Vegas Pro 19/20 - GPU acceleration of video processing -advise please

Max-Hind wrote on 5/30/2023, 7:59 AM

Hi, Please could someone tell me what benefits "GPU acceleration of video processing" has if turned on. Going back to an earlier version of Vegas 19 I had issues with crashing and tech support suggested turning this to off as a solution. I now have the latest version of 19 and 20 and everything is pretty stable, but I am wondering what I am missing by have this option turned off. For example does it make rendering faster? Or if turned on is it possible to edit 4k footage without proxying footage first (I have a high spec pc, but still have to proxy 4k footage currently). Really appreciate any advise. Thanks

Comments

Dexcon wrote on 5/30/2023, 8:12 AM

I have a high spec pc, but still have to proxy 4k footage currently

It rather depends on what media is being used on the timeline and what choices you have selected in Options/Preferences/File I/O. For example, using HEVC 4K video from a GoPro Hero Black 11 camera is better with proxies in Vegas Pro 20 (even though I hate using proxies) and 4K video from a Sony FDR-AX100 camera plays better on the timeline if File I/O has 'Enable legacy AVC decoding' checked 'on'.

Cameras: Sony FDR-AX100E; GoPro Hero 11 Black Creator Edition

Installed: Vegas Pro 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22, HitFilm Pro 2021.3, DaVinci Resolve Studio 19.0.3, BCC 2025, Mocha Pro 2025.0, NBFX TotalFX 7, Neat NR, DVD Architect 6.0, MAGIX Travel Maps, Sound Forge Pro 16, SpectraLayers Pro 11, iZotope RX11 Advanced and many other iZ plugins, Vegasaur 4.0

Windows 11

Dell Alienware Aurora 11:

10th Gen Intel i9 10900KF - 10 cores (20 threads) - 3.7 to 5.3 GHz

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB GDDR6 - liquid cooled

64GB RAM - Dual Channel HyperX FURY DDR4 XMP at 3200MHz

C drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD

D: drive: 4TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD (used for media for editing current projects)

E: drive: 2TB Samsung 870 SATA SSD

F: drive: 6TB WD 7200 rpm Black HDD 3.5"

Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4K Color Calibrated Monitor

 

LAPTOP:

Dell Inspiron 5310 EVO 13.3"

i5-11320H CPU

C Drive: 1TB Corsair Gen4 NVMe M.2 2230 SSD (upgraded from the original 500 GB SSD)

Monitor is 2560 x 1600 @ 60 Hz

RogerS wrote on 5/30/2023, 8:17 AM

It speeds up all timeline processing and GPU-enabled Fx. Try playing back either of the projects in my signature (and rendering) with and without it.

RogerS wrote on 5/30/2023, 8:18 AM

GPU decoding is a separate function of the GPU- this setting is under preferences/ file io in VEGAS.

What's the media you are having trouble with? Use MediaInfo to answer: https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

Wolfgang S. wrote on 5/30/2023, 8:26 AM

There are two possibilities to help your playback (decoding from the timeline) but also your fx-calculations in Vegas:

- either in the gpu acceleration of videos, mentioned by you

- or in the I/O preferences, where you can also select an i-GPU if available in your system.

If you think about to purchase a new system, now or maybe in future, I really recommend you to choose a processor with a suitable i-GPU. The point is, that here you finde both decoding and encodings support what helps also in Vegas a lot.

Details are shown here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/docs/onevpl/developer-reference-media-intel-hardware/1-1/overview.html#DECODE-OVERVIEW-DISCRETE

For HEVC, Dexcon is right (at the moment): it is hard to playback HEVC UHD footage in Vegas at the moment. But there are some cameras - like the Sony FX3/FX30 - that deliver now HEVC UHD 10bit 422 footage, what is great compared to the older HEVC UHD 10bit 420. I hope that we will see some improvements in Vegas in the future, allowing us to playback HEVC also in a great way.

Desktop: PC AMD 3960X, 24x3,8 Mhz * RTX 3080 Ti (12 GB)* Blackmagic Extreme 4K 12G * QNAP Max8 10 Gb Lan * Resolve Studio 18 * Edius X* Blackmagic Pocket 6K/6K Pro, EVA1, FS7

Laptop: ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED * internal HDR preview * i9 12900H with i-GPU Iris XE * 32 GB Ram) * Geforce RTX 3070 TI 8GB * internal HDR preview on the laptop monitor * Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K mini

HDR monitor: ProArt Monitor PA32 UCG-K 1600 nits, Atomos Sumo

Others: Edius NX (Canopus NX)-card in an old XP-System. Edius 4.6 and other systems

fr0sty wrote on 5/31/2023, 12:10 AM

GPU acceleration in the video tab = faster playback and faster rendering of text and GPU accelerated effects.

GPU Decoding in the file I/O tab of preferences = faster playback via faster decoding of HEVC and AVC video formats (8 bit only).

Last changed by fr0sty on 5/31/2023, 12:10 AM, changed a total of 2 times.

Systems:

Desktop

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x 8 core 16 thread at stock speed

64GB 3000mhz DDR4

Geforce RTX 3090

Windows 10

Laptop:

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo 32GB (9980HK CPU, RTX 2060 GPU, dual 4K touch screens, main one OLED HDR)

Wolfgang S. wrote on 5/31/2023, 12:15 AM

GPU Decoding in the file I/O tab of preferences = faster playback via faster decoding of HEVC and AVC video formats (8 bit only).

Have a look to the link above. That works with 10bit for decoding in many cases too.

Desktop: PC AMD 3960X, 24x3,8 Mhz * RTX 3080 Ti (12 GB)* Blackmagic Extreme 4K 12G * QNAP Max8 10 Gb Lan * Resolve Studio 18 * Edius X* Blackmagic Pocket 6K/6K Pro, EVA1, FS7

Laptop: ProArt Studiobook 16 OLED * internal HDR preview * i9 12900H with i-GPU Iris XE * 32 GB Ram) * Geforce RTX 3070 TI 8GB * internal HDR preview on the laptop monitor * Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K mini

HDR monitor: ProArt Monitor PA32 UCG-K 1600 nits, Atomos Sumo

Others: Edius NX (Canopus NX)-card in an old XP-System. Edius 4.6 and other systems

andyrpsmith wrote on 5/31/2023, 9:10 AM

I have a high spec pc, but still have to proxy 4k footage currently

It rather depends on what media is being used on the timeline and what choices you have selected in Options/Preferences/File I/O. For example, using HEVC 4K video from a GoPro Hero Black 11 camera is better with proxies in Vegas Pro 20 (even though I hate using proxies) and 4K video from a Sony FDR-AX100 camera plays better on the timeline if File I/O has 'Enable legacy AVC decoding' checked 'on'.

I use exclusively 4K XAVCS footage from Sony Ax100 and AX700 and it works really well with Nvidia 1080Ti GPU, I can play back at full resolution with video decoding and render using Voukoder and Neat video noise reduction with GPU acceleration. You will not get this if you use legacy decoding.

(Intel 3rd gen i5@4.1GHz, 32GB RAM, SSD, 1080Ti GPU, Windows 10) Not now used with Vegas.

13th gen i913900K - water cooled, 96GB RAM, 4TB M2 drive, 4TB games SSD, 2TB video SSD, GPU RTX 4080 Super, Windows 11 pro

Howard-Vigorita wrote on 5/31/2023, 12:15 PM

@andyrpsmith I think checking legacy avc kicks in a software decoder lib for avc. Probably works better because 10-bit avc is not supported by any of the gpu makers for onboard decoding. If that footage is all you shoot, you might get similar performance selecting Off for decoding... unless the legacy avc decoding lib is using the gpu some other way to facilitate decoding, like for math calcs or vram caching.