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Render time on Vegas 14 for MP4 videos for YouTube on a fast PC vs Final Cut Pro on Macbook
I’m curious about how people’s render times are turning out and if anyone can attest to whether Vegas is faster or slower than rendering using FCP on a Macbook. I have a friend who’s looking into FCP and want to see if I can get a good answer for him.
I have Vegas 14 but have a 5 year old computer that still performs well. On a video I’ll shoot on a Canon Powershot G7X with few or none plugins it might take 5 minutes or so to render 1 min (with just color curves adjusted, 29.97 fps video at 1920×1080 resolution and 6 mpbs render in MP4). The G7X has a 33 mpbs bitrate, so obviously I know camera settings will make render time vary.
My friend is looking for something to render videos out to YouTube quickly. I’m pretty convinced he could do so with a faster PC and Vegas 14 (his PC is slower than mine and it can take him around 3 hours to render a 10-15 minute video shot on an older model Canon Vixia) but want to have a good answer for him. Thanks!
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1 Reply
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[Angelo Mike] “I’m curious about how people’s render times are turning out and if anyone can attest to whether Vegas is faster or slower than rendering using FCP on a Macbook.”
First, it’s important to be very precise about the Mac hardware that you are asking about. There is the MacBook and then there is the MacBook Pro. The entry level MacBook is NOT designed for editing video! So if you really mean the entry level MacBook then forget about it. The MacBook Pro, on the other hard, can edit 4K video like butter in FCP X so thats a whole different story. The MacBook Air is somewhere in between.
The question itself is difficult to answer as well because there are two parts to rendering: (1) processing all of the FX and tracks into a single video stream and then… (2) encoding that video stream for output. The number of FX and whether they are GPU acceleration or not will affect the outcome. Without knowing what they are, it’s impossible to say. You would have to do a very controlled experiment using either the same 3rd party plug-ins or similar FX on both videos in Vegas Pro and Final Cut Pro X to be able to measure. Then both projects would need to be rendered with the same or very similar parameters to the same format.
FCP X makes generous use of the GPU in the Mac. Vegas Pro has very limited GPU support, so the MacBook Pro with FCP X might actually be faster because it supports the hardware better. If your friend buys a new PC with a new GPU that Vegas Pro doesn’t support (because Vegas Pro only supports 6 year old GPU’s for rendering to MP4) it might not perform as well as you might think. This is one of the reasons I stopped using Vegas Pro (absence of modern GPU support).
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasstsoftware.com
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