Dispelling Rumors - Vegas 8.0 v 8.1 - Compression Tests

[PerroneFord]

For quite some time now, I've been hearing how using .MOV file types in Vegas is painful. How quicktime is "crippleware" in Vegas, etc. I also knew that I was seeing results in my work that seemed to refute what I was reading.

Last week, I stumbled upon some informal benchmarking on the Sony Creative Suites forum called HDVRender Test. Essentially, the idea was to take a known .veg of generated media, and render it on various machines so people could compare performance numbers. Great idea, so I tried it. Today, I decided to take that one step further. I wanted to use that test to see how various codecs stacked up, and how the two current shipping versions of Vegas stacked up. These are my results:

Machine:

Dell Precision M6300 Laptop
2003 XPPro x64 SP2
Core2 Duo T7250 @ 2.00 GHz
4GB RAM

Vegas Versions:

Vegas 8.1 build 171
Vegas 8.0b build 217

The Codecs: Mpeg-2 HD @ 25 Mbps, Uncompressed, Lagarith, Sony AVC, Avid DNxHD, JPEG2000.


So how do they compare:



Test 1: Stock HDVRender Test

V8.0 MXF 05:46 1440x1080x32 29.970i mpeg-2 HD 25 Mbps(CBR) 48KHz16 bit Stereo 15,810Kb

V8.1 MXF 05:03 1440x1080x32 29.970i mpeg-2 HD 25 Mbps(CBR) 48KHz16 bit Stereo 15,810Kb

** As expected, the 64bit version was significantly faster.


Test 2: Uncompressed AVI HDVRender Test

V8.0 AVI 05:46 1440x1080x24 29.970i Uncompressed 48KHz16 bit Stereo 684,548

V8.1 AVI 05:03 1440x1080x16 29.970i Uncompressed 48KHz16 bit Stereo 456,809

** 64bit render only offered 16 bits per pixel! Speed was faster


Test 3: Lagarith AVI HDVRender Test

V8.0 AVI 05:49 1440x1080x24 29.970i Lagarith 48KHz16 bit Stereo 13,176

V8.1 AVI 05:04 1440x1080x16 29.970i Lagarith 48KHz16 bit Stereo 13,176

** Again 64bit only offers 16 bits per pixel


Test 4: Sony AVC HDVRender Test

V8.0 MP4 02:58 1440x1080x32 29.970i Sony AVC 20 Mbps/512 Kbps 48KHz16 bit Stereo 1,881

V8.1 Would not Render

** This was unexpected as I tried to choose codecs that were in both versions


Test 5: Uncompressed Quicktime HDVRender Test

V8.0 MOV 06:18 1440x1080x32 29.970i Uncompressed 48KHz16 bit Stereo 912,193

V8.1 MOV 03:15 1440x1080x32 29.970i Uncompressed 48KHz16 bit Stereo 912,193

** File size is larger than AVI because it offers 32 bits per pixel. Render speed in 64 bit is nearly twice as fast as 32 bit and much faster than AVI even with increased bit depth.


Test 6: DNxHD 220x 10 bit HDVRender Test

V8.0 MOV 06:01 1440x1080x32 29.970i DNxHD 220x (10bit) 48KHz16 bit Stereo 135,343

V8.1 MOV 01:50 1440x1080x32 29.970i DNxHD 220x (10bit) 48KHz16 bit Stereo 135,343

** Render time is less than 1/3 that of 32bit version and over twice as fast as any AVI.


Test 7: DNxHD 45 8 bit HDVRender Test

V8.0 MOV 06:01 1440x1080x32 29.970i DNxHD 45 48KHz16 bit Stereo 28,542

V8.1 MOV 01:50 1440x1080x32 29.970i DNxHD 45 48KHz16 bit Stereo 28,542

** Same performance gain as 10 bit version


Test 8: JPEG2000 HDVRender Test

V8.0c MOV 06:16 1440x1080x32 29.970i JPEG2000 (32Mbps) 48KHz16 bit Stereo 20,056

V8.1 MOV 03:52 1440x1080x32 29.970i JPEG2000 (32Mbps) 48KHz16 bit Stereo 20,129

** Performance abot 60% better in 64bit version.


In terms of compression:

AVI Files:

Lagarith offers a 52:1 advantage over uncompressed


MOV Files

DNx 220x offers a 6.5:1 advantage
DNx 45 offers a 32:1 advantage
JPEG2k offers a 45:1 advantage



So while this test is hardly scientific, it does seem to offer up some very interesting trends.

1. 64 bit Vegas is CLEARLY faster on the same material using the same codec as 32bit

2. 64 bit Vegas has some significant issues with .AVI files and bit depth

3. The conventional wisdom that somehow Vegas is optimized for .AVI may be true in 32 bit, but the 64bit version blows that out of the water.

So it seems in terms of rendering, that the most speed is available by working with and rendering .MOV file types in 64 bit Vegas. If the Avid DNxHD codec is used, the render times are faster than anything else around (though I would like to test Cineform) and they can be traded off to Macs or other PCs without cost.

This test took a couple hours to run. I'd be curious to see it replicated on one of the quadcores or dual quadcores out there. Disk speed didn't seem to be a big factor as the render times didn't change much even when writing out uncompressed files versus the far smaller highly compressed intermediate files.


Comments welcome.

 

[Barry_Green]

It's not so much in rendering that the complaints about quicktime came about, it's in editing quicktime files. Try rendering out that footage in the various formats, then re-importing it and running some other test using quicktime source files vs. avi source files, and see if that makes a difference.

Excellent work on proving when & why someone would benefit from the 64-bit version, those speedups are massively impressive.

 

[PerroneFord]

Barry, I am aware of the slow timeline performance of the quicktime versions. Honestly, it doesn't affect me much because I am usually working with proxy files, or fairly low bit rate quicktimes. As slow as my machine is, even Cineform 1080s cause too much pain.

But yes, the 64 bit version is LIGHT years ahead in performance, but 2 generations behind in terms of support for codecs, plug-ins, etc. It was the move to 64 bit that caused me to find a new codec. And that new codec search that led me to jump to the .MOV container as I had full codec support there. AVI support in 64bit is disappointingly weak.