Preview was set at BEST (Full) on both machines .... as to threads? You've lost me!!!

All I can say is that all the settings looked the same on both machines.

Where do I find the CPU/GPU settings in the render codec? (enthusiastic amateur here - spent £3k on a new machine because the render times in vegas and architect were doing my patience!! )

For info though - just tried rendering as SONY AVC/MVC - AVCD 1440x1080-50i (as that was a matched setting) .... when I went to 'Customise Template' - and selected "Render using GPU if selected", then click on the SYSTEM tab, there is an option to CHECK GPU. When I click that it says "No GPU available" !!

If i accept the default FORMAT setting of 'MPEG-2 transport steam (.m2ts)' the file renders ..... and at 4% when it started counting down it was indicating a further 1 hour 45mins to render.

When I change the FORMAT from the drop down box and select MP4 file format - I get taken to a PROBLEM REPORT box saying vagas has stopped working and asking to send details to vegas (which I did).

I am not amused (as Queen Vic used to say LOL)

The BEST Preview setting was not what i was referring to. I mean the:
Options->Preferences->Video tab.

See the top two items,
Dynamic RAM preview max
and
Max Number Of Rendering Threads.

Those both have a dramatic effect on render speeds. And need to be tweeked depending on your system. (everyone seems to be different!).
I use RAM 200 and threads 2.

As for the render settings, it sounds like you have them already. They are found in the rendering codec's settings panel. At the bottom, shown as "encode mode" and shows as GPU only / CPU only and Auto..

Now then, when you did the check in the render System tab - it shows No GPU Available? thats the problem :(
This is wrong, and it means you are not rendering with GPU, its will default to CPU in this case. Question is why...
Is your GPU card supported by Vegas? please check.

Do you have the latest version of Vegas installed, along with the latest video drivers?

Paul.

Yes, I'd try updating to the latest nVidia drivers that support the GTX 690. Other users with 600 series cards have reported problems getting GPU acceleration to work on the MainConcept AVC encoder, but the Sony AVC encoder generally seems to detect the GPU.

Personally, I do most of my encoding with TMPGEnc's software, which features pretty good CUDA support, so I haven't run into any of these things despite having a GTX 670.

While rendering on both machine strike Control+Shift+Escape to bring up the Task Manager. On the Performance tab, note the CPU usage percentage for each. Even though the new machine has more cores and a faster video card, it may be loafing at less than 100% CPU. I would guess that it probably is if your results are that similar.

You should be getting a little bump from the slightly higher clock speed and extra cores of the 3930.

I did find this. Not good news. Half way down along the lines of : CUDA processing is slower on the GTX 6xx series than its predecessors. 

Interesting.

Grazie

it's a completely different architecture. The 600 Series is Kepler, and almost all the CUDA acceleration is built around the Fermi architecture and earlier. It will probably take a little while before the 600 series are getting good support in software. Plus the current line of cards are all GK104 which are all being done with single floating point precision processing. The GK110's are supposed to be coming ( read GTX685 ), and that will be double floating point precision processing which can also help.

Dave

Hi Paul

I have tried those tweaks you suggested - to no avail.

How can I check the GTX690 is supported by Vegas? I assumed that the forum was monitored by them and they would pic up the problem that way!!

Vagas is Build 683 (the latest)
and the Graphic Drivers are the latest (May this year) - although they have a beta driver that has just appeared. I will try that next and report back.

Stupid question - I know .... but the best way to contact the boys at Vagas is .......???

Roy

I found the tech support link (Dohhhhhh) and have sent then details of the problem!!!

Thanks for bearing with me :-)

Roy

Roy, reading around on various threads, its starting to look like your card is not fully supported.
Even though in Vegas prefs it does allow you to select it, it does not seem to be selecting in your render codecs. Thats an important point to mention in your support ticket. You can start one here:
https://www.custcenter.com/app/ask

All the SCS self help notes say is 'supports Nvida 4xx and higher'... etc
So that should in theory include yours, but obviously, its so new maybe its not implemented yet.

See what they say - or maybe Paddy (admin) and comment directly here and save you the trouble.

Paul.

We posted at the same time!

OK

Paul.

Cheers Paul - I've sent 2 tickets as I've come across a wierd coincidence!!

And btw - I've downloaded the new Beta driver for the GTX690 and it makes no difference.

If I try and render as a SONY AVC/MVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc) / ACCHD 1440x1080-50i ..... it will render slowly. In "Customize Template" - ENCODE MODE / Render using GPU if available ... then SYSTEM TAB/ CHECK GPU - and it says NO GPU available.

However - if I try and render as MAINCONCEPT AVC/AAC (*.mp4) / Internet HD 1080p and then look in the CUSTOMIZE TEMPLATE box. ENCODE MODE/ Render using GPU is available .... then click the SYSTEM TAB/ CHECK GPU - it says "CUDA is available'

The only problem then is that when you try to Render - you get a Pop-Up Box saying "An error occurred while creating the media file xxxxx.mp4. The reason for the error could not be determined."

Whether the problem is with Nvidia or Vegas - I'm not in a position to say .... I just hope I'm not to the only one in the same position - if others are too - they might sort the problem out.

As it stands, I feel a bit of a fool spending a large sum of money to make video production supposedly faster, and being no better off than I was before :-(

I thought that by going for the GTX690 instead of a GTX680 - it would stand me in good stead in the future.

I must do a search and find out if guys using the GTX 680 are having the same problem!!

Please let me know if anyone else has the same problem - and/or found a solution.

Roy

Just to add, the fact that it shows No GPU in the Sony AVC but it does show GPU but crashes in the MainConcept AVC, indicates clearly there is a problem within Vegas, having already downloaded the very latest video drivers for your card. That leaves the ball in SCS's court.
I really suspect the implementation for this card has not been added to Vegas yet. Its is giving you false indications - like saying GPU enabled in mainconcept, when in fact that is false.

Good luck with this, hope SCS reply to you soon. And yes, others with the 680 may help also by posting their findings here too.

Paul.

Cheers Paul - will post any responses from SCS's

If I try and render as a SONY AVC/MVC (*.mp4;*.m2ts;*.avc) / ACCHD 1440x1080-50i ..... it will render slowly. In "Customize Template" - ENCODE MODE / Render using GPU if available ... then SYSTEM TAB/ CHECK GPU - and it says NO GPU available.
That suggests that the Sony codec uses straight CUDA and the MainConcept codec uses OpenCL.

With each new architecture the CUDA binaries change, so old CUDA binaries do not work with it. But OpenCL only depends on the driver which will compile it on the fly for whatever architecture is available in your system.

Solution? Tell SCS about it and hope they will create binaries for your new architecture (which should only mean a recompile for them) or change it to use OpenCL (which means they would have to rewrite it, much more work, but a future-proof solution).

I have 2 EVGA GTX 680 FTW cards & have used both the latest drivers & beta drivers. No matter what when ever I render out to main concept it always says "An error occurred while creating the media file xxxxx.mp4" & yes it does say cuda is available.

Hopefully they get this worked out sometime soon.

Bullboykennels wrote: "I have 2 EVGA GTX 680 FTW cards & have used both the latest drivers & beta drivers. No matter what when ever I render out to main concept it always says "An error occurred while creating the media file xxxxx.mp4" & yes it does say cuda is available."

I have the same problem with 1 GTX 680. However, I can get around this problem if I use the Sony AVC codec.

One more thing: using 2 video cards or using a double GPU card does not accelerate the process. All video editing software can only take advantage of one GPU. That's one lesson I learned last Winter.

To NicolSD ..... Yes the Sony AVC codec does render - but it doesn't use the GPU acceleration (in my experience) - rendering the same bit of video on my old computer and the new one side by side produces no improvement in speed on the new computer with the GTX690 - in fact its is slower when the facility to use GPU acceleration is chosen.

With GPU acceleration turned off - the new system is markedly quicker due to the 6 core i7-3930k processor.

The point being that my main purpose of purchasing a high spec graphic accelerating Video card has been a wasted purchase - or at least will be untill Vegas sort this prtoblem out!!

After two months support finally replied to my help ticket--they basically told me to make sure I have all AMD stuff and card taken out. I replied multi card set up was not the problem. I solely ahd a GTX 670 installed. Then the reply was "we are aware of the mp4 rendering problem when attempting to use GPU acceleration. It may be fixed in a future release".

So Sony has blatantly ripped people off in my estimation.

I looked through the whole thread and never say what the ACTUAL render time was, everyone was going based on reported estimates. The estimates are many times wrong, you should let both renders go all the way through.

What's the actual render times? Even if the GPU render doesn't work on those cards then the new machine has a little more mhz to it, but rendering to the same drive as the video could be slowing it down.

For GLpride:
For heaven's sake, as a recent poster asked, have you let this render comparison go to completion? You have quoted the tip-over point reads, but this is notoriously unreliable according to the way the interface is programmed. Once you have solid experience and many hours on the machine you will be able to interpret these correctly.

For now let it render and time the completions. Also please download the Sony Veg test set and post your results in our processor comparison thread.

For giggles FYI, theoretically with the way your new machine is configured the Premiere CS5 Adobe users test of your machine gives consistent results of about score 250 on a rating scale of 1 to 900+ , placing in the better of class editing machines - but note ONLY with a GTX570 card - nothing to post in the 600 series tells you something.

Looking at the cards on Newegg, the higher end 5xx series are more expensive then the higher end 6xx series. Could be the newest generation isn't as relatively high in capabilities as the highest 5xx series. I remember with the ATI's the ATI 97xx cards actually performed better then the 98xx cards because of the differences in the design.

I am in a similar situation as the new poster. I have a EVGA GTX 570 in one machine, Galaxy GTX 670... The 570 is recognized for GPU rendering, the 670 is not. Sony needs to update their codec, and Vegas needs to be updated to extend support to the newer GPUs.

Sony's website states that you need higher than X... It does not specify which models are supported and which are not. Furthermore, Vegas just doesn't compare to Adobe's Mercury engine, in terms of taking advantage of GPUs or even 6 core machines.

11 is the first version of Vegas to support GPU acceleration within the program, and not just on render. But dang if it isn't buggy! How they could release it in its current form is just baffling.

If its any consolation, you are not alone brother. I have mentioned to a few people but if Vegas 11 isn't patched by the end of July, I'm going to Premiere. CS6 has many benefits, among them taking advantage of the multiple 'beast' workstations that I have built for live broadcasting and video editing.

Also, in putting in tech tickets, Sony has given me a similar response. They acknowledge there is a problem, and say it 'might' be fixed in the future. I think they do a great job of putting a barrier between the developers/techs/HR and those of us who actually USE the software.

Unfortunately I am not a hobbyist and can't mess around trying a billion different configurations of my machines until I find the sweet spot that Vegas likes. If Sony doesn't patch 11, or write me an email and ask for help troubleshooting, I'm done. July 26 is my birthday, and I may very well be giving myself, and my employees a big present... in the form of Lydia crash courses through CS6.