So, I just got a new M2 PCIe (Samsung 970 EVO), which is benchmarked with ~2500 MB/s read and write speed.
One of my goals was making Vegas faster for importing files. Specifically the audio track peaks building, which was painfully slow for long footages.
The new SSD did not improve this. I'm not sure if the reason is the audio format, which is AAC. I suppose WAV files are faster, but I'm disappointed it didn't get improved at all. Any settings or info I'm missing? Thanks.
"Any settings or info I'm missing?"
The info that you likely missed is that the other-worldly 3500 MBps speeds are for large file reads. When working with smaller files with different cluster sizes, the performance drops to more pedestrian levels.
That said, I use and Intel 750 NVMe x 4 drive to run all my video projects. NVMe disks excel with large files such as intermediates, uncompressed or multi camera files.
That screenshot is not my disk. It's a Samsung NVMe drive captured from youtube that I used for illustration.
I would not expect building audio peaks speed improvements if I upgrade from normal SSD as files reading speed is already fast enough, system reading files one by one and everything is limited by decoding streams and doing job.
It would be timeline speed improvements while working with many small files (images) or if you have overlapped media on different tracks.
Upgrading from HDD is completely different story.
"Upgrading from HDD is completely different story."
It certainly is...
Thanks for your answers. I've been using Vegas for years and the audio peaks building always bugged me. Do you know any way of making it faster, or which audio formats are imported faster?
All of them run faster when you're somewhere else drinking something. Sooner or later, you'll look forward to building peaks so you can go pee.
My cameras record PCM so I take what I can get.
@john_dennis lol
@guigh, I do not know. However, this does not bothered me much as building these peaks is just one time process (per project) when you can really do something else as already suggested. Who cares about these few minutes in background when the whole project will take hours of work?
Yes indeed, building the audio peaks is a one-time process, unless the <.sfk> waveform file(s) are deleted. A faster HD will not make a noticeable difference in this case.
Wav files will import faster than AAC, but I'm not sure if it's "faster enough" to matter, honestly. It's uncompressed and decodes faster, and will use less CPU while playing back a project, as well.
Wave is like Audio ProRes. The files are bigger, but it's a more efficient audio format to work with.
Honestly don't think it will make that big of a difference, and VEGAS generates the peak files in the background so it's not like you are staring at a modal dialog box while they're generating. I do wish it would contain them to one folder location, though. They can end up using a ton of disk space if not kept under control (i.e. if you have a Sound Effects/Music Library and use a lot of it in VEGAS Pro over time).
What I want to know is - how come Vegas takes FOREVER if you import a media file with both audio and video, but if you separate the tracks into individual files, the uncompressed PCM imports at light speed.
I did a test case where I recorded some video (MagicYUV/444 + PCM Audio). Importing the file as is, takes forever.. chugs along, disk read at 1MB/s or whatever while it calculates peaks.
Then I opened the file in Virtualdub2 (if you liked Vdub back in the day check it out), stream copied the video track only to a new file. dumped the raw PCM to a WAV file.
Imported and peaks done in less than 10 seconds. Source files were nearly 30 minutes in length.
It would be nice if Vegas would let you ignore audio tracks when importing media. Especially if you are unable to separately record Video / Audio tracks to individual files. Even basic consumer programs let you ignore source tracks.