Optimal parameters for Magix to reduce rendering time and video file size

[Tobi_96]

Hello dear people,
 
I know someone who produces a lot of videos for Youtube. He uploads at least one video per week. For this he uses the video editing program 'Magix'.
This program works great for him. He bought the license 'Video Deluxe Premium'. He got this cheaper in a sale.
 
He has the following PC specs:
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, GTX 1070 Dual OC (8GB), Asus ROG Crosshair VI Extreme, Intel 660p M.2 NVME SSD, RAM 16GB 2666Mhz Crucial Ballistix Sport
 
Problem:
He always has too little CPU and GPU utilization (see the reference video for details) and it takes far too long to render the videos. In my following evaluation, I have a standard video with different encoders and settings repeatedly rendered (for details, see evaluation).
 
The following Magix settings are available:
Encoder: purchased license 'Main Concept' encoder and standard encoder
Audio in wave form in video
Video standard 'PAL'
encode without hardware acceleration: AMD CPUs do not have their own graphics unit (iGPU like Intel) and therefore can not be used for hardware acceleration (see any other forum entries). This is a well-founded statement, since it is already confirmed that with all video editing programs on AMD CPU's no hardware acceleration is possible. This phenomenon, which is not solved yet and maybe someday hopefully it will! This could speed up the rendering process (encoding, decoding) many times over!

 

 

I have not been able to upload more pictures, but many others have the problem ...
 
Test video (reference):
MP4 format, full HD 1920x1080, 59.94 fps, video bit rate: 100,000 kbps, audio bit rate: 320 kbps in stereo -> comes from Dashcam 'iTracker'
Test conditions:
2 Chrome tabs open, nothing else open to produce unnecessary load, CPU usage: about 1% without rendering.
 
Execution:
Picture 1: Test parameters and references
Figure 2: Test parameters and evaluation of the finished video
 
So these were my attitudes for him. Read it through well, otherwise you hardly check the diagrams.
 
Results:

Picture 3: Render times
Here you can see that with the Windows Media Video Export the render time is much smaller (in comparison to the standard MPEG-4 export - first two columns). The standard encoder takes far too long. Although the Magix video export takes a little shorter but you can see in the evaluation in Figure 2 that the video quality is not enough for him.
 
-> Windows Media Video Export
 

Figure 4: File sizes of the test videos.
Here you can see the much smaller video size of the WMV (Windows Media Video) export. This is especially important for his recourses (TBW an SSD is already high but still comes together a lot over the years). He always deletes the finished videos after the upload... :/
The WMV export is therefore well suited for an infinite data storage of its videos for a server / NAS.
 
-> WMV export
 

Fig. 5: CPU utilization (only for Magix video, not for complete system), read in Task Manager
Here you can see that the WMV export has significantly higher, but fluctuating values for the CPU utilization. The CPU usage is a bit better for the reference, so you can prepare the next project next time. Who can explain the higher utilization here? That depends definitely with the encoding of the WMV's together?
 
-> WMV export
 

Figure 6: GPU utilization, always for maximum value (read in Task Manager)
Here you can see that the GPU utilization for WMV export is slightly lower than for the MPEG-4 export.
 
-> WMV export
 
Remarks:
The wmv files can also be uploaded with Youtube, so everything is fine!
You may wonder why the spaces for the 10-minute reference video are empty, unfortunately I have not been able to create them yet. It's all about testing UP scaling. Are the render times / file sizes directly proportional to the 1-minute video? He usually produces 10-15 minute videos....
Sequel follows...
 
 
Conclusion / Discussion:
An optimal setting for shorter rendering times / smaller file sizes offers the following setting:
MP4 Videos - MainConcept Encoder (Magix) - Windows Media Video 9 Export (Magix) - Decoder Complexity: Level 2 (live) (Magix)
Under these settings comes out a perfectly acceptable video that is in no way inferior to the original in image quality and sound quality! He looked at the videos and said that it was like his last videos.
 
I have learned a lot and can pass on much. So if anyone has problems, then read this post and share it with others!

I am glad that I was able to help him and that he can produce videos faster by 1/3 !!! And believe me, that makes for precious life in a year! It is worth it!

Thank you for reading,

Your Tobi :)

 

Links to the original german posts on different sites (Magix forum and Tom's Hardware forum)

https://www.tomshw.de/community/threads/optimale-parameter-f%C3%BCr-magix.1293/
https://www.magix.info/de/forum/optimale-einstellungen-in-magix-fr-krzere-renderzeiten--1226428/

I'm sorry, the images are in german, but you can understand the graphics if you look to the encoder.

[mariushm]

Video standard: PAL would imply a refresh rate of 25fps or 50fps. 

You're importing a 59.94fps 100mbps 1080p, which is standard NTSC.  Magix may have to resample from 60fps to 50fps or 25fps, slowing down.

If you want speed, stick to the refresh rate of your input... make sure the output is 59.94 fps (or 60fps, and audio will probably stretched a bit, practically inaudible)

 

Is your licensed Main Concept encoder CPU only encoder, or CPU/ GPU/CPU+GPU encoder... you may have to enable optional GPU encoding (or use the nVidia GPU to partially help with some encoding parts) but depending on encoder it may slow down the actual encoding (if for example the Magix encoder is optimized for OpenCL instead of Cuda

 

If your Main Concept is cpu only, then only decoding of input video is hardware accelerated which won't improve rendering process much because  h264 video is super easy to decode, using probably less than 1 cores of your 2700x ... basically a single core is kinda powerful enough by itself to decode that input video at around 100fps+ so your encoding time will not be affected by decoding

 

Windows Media Export is kinda stupid ... that may not be hardware encoded using your gtx 1070, it may be cpu only. Codec wise, should be fairly similar to h264, you'd be better off exporting to MP4 or raw H264 (to remux into a mkv container later, with audio you export with a second render pass to AAC or AC3) using one of the codecs that supports hardware acceleration.

 

Also may be worth checking out XAVC output if it's still available (I have Vegas 14 Edit that I bought on sale on a Humble Bundle promo) but not sure if Youtube will import it

 

Disable previews when rendering, it can speed up things.

[Tobi_96]

The refresh rate is always constant - import and export is the same setting. What do you mean with speed?

 

Its not possible to render over the GPU or accelerate over GPU with Magix and a AMD processor. Sadly. And still no solution at this point. AMD CPU's need a integrated GPU like Intels CPU's.

 

Hmm i rendered with my Ryzen 1800X and get hours of encoding of just a 1 min video... But a 2700X has a integrated GPU so this is not a comparison.

 

Which codecs supports hardware acceleration? I searched the whole world wide web and dont find a answer yet. H.264 is way to slow for my 1800X because i get not hardware acceleration.

 

What files is Vegas 14 producing? The standard files are:

• .MOV
• .MPEG4
• .MP4
• .AVI
• .WMV
• .MPEGPS
• .FLV
• 3GPP
• WebM
• DNxHR
• ProRes
• CineForm
• HEVC (h265)

Preview is always disabled.