[Hayden Roberts]

[Dave Lozinski] “Curiously now… have to ask why the Mainconcept would be so much quicker than the Sony one?

Surely Sony would have optimized the code for theirs? :-)”

I thought the same thing. I really can’t explain it. I did notice that while rendering Mainconcept AVC that my GPU’s where at a far higher usage %. Here are some images showing the difference between Sony and Mainconcept AVC GPU usage (both cards are NVIDIA GTX 580’s running in SLI).

Mainconcept GPU usage:

GPU1: Max 44%
GPU2: Max 82%
(also note CPU utilization was at ~75%)

Sony GPU usage:

GPU1: 30% (due to that spike, average was 27%)
GPU2: 27%
(also note CPU utilization was at ~64%)

Seems to me like Mainconcept is better optimized than Sony. This doesn’t surprise me greatly when looking at Sony’s track record with software, Vegas Pro included.

I would love to have the speed while using Sony AVC that MC offers, I can render a 1 min clip of 1080p 59.940fps at 15mbps (with no effects) in just 53 seconds. The same clip and setting in 29.970fps at just 32 seconds! This is around 60fps render speed for a 1080p clip. That is blazing fast. Now if only Sony’s AVC GPU rendering was nearly that fast.

[Hayden Roberts]

[Adis Klodish] “It’s on this page:
https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro/gpuacceleration

Direct link:
https://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/vegaspro11benchmark“

I ended up finding it last night. The benchmark downloads ultra slow at 100 KB/s so I didn’t bother. I ran my own tests using a 1080p 59.94fps clip. GPU rendering with Mainconcept AVC with my GTX 580 was 520% (equivalent to 5.2x) faster than using just my Intel i7 2600K (overclocked to 4.7 GHz too)! That is an insane improvement. Sony AVC was only a 18% boost using all the same settings.

Regards, Hayden.

[Hayden Roberts]

[Adis Klodish] “But Sony’s GPU vp11_benchmark project renders flawlessly.”

I have read a bit about this benchmark but have yet to find it. I would really like to download it and give it a try, Have you got a download link available?

Regards, Hayden.

[Hayden Roberts]

[Bernd Porr] “I’ve just got an e-mail from Sony telling me that there is a new build available. So, installed it and tried the Sony AVC render and there’s still no sound.”

I have recently done a fresh install of Windows 7 x64 and have just installed Sony Vegas Pro 11 (build 511) 64-bit and the Sony AVC/ACC audio bug is now fixed.

I’d like to add that I did another Windows 7 install after my original post but before build 510/511 and the bug was still present. This leads me to the conclusion that build 510/511 has solved this issue.

Maybe there is some other gremlin at work here for you Bernd?

I’m so glad this has been fixed. My videos render slower with Sony AVC/ACC but the improved image quality the codec gives is more than worth it.

Hayden.

[Hayden Roberts]

[Lukasz Tomecki] “What i did is I matched exactly the settings of the input audio (256 Kbps, 44 100 Hz, Stereo, MPEG Layer-3 in this instance) with the render settings. Previously, when those settings differed, I’d had no audio in the output file. “

This still doesn’t work for me. After reading your next post, it seems like you are having a media player/codec issue. You should install MediaInfo and that will tell you if the audio stream is there or not.

As you can see from report in the original post, no audio is being rendered so it’s not a playback issue like you reported. There is just no audio to be played…

[Hayden Roberts]

[Dave Lozinski] “I have a laptop with the nVidia GTX 460M video card and both the Sony and Main Concept avc render fine with audio.

If it’s not working for your video card make sure you have the latest drivers. For the nVidia 460 series you have to have driver version >= 270.xx
“

I have two GTX 580’s in my PC and I update my drivers the day they are released.

MainConcept works fine for me (and others it seems) while Sony AVC only renders video without audio (again, others are having same issue). The Sony AVC *should* use the same codec for the audio (ACC) but it doesn’t even try. There are no errors (driver or otherwise) and Vegas doesn’t even attempt to render the audio.

If this were a CUDA driver issue, then Sony AVC or MainConcept would error when trying to render anything. Also, the problem then would solve itself if “CPU only” was selected when rendering. This doesn’t solve the issue thus eliminating any GPU driver issues.

[Hayden Roberts]

[Bernd Porr] “I’ve filed a bug report at Sony’s web site. Haven’t got a reply yet.
/Bernd”

Thank you. I really think this is a bug seeing as now a few more people have reported the same problem. Can’t wait to get this fixed.

Hayden.

[Hayden Roberts]

[Bernd Porr] “I’m experiencing exactly the same problem with Sony’s AVC encoder. I’ve switched to MP4 and enabled audio but it’s not in the stream. Seems to be a bug in Vegas. Mainconcept’s encoder works fine. It’s pretty frustrating because the Sony encoder is two times faster than the Mainconcept encoder.
/Bernd”

Good to hear I’m not alone. I’m not too fussed about render times but the picture quality is much better using Sony AVC, especially at 1080p.

Is there a way to mux/join Sony AVC with a separate audio file such as mp3 or ac3 without having to re-render the whole file?

[Hayden Roberts]

[Dave Lozinski] “Have you tried reinstalling Vegas from scratch?”

Yes, I’ve tried this twice: uninstall, restart Windows, install.

I have read on this forum a user was having the same issue but changing the audio from 48,000 Hz to 44,100 Hz solved his issue. This doesn’t work for me, nothing does.

I think it’s worth nothing that this Vegas install was done on a brand new Windows 7 install, so there’s no conflicting programs or messed up registry settings. The first render settings I tried were Sony AVC because I wanted to test the GPU rendering. Been having this bug from the very beginning.

Maybe not many people try to render in Sony AVC + audio using .mp4? MainConcept AVC + audio (ACC) works perfectly but does not look as good bit for bit. I guess most/all people are happy with MainConcept. Either that or I am experiencing a 1 in a million bug.

[Hayden Roberts]

[Dave Lozinski] “Sorry… I wanted you to render it as an audio file such as mp3 to see if it could be rendered.”

From what you’re asking, it seems to me that you think my source files are the culprit. Let me assure you, they are fine. I can render .mp3 and .ac3 with no problems at all. All the audio is there, just as it should be.

I have also tried the “empty video track” trick and all I get is a black video with no sound. The audio track is just not there.

As you can clearly see from my MediaInfo reports, Sony Vegas Pro is not creating any audio tracks, it’s not even trying to. It doesn’t spit out an error. It’s like I’m not even clicking the “include audio” option.

This has got to be a bug in Vegas. I have tried every single combination of settings, files and who know what else. It’s just not rendering ANY audio, ever.