[Frederic Baumann]

Hi,

I have made the tests with a 298.xx driver, which officially supports the GTX460.

I have also installed the beta 260.63 driver (supporting CUDA 3.2), and the GPU load still stays at 0% while rendering under Vegas Movie Studio Platinum HD 10.

Apart from this, I can get the GPU loaded at 99% with test CUDA samples, so the driver and CUDA seem to work properly, except for Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum HD 10.

So, if one could have any further suggestions, I would appreciate. I have no answer from the Sony support so far – I have asked them to confirm that the GTX 460 was really supported for CUDA-based rendering.

Thanks in advance!
Frédéric

—
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[Frederic Baumann]

Hi,

I have contacted the Sony support to ask how to benefit from the CUDA acceleration with the Sony AVC Plug-in.

Here is an extract of the answer I got:

“Based on your description of the issue, it appears that your machine also includes a fast processor, which as you can see, does the majority of the rendering work. With a high-end processor, we would not expect to see a great difference in rendering times. For more information on rendering times, please see:

Answer Title: Long render times
Answer Link: https://www.custcenter.com/cgi-bin/sonypictures.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=4835
”

This clarifies a bit more, for me, why I can see no difference between renderings with the GPU toggled on or off.
The ideal would be that the software can load both the CPU and the GPU, but it seems not to be implemented so far.

Best regards,
Frédéric

—
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[Frederic Baumann]

It’s very nice to you John to have taken the time for these tests!

It’s a pity that Studio does not load the CPU as much as it could.

I don’t know why there is no difference on my machine between rendering with/without GPU. I am just figuring out that I start from 1920×1080 clips to render to 1280×720 MP4. Maybe the resizing is the difference with your tests (in which GPU shows it helps). I will do another test where I render to 1920×1080 and will let you know.

Thanks again,
Frédéric

—
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French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999

[Frederic Baumann]

Thanks John – I am going to consider an extra budget for an extra 2GB… however so far I did not get any out of memory error. Movie Studio, like Vegas Pro 64, never eats more than 2 GB even if I have 4 GB available. I guess it is normal for Studio (32bits) but isn’t it strange for Vegas Pro?

BTW, I would greatly appreciate if you could have a look to the last post I have sent (the one with 5 comparative tests on different settings), and give feedback. There are things looking very strange to me, and I guess they would be clearer for you…

—
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[Frederic Baumann]

I have played around with my new PC, and I noticed strange things in terms of perf, that I would like you to comment if you see where the problems come from…

First, if it matters, my motherboard is not a Gigabyte X58-USB3 as I wrote, but a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R. And my Ram is 2x2GB Corsair XMS3 1600 MHz.

Second, I have 3 hard drives:

C: is my main Windows Seagate 500 GB Sata II hard drive (swap here)

E: is a secondary IDE Matrox 320 GB hard drive (I know, it would be better to have Sata instead of IDE)

G: is an external WD 500 GB USB2 drive

Independently from Vegas, transferring a big file from one drive to another gives the following throughputs:

E: to C: 78 MB/sec
C: to E: 73 MB/sec
E: to G: 30 MB/sec
G: to E: 32 MB/sec

I have tested the rendering of the same 3-minute project (containing one single track with AVI files from Cineform), to MP4 at 10Mbps, with different configurations. In all cases, it takes between 6 to 8 minutes to render. And looking at the Windows resource monitor, the throughput of harddrives never exceeds 10MB/sec.

With the Sony AVC plugin, the CPU never runs at more than 35%, with approx only 4 cores used (GPU being used or not). With MainConcept MP4, it runs at 90-95%, with all 8 cores used.

So it looks like there is a bottleneck somewhere, which is not the CPU, and which are not the hard drives. It might be the RAM as John pointed out, but how could I check this? Or could it be something else?

More details on the various rendering configurations:

1) Sony AVC without GPU. source files on E: and target on C: -> CPU 33%, disk throughputs 8-9 MB/sec. total time 6’30

2) MainConcept. source files on E: and target on C: -> CPU 90%, disks 8 MB/sec. total time 8 minutes

3) MainConcept. Source files on E: and target on G: -> CPU 90%, disks 7 MB/sec. total time 8 minutes

4) Sony AVC with GPU. Source files on E: and target on G: -> CPU 35%, disks 9 MB/sec. Total time 6’30

5) Vegas Pro 64, MainConcept, Source files on E: and target on E: -> CPU 90%, disks 7MB/sec, total time 6’30

Also, even with Vegas Pro 64 bit, the memory used never exceeds 2 GB. It raises up to 2.03 GB in the task manager. Don’t you find it strange?

My OS is Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium.

Many thanks in advance, and sorry for having been so long!!!
Frederic

—
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[Frederic Baumann]

Ooops, you are right John, I have the 64-bit version 🙁

—
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[Frederic Baumann]

Could you send a screenshot showing your pan/crop setting at some point of your timeline where the problem occurs?

BTW, you can see my tutorial about pan/crop, see link below. Hope it will help 🙂

Frédéric

—
Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my video tutorial:
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French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999

[Frederic Baumann]

I finally bought my new PC while you were answering. Here is what I now have, and also some benchmarks (Movie Studio Platinum HD 10):

– Core i7 950
– 2 x 2 GB (too bad John, I wish I could have read your notice before. However I have just found a benchmark showing there is no noticeable perf loss between 2 and 3 channels. But this is just a test)
– graphics card: Asus GTX 460 / 1GB DDR5
– motherboard: Gigabyte X58 USB3
– Seagate baracuda 500 GB Sata II Hard drive (only one HD so far)

For a 3’30 movie with AVI rushes coming from an EOS 7D, converted from MOV to AVI by Cineform, I get the following perf for different MP4 10Mbps settings:

1) Main Concept MP4
Total rendering time : about 7′
The 8 cores are loaded at about 98%

2) Sony AVC plugin,
GPU rendering activated
Total rendering time : 6’35
The task manager shows about 4 cores working on the 8 available
average CPU load 30-40%

3) Sony AVC plugin,
GPU deactivated
Total rendering time : 6’26
Here also, the task manager shows about 4 cores working on the 8 available
average CPU load 30-40%

So I am very confused by the Sony AVC plugin. I don’t see the value of the GPU rendering, while my GTX460 has 300+ cores available to help the CPU!!

However, compared to my P8400 laptop, the Sony AVC plugin required 13’46 instead of about 6’30 with the i7, so I have a gain of 2 in overall rendering perf.

With the MainConcept MP4 plugin, the P8400 required 30’30, instead of 7 minutes with the i7 : gain of about 4.5.

Please let me know if you have any comments, or questions.
And also, any hints to leverage the CUDA rendering, as it appears to bring nothing so far on my machine…

I will also have to redo the tests with a 2nd hard drive.

Frédéric

—
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French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999

[Frederic Baumann]

Hi,

you might want to have a look to my tutorials about keyframes and pan/crop, the links are at the bottom of this post.

Especially the pan/crop one shows how to do a split screen.

They have been done within Vegas Movie Studio Platinum HD 10.0

Hope they will help,
Frederic

—
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[Frederic Baumann]

Thanks again to you for your help.
So, I have just tried to do what you recommend. BUT:

1) for the “customize keyboard” stuff, I am afraid it is only available in the Pro version, isn’t it ? In my Studio Platinum HD version, in the Options menu, I only have “Customize Toolbar”, and no “Customize Keyboard” item. The help does not mention it either.

2) Then, to edit an existing text media, if I clic the small Icon as you say John, I actually get the media property dialog activated, but the keyboard focus is not in the text field it self. So I have to do one more clic to have the caret blinking in the text box. And the TAB key does not help. Would it mean that the Pro versions behave more efficiently? Or did you try on Studio Platinum HD 10 like me, and I would have missed something?
Anyway, thanks to you I saved on clic, moving from 3 clics to 2 clics only. But if I could save one more, I would be even happier 🙂

Thanks again,
Frederic

—
Want to learn on Sony Vegas Event Pan/Crop tool? Watch my video tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/baumann_frederic/Sony-Vegas_event-pan-crop-tool/1

Or about Keyframes? https://library.creativecow.net/articles/baumann_frederic/Animating-with-Keyframes-in-Sony-Vegas.php

French version: https://geo.creativecow.net/fr/a/12999