[Dave Haynie]

There are zillions of 4K samples around. Just Google for “free 4K sample video”. This article points to a whole mess of them: https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/thousands-of-clips-all-in-4k-almost-all-for-free

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

That’s expected behavior.

Apple provides the Quicktime player that you see, but there’s also a whole multimedia framework for Quicktime that exports an API to applications like Vegas. Without that framework, there’s no knowledge of the structure of .MOV files. However, Quicktime files are a bit like MP4 files, only in that the MP4 file wrapper was based on, but not identical to, the Quicktime .MOV format.

You might try copying your .MOV file to a .MP4 file. That sometimes works, though not always. Otherwise, you need some version of the Quicktime API in order for Vegas to decode that file. Vegas, of course, understands the various CODECs in there: AVC, AAC, etc. What it doesn’t have built-in is the overall structure of the .MOV structured multimedia wrapper.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Actually, that’s not always true. It depends entirely on the cache design. In hardware L1/L2/L3 caches, we have content-addressable memory, which makes cache lookup very fast. And you get to redesign that hardware any time the cache grows.

As you increase the software cache size in any program, you increase the search time for every storage access. There’s no way to parallellize that. Just trade-offs in search algorithms. That can be designed for the expected cache use, but it’ll actually slow things down if too much cache is used. Vegas let’s you set some memory aside for it, the rest is dynamically allocated based on what Vegas needs. There’s no useful way to use 64GB memory in Vegas. But that’s really no problem.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

If you’re building for Vegas 14, it really does make sense to wait until Vegas 14 is out, at least for the whole system.

Ok, some of it’s pretty easy. Spend what you can for CPU and memory — you can get 8 cores in the i7-5960, but those last two seem to cost about as much as the first six 🙂 And then there’s the i7-6950X, which is 10 core and not quite double the 5960 for those two additional cores. These get you the four memory channels, which you’re going to want with this many cores in the system.

But then there’s what you might need that’s Vegas-specific. Do they upgrade any of the GPU stuff? Are they specific GPUS that work better than others? What are the memory requirements for the kind of work you want to do (I have 64GB for still photography, so “overkill for Vegas” came along for the ride)? I wouldn’t necessarily expected big changes, but I’d be pretty happy if they actually went to town on some of the shortcomings in Vegas 13. It’ll be an upgrade for me anyway… I’m not even doing a great deal of video these days, but I’d like to help send MAGIX the message that they’ve made a good decision.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Hi Ellen-

From your description of the case, I think you may be running low on RAM during the render. I would recommend at least 8GB memory for any high definition work, though of course if you’re rendering to 720p, that uses roughly half the memory for the render engine, but just as much to decide your source material.

When you have too little memory in your system, the PC uses virtual memory to make up the difference. This means chunks of memory go to and from the hard drive during the render, slowing down your system dramatically.

One way to check this is to run the system monitor on the resources tab and watch your CPU and memory use. On a “happy” system, you should see each core of the CPU (you will see either 4 or 8 with a laptop i7) running around 90% — more is better. You can also see “real” and “virtual” memory use… real is the good stuff. Lots of virtual memory actuvity and you will be slowing way, way down… RAM memory is 1000x faster than disc storage.

Hope I didn’t overload you on the tech stuff!

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[John Rofrano] “Sony has certainly priced Blu-ray creation out of the general market. Considering that it has failed to replace the DVD, it really doesn’t matter what they change for it. DVD Architect is fine for 99% of non-Hollywood Blu-ray authoring.”

If you look at the numbers for 2015, Blu-ray outsells DVD for nearly every major studio release — on numbers alone. DVD occasionally does better on kids titles, reflecting the reality that the kiddies don’t have Blu-ray players yet. No shock — my kids got VHS tapes back when I got into viewing and creating DVDs.

Blu-ray can never exactly replace DVD, since every Blu-ray player is also a DVD player.

As far as creation goes, DVD Architect does most of what I want. It’s powerful enough for most DVD needs, and since it’s Blu-ray mode essentially builds that same DVD model in Blu-ray form, it’s time efficient, since a project is 90-95% the same for both.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

[Bruce Richard] “They use a Rank Cintel scanner.

The DVCPROHD I couldn’t even open (I’m on a Windows machine) and the DVCPRO50 stretched to 16×9, when it should have stayed 4×3, like the source. The others played fine.”

You’re going to need a separate CODEC for the DVCPROHD scan. And it’s not full HD… the maximum DVCPROHD resolution is 1440×1080 interlaced. I’m not sure how much that matters on 8mm film, but there’s no sense in getting a delivery format that might be losing some detail. I would imagine a well shot film on Kodachrome 25 would have greater-than-SD resolution with a good scanner like the Rank Cintel.

It would be easy enough to adjust the DVCPRO50 video to 4:3 in Vegas, but that’s an SD format, just sampled at twice the DV rate.

[Bruce Richard] “I understand there is a “Raylight decoder” which is required for viewing/decoding DVCPROHD, which runs now I think $45. I’m leaning towards not going that route, not just because of the $, but also because I have heard/read a few things about how trying to use apple formats on windows is often times squirelly.

Correct about the Raylight decoder. But DVCPROHD is a Panasonic format, not an Apple format. ProResHD is the Apple proprietary format, but unfortunately, also the best format on their list. At least in theory, it’s 4:2:2 subsampled and 10-bit, though I’d ask for more details. If you can read this via QuickTime in Vegas, you’re ok.

The only other option I’d consider is MJPEG 1080i… I assume they’re delivering interlaced on these due to their telecining — they have to convert the 16fps (probably) of your 8mm film into something video compatible, and going interlace matches more video formats (Blu-ray, etc) and delivers a smoother result than progressive at half the frame rate (telecining 16fps into 30fps is the issue… it don’t quite fit).

If I didn’t have trouble with the samples, I’d probably go for the ProResHD format, much as I dislike proprietary formats. But I’d double-check the actual ProResHD details; if it’s not much different than MJPEG (ProResHD is kind of similar to Motion JPEG), maybe I’d go with the MJPEG. I would not bother with the SD or Panasonic proprietary formats.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

There are a bunch of possibilities.

Check your authoring bitrates. It’s fairly unusual for this to be an issue on computers. Older stand-alone DVD players sometimes have issues with bitrates right at the DVD’s peak legal combined audio/video bitrate.

Watch the DVD-R blanks you’re using, and for universal playback, don’t use DVD-RW or dual layer DVD-R. Lower quality blanks can kead to read errors that trip up your playback. This is particularly true of older stand-alone players, but may be an issue on PCs as well.

While not a huge problem with modern gear, older PCs doing software-onky decoding can be sensitive to CPU load and the efficiency of the DVD player software. Skip generic players like VLC for DVD-specific player software where possible, and shut down any other applications on the player PC.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

As others have suggested, Main Concept AVC won’t support any new GPUs. Yes, it will claim to use OpenCL or CUDA, but it’s kind of bypassing the whole point of those systems, and hard-coding for specific GPUs. If you have any GPU made much after 2010, you’re SOL — it probably would work without their GPU check, but they simple disable GPU rendering for any GPU not on the list.

Vegas does use OpenCL to accelerate its internal rendering. That’s not going to prevent your CPU from going to 95-100%, but it does make things faster, both in preview and final rendering. This is not controlled via the rendering plug-in, it’s on Video tab of the preferences dialog, look for your OpenCL card being listed there (nVida include OpenCL in their CUDA drivers).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with running a properly designed PC at 100% CPU for hours, days, or even weeks. That’s what you want when rendering — that’s the best your PC can do. The only reason using OpenCL or CUDA in a rendering pipeline like Main Concept’s doesn’t let you PC get to 100% is pipelining inefficiencies… there’s plenty of work to do, but without being more multithreaded, the CPU ends up waiting for various GPU tasks to complete, resulting in some “dead time” on the CPU.

A far better way to tell if your GPU is helping out: actually monitor the GPU, don’t simply assume it’s not doing anything because the CPU is fully occupied. Run something like GPU Shark to monitor GPU activity during a render. It’s also quite true that the places that OpenCL is used by Vegas apply to the compositing and plug-in pieces, as mentioned, leaving the format-specific rendering to plug-ins like Main Concept. So if you are simply rendering one format to another without any image processing or compositing, the GPU can’t help you a great deal. If you’re doing something complex like the old “Red Car Demo”, it’s going to help quite a bit.

-Dave

[Dave Haynie]

Ok, first, let’s deal with the details:

* MainConcept AVC will probably deliver a better result than Sony AVC at lower bitrates. MainConcept can also do VBR encoding, Sony can’t. So there are some advantages to MainConcept. At higher bitrates, there’s not likely much difference.

* MainConcept has very good GPU acceleration that they won’t enable if your GPU basically isn’t on their internal list. There’s no good reason for that aside from pressuring Sony to upgrade, but since they stopped doing upgrades (MainConcept has been a division of several different companies), that’s what we’re stuck with. GPU rendered AVC isn’t quite as high quality as CPU rendered AVC, due to the differences in algorithm. Maybe some day, but probably not from MainConcept. The HD6970 — my GPU, BTW — is the fastest card for MainConcept support, far as I know.

*All newer GPUs support OpenCL just dandy — the MainConcept problem is something different (they reject GPUs hard coded in their driver, kind of doing an end run around the very concept of OpenCL).

So, OpenCL is also used by Vegas itself. Some plug-ins use it, the compositing engine uses it for some work, etc. Basically, you refer to “preview” acceleration, but truthfully, anything that speeds up preview using the GPU can also speed up any render to any CODEC.

So the real questions to answer: [a] will the HD6970 speed up your MainConcept AVC renders, and [b] will the HD6970 at least not slow down your system in any other way, in order to make [a] worthwhile.

Ok, so as far as speeding up your system, yes, it will. My old system was based on an AMD 1090T processor, a 6-way “Phenom II” processor. There are a few architectural advantages in Phenom over the Piledriver architecture in your CPU, the idea of two integer CPUs sharing one FPU and L2 caches, but the extra cores and clock speed means your chip should edge out my old one, but probably not enough to change basic system behavior.

Given that, the HD6970 was a dramatic speed improvement for MainConcept rendering on my old system, so probably on yours, too. I didn’t find that specific benchmark, but it was a solid increase. In fact, I bought both the HD6970 and the price-parity nVidia, GTX580 maybe, and ran the Sony benchmark and other tests. The nVidia went back. And Vegas 12 improved the rendering performance, mostly due to Vegas itself using the GPU, not just the MainConcept plug-in. That benchmark is around somewhere.

Here’s a thread with the results on my current system (Intel i3930K)… best speedup is about 6x using GPU vs no-GPU. That is significant.
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/24/973364#973581

You can see that the GPU helps preview and rendering. But anything that’s speeding up the preview will speed up that same work, compositing and all, that’s needed for the final render.

Now, about that [b] part — it’s technically possible that the speed boost from a more modern GPU would run the Vegas accelerations so much faster than an older GPU, that this would offset the MainConcept improvements. And those would be enjoyed by the Sony CODEC and any other output rendering you do. However, checking on the available benchmarks, it looks like the HD6970 is faster than your HD7850 at many graphics benchmarks and OpenCL, but they’re not far apart even when the HD7850 wins. So you would get a speedup buying the HD6970. Makes some sense — they’re only one generation apart. That said, the HD6970’s peak power consumption is around 260W… twice that of the HD7850 — they got a die shrink from 40nm to 28nm in there as well. So make sure your PSU can handle it.

-Dave