Vegas Pro render 33% slower than Vegas Movie Studio? (VMS 50% faster)

Brandigan wrote on 10/2/2018, 4:32 AM

Here is my experience rendering the same clip with Vegas Movie Studio 14 and Vegas Pro 14.

I've also got VMS 15, but haven't used it much and haven't got VP15 to compare with. As we've also now got VP16, comparisons become harder, but maybe someone else can do some of their own if they have other software versions and see if we semi-agree on the results, or even confirm these?

Source: 45 second 4K MP4 video 29.97fps in a 1080p timeline rendering with the Sony 1080p default template (so nothing changes and everyone has this). Rendering from an SSD to an HDD, OS is booted from SSD, although not sure this matters as it's a constant for all of the tests anyway.

PC: dual CPU 3.07Ghz, 12 core / 24 threads, 48GB RAM, Quadro 4000

VP14 render with Cuda On = 30% CPU - 16 threads used, 83% GPU, time 59 secs (screen grab shows less threads; it varies from render to render)
VP14 render with CPU Only = 89% CPU - 24 threads used, 48% GPU, time 1min 3 sec

Despite turning off GPU support, it is used with the CPU anyway and makes no real difference to render speed.

VMS14 render with Cuda on = 59% CPU - 24 threads used, 72% GPU, time >>40 seconds<< 50% faster
VMS14 render with CPU Only = 96% CPU - 24 threads used, 1% GPU, time 1 min 1 sec

Take all of those % values as +/- 5%, as the graph lines are wiggling about.

So, VP14 doesn't use all the available CPU threads and is ignoring the "CPU Only" flag - to no real benefit - while VMS14 uses all the resources available all the time and is 50% faster, or VP 14 is 33% slower, depending on your initial position. Not what you'd expect, or want.

I even went into VP 14 settings and changed the 'Internal' render thread count limit from 16 to 24 to see if it would use all 24 CPU threads, as VMS does automatically, and it made no difference at all; which is semi- expected as VMS didn't need the change to be made to use them all, so what is that value for anyway?

For Magix to make claims that the Intel Optimisations can improve speed in the latest versions x2 might not be all that impressive if they're comparing to Vegas Pro speeds rather than Vegas Movie Studio speeds - even if you have the right hardware.

Anyone done any tests with VP14 > VP15 > VP16 to see if that's improved/changed - ignoring the Intel "Quicker" stuff?

Comments

fr0sty wrote on 10/2/2018, 7:56 AM

Former user wrote on 10/2/2018, 8:04 AM

You're using NVENC, he's got a dual xeon & quadro GPU, in no sane world would he ever use the low quality NVENC encoding. But still your tests are valuable to others i'm sure.

Brandigan wrote on 10/2/2018, 8:16 AM

After a while I realised I was watching a video waiting for someone else's render to finish so I could see the result, so skipped ahead to see the same thing in a different version of Vegas. Didn't bother to note what either of them did and closed the video.

Any chance you could just tell us what you found?

fr0sty wrote on 10/2/2018, 8:48 AM

LOL, you pressed more buttons typing that message than you would have just pulling the video back up and skipping to the 2 parts where the results were... Vegas 16 NVENC render on the same clip was about 50% faster if I remember right. That result hasn't proven to be universal, others say there is no improvement, but I got it, and I got it on video. GTX 970 GPU. Ryzen 7 1800x CPU

Brandigan wrote on 10/2/2018, 9:28 AM

Updated with Vegas Movie Studio 15 results. The news isn't good.

The Mainconcept Codec was renamed to Magix Codec (edit: no it's still there, but hidden), although there is now no option to select 'Cuda', 'Open GL' or 'CPU only' any more. I know, this is many months after the fact, I just never really used VMS15 after I bought it, so it was news to me.

So, despite 'Allow Legacy GPU' and 'Use GPU Accelerated Video Processing' - or whatever they're called - both being turned on, there is no option to actually use that Legacy GPU when rendering.

The only render option being 'MainConcept' in that profile (at the bottom) is about the same as "CPU only" when rendering with Vegas Pro 14. i.e it's a little bit of CPU and a little bit of GPU. Result: 21% slower overall than VP 14 was at it's slowest when it was also "CPU Only" i.e not like VMS 14 'CPU only' which really was and only 1% GPU.

So that "2x faster" Intel codec feature in the latest versions is looking like it might not be much faster than VMS14 already was at 40 seconds compared to VMS 15's 1m 17s (or 77 seconds) now.

Do the maths and 40 seconds is 51% of 77 seconds, so VMS 14 is nearly 2x as fast as VMS 15 (and 16 when it comes out?). How does this compare to VPro 15 and 16?

Marketing Statistics, eh? 😂

vkmast wrote on 10/2/2018, 9:49 AM

MainConcept AVC/AAC first paragraph.

Brandigan wrote on 10/2/2018, 10:06 AM

MainConcept AVC/AAC first paragraph.

There is no MainConcept AVC/AAC on my version of VMS 15. Where are you getting that from?

vkmast wrote on 10/2/2018, 10:13 AM

Did you read Nick Hope's comment I linked above along with the screenshot? (Platinum version)

VMS versions 15 were released in Feb. this year.

Brandigan wrote on 10/2/2018, 11:27 AM

Did you read Nick Hope's comment I linked above along with the screenshot? (Platinum version)

VMS versions 15 were released in Feb. this year.

Aha, thanks. I didn't spot that was a link. I've turned the MainConcept AVC/AAC option back on now and tested it.

Still not good. VMS 15 has inherited the VP 14 slower method of CUDA rendering and not using all the CPU cores/threads with the MainConcept Codec and even takes slightly longer than VP 14 does (only a few %, so about the same)

Maybe I'll experiment with moving the .dll files from VMS14 to 15 and see if that improves matters, as VMS 14 is still much, much faster.

Brandigan wrote on 10/26/2018, 7:30 AM

So @garyrebholz , based on the above tests - and I'm sure you could do your own to confirm - any particular reason why VMS 14 is that much faster than VP 14 (and 15, probably 16) with the same settings, clip and hardware?

Is there anything we can do to force/unlock the faster render speeds in VP14 ( and 15 and 16?)?

Cheers.