I may have figured out this problem (while finding another). As I had just installed v18, I had failed to modify the properties of the launching shortcut so that it would run in Administrator Mode as v17 is setup to run in. When I made this change to v18, the render runs at an average 24.83fps and nearly completes in 57 seconds, but twice now it gets to 84% complete and then just hangs (spinning blue circle). I've left it that way for 10+ minutes and it never advances. I've cancelled Vegas Pro (the render itself won't cancel) and restarted and tried now twice but each time it gets to 84% and hangs.

I guess this is progress?

Strange, as I get a 35% faster render in V18 compared with V17. My video is Sony XAVC 4K and I use Sony AVC render template.

If I saved the project where I last had this problem I"ll try it with adim rights, otherwise next time I get this 2fps business I"ll try it, and add to this thread

Strange, as I get a 35% faster render in V18 compared with V17. My video is Sony XAVC 4K and I use Sony AVC render template.

If he's getting the same slow render bug as I do, it doesn't happen with every file, it's quite rare for it to happen, but when it does, nothing can fix it, speed does not improve by using voukoder or internal encoder, nor resetting vegas, nor resetting computer. nor disabling so4 or decoder, It's extremely reproducible

I've tried a couple of more times to render this project and it always hangs at 84%. The good news is it now gets to 84% pretty quickly! ;-)

The inability to cancel the render is also a problem. I literally cannot stop Vegas Pro without using Task Manager to kill the process.

I just tried a different v17 project (larger & more complex) and v18 did successfully render it fully in about 17 minutes. I'll re-render it under v17 to compare render times...

OK, my 2nd test case that has now been re-rendered under v17 to compare with render times on v18, is showing v17 render taking 17 minutes & 29 seconds versus 16 minutes & 43 seconds under v18, which translates to v18 being faster than v17 by 46 seconds. That's better than what I was getting when I wasn't running v18 in administrator mode.

What's become more disconcerting is just how often v18 seems to hang/crash and all I was doing was running renders on completed v17 projects.

If anyone at MAGIX wants some data to work with, just let me know...

Look in the help menu, run the driver update utility in there and download any drivers it suggests. Let me know if that screen comes up blank. See if that helps.

Yes, I had run it before and I did again just now and it just comes up an empty box. However, I know for a fact I'm running the latest available drivers for my AMD Vegas 64 card.

Are you using the enterprise pro drivers? If not, give that a shot.

@Jonathan-Burnett

[Anecdotal Folderol]

I jumped to a similar conclusion when I did my first Vegas Pro 18 render comparison with Vegas Pro 17.

But!

On closer inspection, I found that I had used the OTB default render template for a new Vegas Pro 18 installation, which is HEVC. After properly selecting and matching the Magix AVC/AAC render option for both 17 and 18, I found that 18 rendered slightly faster.

[/Anecdotal Folderol]

More anecdotes, here's video of my experience (system specs in the video):

I have experienced similar bug with both VP17 and VP18. It happened on unremarkable 1080P30 AVC files, encoding via Nvenc. The render speed average as I recall was more like 2fps, . it starts out slow, but not that slow and gets slower

The last time it happened I was rendering a OBS capture to show another vegas bug for this forum. I could not see why it happened or how to fix it. The next OBS capture file I rendered worked fine

I had a look into this. The fault is with the mkv reader. For file safety reasons I screen capture using mkv format as it is resistant to file corruption unlike .mp4. . Anyway I had loaded in the mkv file, and it would render at 2fps. I remuxed it to mp4 chose the 'replace file' option in vegas, and it rendered at 60fps. So there's a fault with mkv reader as the AVC plays fine in mp4 container but not MKV container

So this is not the same bug. I also tried running as admin, and it does not speed up and crash, it performs the same rendering at 2fps

Are you using the enterprise pro drivers? If not, give that a shot.

Enterprise Pro drivers? I'm running the only drivers I know from AMD, in my particular case Radeon 20.8.1. What are the others you might be referring to?

@Jonathan-Burnett

[Anecdotal Folderol]

I jumped to a similar conclusion when I did my first Vegas Pro 18 render comparison with Vegas Pro 17.

But!

On closer inspection, I found that I had used the OTB default render template for a new Vegas Pro 18 installation, which is HEVC. After properly selecting and matching the Magix AVC/AAC render option for both 17 and 18, I found that 18 rendered slightly faster.

[/Anecdotal Folderol]

But HEVC is the normal and preferred rendering codec I use:

Are you using the enterprise pro drivers? If not, give that a shot.

Enterprise Pro drivers? I'm running the only drivers I know from AMD, in my particular case Radeon 20.8.1. What are the others you might be referring to?

Radeon offers multiple versions of their drivers now.

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-pro-software

Are you using the enterprise pro drivers? If not, give that a shot.

Enterprise Pro drivers? I'm running the only drivers I know from AMD, in my particular case Radeon 20.8.1. What are the others you might be referring to?

Radeon offers multiple versions of their drivers now.

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/radeon-pro-software

Thank you fr0sty! I pulled down the "pro" version of my driver, which regressed what I was running to a point back in May. I'll stay on this series for now, though I'm not sure exactly how that will help with my v18 experiences.

@Jonathan-Burnett

My Vegas 17-18 HEVC results:

@john_dennis Do you upload those HEVC's to youtube and can comment on how much slower it takes for YouTube to do it's HD encode in conparision with AVC?

I think I may have done some tests, but have no memory

I got very poor performance with the q1 amd enterprise drivers when I benched them on v17 so I ditched them. Have not tried q2 or with v18 yet. @fr0sty... are you using them on your Radeon VII system and are Vegas 18 track motion and pan/crop working ok on hevc tracks and clips for you?

@Former user

I didn't take note of youtube processing time.

@Jonathan-Burnett

My Vegas 17-18 HEVC results:

Thank you John for sharing. I see that your v18 render times are a bit slower too than v17 just like mine. Again, it was rendering while NOT running in Administrator mode that hurt so bad (1 min vs. 42 min).

I did notice that your GPU gets higher utilization than mine. I'm using the AMD Vegas 64 card and it almost never gets used more than 30% if that. My CPU is a 12 thread, 3.3Ghz and either runs at 100% during renders or something pretty high. I've begun to wonder if my CPU is constraining the performance of my GPU? That is, the GPU can't be more utilized because the CPU processing can't keep up? Opinions?