Video Editing/Rendering w/ GPU
ebergerly
Posts: 3,255
Not sure how many do animations with D|S, then edit those into videos, but I thought I'd start a discussion the best apps & settings to do video rendering, considering the latest technologies. I'd be interested to see what others have found.
Previously, I used Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum 11 or whatever the heck it's called. I've never been a fan of it, but I had it and used it. Now my old computer (i7-6700 CPU with 8 logical CPU's, and a piece of junk graphics card GT-730) would render videos (I used 1920x1080 generally) at a rate of about 1 minute of render time for every minute of video time. So a 30 minute long video would take about 30 minutes to render. A big pain.
So now that I have a Ryzen 7-1700 CPU (16 logical CPU's), and a GTX 1070 GPU, I started looking around at video editing software that could make use of the hardware.
My first look was at Sony Vegas Magix Movie Studio HD Platinum 14 (I just hate any software that I don't even know what name to call it...apparently it's no longer a Sony product, bought by some company called Magix). So I downloaded the trial, and first thing was trying to configure the GPU.
What a mess.
I searched all over the internet and finally found that you have to make 3 settings to ensure it will use the GPU. Well, even then you're not sure. Apparently it supports NVIDIA CUDA for some video formats but not others. So after hours of searching the internet, finding what the setting should be, and configuring it so it said it recognized the GPU and was ready to go, I tried a render. And the GPU utilization stayed at 0. No matter what I tried, it only used the CPU. And render times were horrendous, and there are some youtube videos which say the same thing.
So I found some posts saying that DaVinci Resolve, a free editor I had used before, uses the GPU no problem.
So I downloaded it and WOW was I impressed. In the initial startup screen it shows a nice graphic showing that it's recognizing your GPU and CPU. No special settings, it's just ready to go. Wonderful.
And the interface is much nicer and more intuitive than that piece of junk Movie Studio.
Anyway, I did some tests, and here's what I found:
Keep in mind I was going into it being used to 1 minute of render time for every minute of video length...
A 34 minute video, rendered with no effects, no edits:
- Using Quicktime H.264, 1920x1080 HD, render time was 11 minutes 46 seconds, or about 34% of the video length
- Using Quicktime MPEG4, 1920x1080 HD, render time was 10 minutes: 3 seconds, or about 30% of the video length
So the GPU and additional CPU power cut my renders down to about 1/3 of what they were.
Now, in terms of GPU and CPU utilization during the renders:
- 16 CPU's hovered around 70-90% utilization during renders
- GPU (GTX 1070) hovered around 30% utilization during renders. And yes, it was about 0% before and after the renders. So definitely it detected and used my GPU with no intervention from me whatsoever. Awesome.
So I guess the bottom line for me is:
- Sony Vegas Magix whatever is junk. I immediately uninstalled it after getting these results. My apologies to those who use and like it, but it's just my opinion.
- DaVinci Resolve is awesome, and you might consider it if you are doing video editing/rendering of the compiled frames from your animations.
I'd be very interested to see what others have experienced. I'm sure that editors like Final Cut and Adobe Premiere are much more functional (and expensive).
Comments?
Thanks.
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Comments
By the way, I forgot to mention that the free edition of DaVinci Resolve only supports only ONE GPU. I think there's a Pro version (big bucks) which supports more. Not sure if it's SLI or not.
UPDATE: I just checked, and it's $299 for the Studio Version. And Sony Vegas Magix Movie Studio 14 Platinum HD costs $79.99.
Thanks for the HU, have been looking for a good professional video editor and this looks really good. And $299 for the studio version isn't much really. Seems to be quite picky as for what you can import though, tried some documentaries in HQ FLV format downloaded from our main TV channel, no luck. Guess I'll have to try to convert them to MP4 first.
Not much for Magix either when it comes to video, they had an offer on one of their pro editors a couple of years ago, it was more than $299 and not even 64 bit.
double post
+1 sony vegas version with the plat 11 HD suite,
and sony acid, and screaming bee.
2 tricks learned today.
- importing seq image, there's a tickbox bottom of import media dialog, brings the sequential pngs in as 1 file
- has to turn off resampling on everything, wont save as a default. rclick, switch, no resampling
comes with a nice set of music snips and sound effects.
spent my incometax money on the sony sound effects volumes (doh)
I use Blender. Free but fine for my needs though. Image sequence no problem. Effects and transitions. Lots of different output options.
I typically compile my animations from separate images into an MJPEG stream using ffmpeg. This is a common interchange format for use in non-linear editing, as there is no interframe compression. (It makes huge files, though.) From there I use whatever video editing/finishing tool is called for (usually by the client) I've used Sony/Magix and it's okay, though I find the interface clunky. For $20 a month you can get Adobe Premier. I then will save the file to an inrtermediate HD format, and then call on ffmpeg once again to create the output file(s).
In order to use ffmpeg with the GPU you need to locate a binary where the GPU modules have been compiled in. Or do it yourself.