[Dave Haynie]

I think any track that’s complete empty or muted may not be a huge burden, but any track that’s somewhat occupied still has to be factored in, it can’t be ignored. Obviously, the there’s some time to deal with things being on a track vs. not being on a track, and some time spent dealing with the specifics of what’s on the track. So a blank part isn’t going to use up as much as a different part of that same track with a video clip on it. But there can still be global effects, envelopes, etc. that Vegas has to work out even if there’s no clip.

Having done animations with 50+ tracks, you can buy a little more performance when it’s possible to include multiple unrelated things on the same track. I haven’t measured the actual effect recently, but given that back in those days I was seeing 3-4 hour render times for a 30-60 second animation, every little bit helped.

There may be other things at work, too, that conspire to make things slower than you’d expect. Vegas is doing a great bit of work dealing with multiple tracks, the aforementioned indvidual per-track overhead, the media on each track, etc. I suspect that some of these are ideally kept in cache (per-track data, for example) while other data may be sortly cached or not at all (the media, as it streams through). It may very well be that once you have a certain number of tracks on your system, you all of a sudden start “thrashing” you CPU’s caches. This is worse, too, as you add more processor cores and hyperthreads (each of which can be working on something else) all hitting that same set of caches (CPU, L2, L3) at the same time.

Translated to English, that means that as you add tracks of low complexity, you may find a point that’s more “falling off the wall” than simply adding one more track. You might even find this point yourself. Take that “still fast” project and add, one-by-one, a simple track… not empty, but also not doing much… eg, you’re not expecting to have to decode a whole AVC track (that’s one of the most CPU intensive things done in a typical render, that AVC decoding… at least until we get to HEVC decoders being used for regular video). Track some rendering times and see if this just goes on linearly, forever, or whether it hits some kind of wall.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Not sure I know a clinical definition of “laggy video”. Are you having troubles playing it back without issues (what player)? Is the audio lagging the video, or vice-versa? Have you previewed this video on a target device, or is this only based on the PC playback. Have a sample online somewhere for some of us to examine?

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

You can burn up to 24-bit/192kHz PCM on Blu-ray. Of course, that’s not an issue if you have 16-bit/48kHz sources. Any old Blu-ray player will dump that full resolution audio out to an HDMI output, but you’re unlikely to find many audio devices that can really deal with 192kHz sampling or a real 24-bit output that doesn’t include “marketing” bits.

Of course, some folks use an optical output, same as they did for DVD, which means that anything you put on your Blu-ray will get schlepped over to the receiver or TV as 16/48k stero, if you’re stereo, or 5.1 AC-3 at 448kb/s or you’re mulit-channel. That’s just dealing with the limits on Sony/Philips optical or S/PDIF wired digital audio. But you’re also hopefully not authoring for the worst that can happen (and this is close, given that so many Blu-ray players only have digital outs these days).

On the other hand, if you are recording in 24-bit, and in particular, if your resulting audio is the product of a mix of multiple sources, you may very well have a real 24-bit resolution on your hands. Less likely in video than multi-track audio recording (which I also do), but just keep in mind, each simultaneous new source adds more more bit of real dynamic range to the final mix, at least in theory (before any compression or limiting).

And the more practical approach applies too… if I have a video that’s not using the whole BD, and I have 24-bit audio (at 48k, 96k, or 192k), why NOT include that in the final project.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Vegas Pro 10 did very little with the GPU. The full support started in VP11, got better in VP12, but there’s plenty of room for improvement. That’s hopefully on the bill for VP13, and I’d expect it sooner than later.

As for switching horses, I haven’t been 100% satisfied with Vegas at every twist and turn, but overall, pretty satisfied. And most of the annoyances have amounted to rare but present bugs in what I once described as “the single most reliable piece of software I have used in any industry”… which was Vegas, back in the SF days.

I would also really, really think 2^N times about signing up for a “software as a subscription” product of any kind. It’s pretty much left up to Sony to offer me a reason to upgrade Vegas, which can be a combination of features, price, and perhaps other-product bundle-ins… all of which they’ve done. But if I don’t upgrade, that’s what I’m giving up, and that alone.

When it’s software as a service, they’re getting your money every month for doing essentially nothing. You stop paying, you not only lose access to the product, but to your own work made with that product, something that can’t ever happy with a software for sale model. They certainly can choose to update the product, and they certainly will. But those updates no longer need to be things that sell the product… they need to keep you from jumping ship, but that’s about it.

If you look at any number of other subscription-type sales models, they all pretty much devolve to offering the least amount of service needed to keep the most subscribers. Your cable or satellite TV provider is building their service with the knowledge that they probably will lose 2-3% of subscribers (or something like that) every year. These are the hardest to please, and they have found that it’s cheaper to attract new viewers. What isn’t made so clear is that, while some subscribers are perfectly happy, there are also some — sometimes many — who are just south of jumping that fence. And sometimes for years… “if it got any worse, I’d leave”. Case in point.. in late 2012/early 2013, I had just crossed that threshold with both my TV and ISP. And those were things that could be pretty much just replaced in-kind. Which suggests, not that Adobe’s there yet, but they could easily get to being worse than that in a fairly short time. And there’s no drop-in replacement for their exact functionality, their file formats, etc.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

I completely agree with John on this. I have tried some of the others: Premiere, Edius, and there’s really nothing that compares to Vegas. Sure, you may find some small thing you like better about any package… and you can find things to hate about any of these, just visit support sites like this one for these other programs.

Beyond that, these others systems have always seemed clumsy to me. Vegas just does what it’s supposed to do, and doesn’t get in my way… I’ve even done 40-50 track audio-only projects in Vegas. That’s one of my main issues… other NLEs are not also first-class DAWs. Vegas is.

As for the GPU, I use the same AMD Radeon HD6970 that I had in my previous PC. It can still double performance under some circumstances, and I have no reason to belive at this point that spending more money on a GPU will get me any measurable return in Vegas. You may chose a pro-class video card, but that’s going be driven by a need for other things, I don’t think it offers much in Vegas. Things may be a bit bumpier in nVidia land… not always a bad thing. nVidia got there first with CUDA, so more applications support CUDA than OpenCL. CUDA is also more architecture dependent (which is exactly why there is an OpenCL(you can even run OpenCL on an x86 CPU, though it’s not usually as efficient as a native x86 app), rather than everyone just licensing or cloning CUDA), which makes performance improvements more dependent on application coding. But as John pointed out, GPU acceleration is only small all part of the whole thing. A faster CPU helps everywhere.

I built a new PC last summer, and came pretty close to the Videoguys’ DIY9. I used a 960GB SSD, I put in a 6GB RAID10, 64GB of DRAM (for photography, never needed for video), and a few other different parts… but pretty much the same specs. So I’d recommend their system as an excellent starting point. Editing multiple AVCHD and Canon video streams these days is “like butter” for the most part. What more do you want?

Sure, I’d like to see Vegas do much more with GPCPU computing. I have a few empty slots for additional GPU cards, if they get there at some point. But GPUs aren’t doing anything that profound on anyone’s platform.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Once again, you can put any old data file on a DVD. Well, judt about… some DVD disc formats have limits. But sure, write whatever you want to a DVD. Just don’t expect any DVD player to automatically do anything with it.

This will not involve DVD architect in any way. DVD architect is an authoring tool for DVD-Video, BDAV, and BDMV formats. Each of this is certainly a data format but DVD Architect will not produce a non-conforming format, because no DVD player will know what to do with it.

The format specifications make the resolution decisions. That the reason you have a pretty good expectation of any old DVD playing on any old DVD player. The tools for creating these specific formats, like DVD Architect, create only those industry standard formats. You are free to make something that will only play on one DVD playermodel if you chose to to that, but don’t expect the standards based tools to support that.

I’m not sure whar you mean by “recoding to the original dimensions”… you are suggesting that a player should recognize a non-standard format and downscale on the fly? Most DVD players lack any sort of video DSP that would make that possible. This is very tighly defined embedded ekectronics… no one’s paying extra for features that will never be used. It’s true that some recent DVD players can do video DSP like upscaling, higher resolution playback, etc. In fact, for just about any DVD player over about $50 we have a name for that: Blu-ray. A whole set if actual standards for this, so a manufacturer will know up front that the player can play every disc. It wouldbe stupid to make that some kind of guessing game.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Just a comment… make sure you tested with at least one brand of BD-R that uses HTL media technology. Quite a few commercially produced BD players have a problem with the cheaper LTH format (uses organic dyes like many DVDs, versus the copper/silicon formulation originally used in Blu-ray).

Another thing… double check that the media encoder going to AVC knows its producing a Blu-ray, and sticks to Blu-ray compatible bitrates. It would be unusual for an encoding to not follow those rules in a Blu-ray oriented tool chain, but that is one of the things that can cause a Blu-ray player to pause/lock-up.

Another option.. ensure you have the latest version of your encoder, and/or try a different AVC encoder for the Blu-ray. Could be there’s some kind of bug that’s media/encoder dependent. Just one of those things I’ve seen in the past. Don’t know about Mac support for this, but if you’re using GPU acceleration in your encoding, try switching that off to see if that changes your performance.

Do your Blu-ray tools have a BD emulator? Some tools do, and these often check for potential problems in a way your BD player can’t.

As for the BD player, are you testing on multiple players, all with up-to-date firmware? If not, it’s worth doing.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[Miguel Almanza] “1) Will Architect 5.0 allow me to burn a 720p to a DL DVD?
Yes. It depends also on your DVD burner’s capabilities.”

That is incorrect. The DVD-Video format does not support 720p video. You could burn a short Blu-ray to a DVD5 or DVD9 disc, using the Blu-ray supported 720p formats (1280x720p60, 1280x720p50, or 1280x720p24) but it would not play in any DVD player. And virtually no Blu-ray players.

[Miguel Almanza] “2) Will a DL DVD maintain 720p or downsize it to 480?
A DL DVD just means two layers of capacity (4.7Gb times two for a total of about 9.4 Gb of capacity). The maintaining of 720p or 480p depends on the authoring program or how you rendered the video. Standard DVD is 720p.”

Most of that is incorrect. DVD supports a number of resolutions. For NTSC, the highest resolutions are 720x480i60 or 720x480p24; in PAL, you can do 720x576i50. That’s it… no 720p to be found (try not to confuse horizontal vs. vertical resolution… we’re usually talking about vertical resolution, and always when only one dimension is quoted).

[Miguel Almanza] “3) If I can in fact burn it to the DL and the DL does keeps it
at 720p, will it be playable on a typical (non blue ray)
HD player?
Yes, but again, it will depend on external factors like authoring software or rendering. A dual-layer DVD with 720p footage will play like a 720p-footage DVD on capable players. There are progressive-scan and “upscale” DVD players, but they will not play BLU-ray or High Definition streams. “

The disc size has nothing to do with the data format. There is no data format that will play at 720p (which again means 1280×720, eg, base-level high definition) on standard DVD players. DVD Architect will not create a DVD-Video format in 720p. If you give it a 720p video source file, it will re-encode based on project settings to one of the aforementioned 480i/p or 576i formats.

[Miguel Almanza] “I saw a bit of the answers and I think you may be confused with HD (1080×720 and above) and SD/DVD (720×480) dimensions of video. I hope I understood your questions correctly.”

I’m not sure he’s the only one confused. There is no 1080×720 format, either. Standard Blu-ray resolutions including 1920x1080i60, 1920x1080i50, 1920x1080p24, 1440x1080i60, 1440x1080i50, 1440x1080p24, 1280x720p60, 1280x720p50, and 1280x720p24. Also supported are DVD legacy resolutions at 720x480i60 and 720x576i50.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Again,just about any bitrate calculator will work, as long as it alliws tge target medium or size to be selected. I use one called “video bitrate calculator” bincsoft for Android that can do this pretty easy. Not much more difficult to do “by hand” using a plain old four-function calculator.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Any bitrare calculator can be used, just set the size to 25GB rather thsn 4.7, and work it otherwise as one would for DVD. Given typical AC-3 audio, this would work out to about 25Mb/s for the video. You’ll get a better quality video using AVC rather than MPEG-2.

-Dave