to something like that, as you say, the stabilisation sets it apart.

“not sure about Vegas.” I’m not sure if the “heal” option would work in VP because they are not from the same clip, maybe there's a script that does it.

Vegasaur …

Join Events (Unsplit)

This command rejoins the selected adjacent events that have been previously split to multiple pieces. For the function to work, all selected events should be consecutive segments of the same media file (but not necessarily, you can also merge different media files, which can be very useful in multicamera mode). Several segments that are placed on different tracks and which refer to different media files can be selected and then unsplit in a single operation.

Tested Vegas encode time on a Xeon machine which yields 5:29 with the AMD 5700xt encoding to Magix avc vce compared to 5:57 using the 1660 to nvenc. Gpu utilization was about 38% encode and 28% decode. Best I got with Voukder was 8:25. Free Resolve (17.2.2.4) was terrible: 17:12.

@Howard-Vigorita To do a good faith comparison you would have to do a software mp4 encode with Vegas and turn off GPU decode, it would then be apples to apples, that could indicate if it's worth buying the pro version with GPU decode and encode

@JN- My latest render with Vegas using the same render settings you showed me, took the same time as before just over 10 minutes. No matter what I do I can't get it any faster without losing the quality. Not sure why it should be like this, apart from the fact that for whatever reason Vegas won't fully utilise the GPU only 20% on this render.

@Former user I have Davinci Resolve 17 Studio It renders using the GPU and is much faster than Vegas 18. I also have Cyberlink Power Director 19 which renders almost as fast as Resolve and much faster than Vegas 18. I can confirm that Davinci Resolve 17 Free will not render using the GPU and is painfully slow. I'm using a nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6gb GPU the CPU is an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8400 CPU running @ 2.81 GHz

@Richard-Green “No matter what I do I can't get it any faster without losing the quality”

I was looking through the whole thread for your machines specs, now I see them in your last post🤪. It’s a good idea to put them in your profile, then easy for everyone to get at when doing this kind of testing.

I suspect the the reason you’re not going to improve your render speed using nvenc is the i5. The CPU still obviously is part of the render chain. In other words if you had a faster Cpu, even using Nvenc I think you’re render speed would improve.

I suspect that the Gpu spends some time waiting on your Cpu. The ideal is a balanced system, whatever that is🤣. Your Cpu usage is around 80%, my Cpu usage a lot less.

@JN- and yet in Davinci it is using all of the GPU's processing power. CPU showing 53%. The machine I'm using is a desktop not a laptop, one I built a few years ago. It works very well and gets a good benchmark score. However, this is not the issue. My original question is why isn't Vegas using the GPU as much as it should be. I now have on this machine three pieces of software, one of which is free which do use the GPU at around 98% and render the test clip on this machine in around 2 minutes at 40Mb/s. Namely Davinci Resolve Studio, Cyberlink Power Director 19 and Movavi Video Editor Plus.

@Richard-Green Hi Richard "My original question is why isn't Vegas using the GPU as much as it should be"

The only people that can answer that are the developers, you and I can only guess. It definitely looks from all of your testing that there's room for improvement in the Nvenc render speed capability. Best to wait and see if VP19 improves things, fingers crossed.

I tweaked the results above of the three tested output files and added a S/S screenshot with a % column.

The 100% value is simply a starting value so as to get a % difference between the other two, it doesn't imply that the 100% item is a 100% quality result, its a convenience.

@JN- and yet in Davinci it is using all of the GPU's processing power. CPU showing 53%. The machine I'm using is a desktop not a laptop, one I built a few years ago. It works very well and gets a good benchmark score

If your vegas were only using 70% CPU you might believe CPU isn't slowing you down even though is it. To improve your results you could buy a higher frequency CPU. This would be why Howard can encode in 5:57 in Vegas to NVENC and your encode is longer

 

 

. However, this is not the issue. My original question is why isn't Vegas using the GPU as much as it should be. I now have on this machine three pieces of software, one of which is free which do use the GPU at around 98% and render the test clip on this machine in around 2 minutes at 40Mb/s. Namely Davinci Resolve Studio, Cyberlink Power Director 19 and Movavi Video Editor Plus.

 

The other video editors can process the video faster and so encode faster.You ask why? I don't know why, technical things that you can't do anything about but you buy a CPU that operates at 5ghz all cores and get the same performance as Howard.

@Former user so I pay a huge amount of money for a Xeon CPU (which might fit straight into my machine or might not) and then should enable me to render an 11-minute GoPro clip in approx half the time that I can at the moment using Vegas 18 while at present without doing anything to my computer I can render the same clip in approx half the time of Howard's machine (with the Xeon CPU) using Davinci, or Power Director, or Movavi Video Editor Plus. I'm sorry but the question has to be asked as to why Vegas takes so long to render. So please don't go down the easy route and say it's your machine it's just not fast enough. 🙂