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Rr697

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2019
56
9
Hey guys! I have a 16 Core 7.1 with 4TB and 96GB of Ram and the Radeon Pro Vega II. Although this computer is much faster (350%) than my 27" iMac. I see the card is maxed out in rendering and exporting on Final Cut. From all the initial reviews I thought I bought enough card, especially considering my footage is NOT demanding at all..... Now I think I need to sell this Radeon Pro Vega II MPX Module and replace it with the Duo. What do you guys think? :oops:

Footage I work with is 8 bit 4:2:0 from a Sony A7R IV (NO PRO RES) I think this footage is not very demanding but I use a lot of luts and grades! However Im planning on getting a RED camera this year so If i'm already maxed out, what will happen with footage that is WAYYY more demanding.

Please advise
 

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OkiRun

macrumors 65816
Oct 25, 2019
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584
Japan
translate your footage to prores an buy a afterburner card
if you should also use the proper editing software (resolve or fcpx)
Great advice. The Pro Vega II is perfect for FCPX and the Afterburner cuts like butter. More than enough power. Have FCPX set to Pro Res and turn on rendering. Be happy the GPU is doing its job.
 
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profdraper

macrumors 6502
Jan 14, 2017
317
244
Brisbane, Australia
Unimpressed with the VEGA II for FCPX or Resolve Studio (the latter still outperforming FCPX). I also have a 11Gb RTX 2080 Ti in a Win workstation and that too way outperforms the Vega. My 2 cents is that much of this is related to the awful Catalina OS & hopefully performance issues 'should' improve once Apple fixes its OS and underlying drivers & firmware updates. Telling that we have not yet seen updates to Pro App support, FCPX, Motion, Compressor, Logic etc. Once that happens, then I expect the performance will be more optimised.
 
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Aboo

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2008
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Well if you are selling your VegaII MPX module, let me know and I may be willing to take it off your hands :)
 
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Rr697

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2019
56
9
Well Export time is about 1:1 I will see what Render is but it could be faster and it worries me that its so slow on this EASY footage
 

jasonmvp

macrumors 6502
Jun 15, 2015
421
345
Northern VA

OK. If you're doing 4K/60, then h.264 hardware encoding is tapped out at real time with that. 4K/30 should be able to be done in about half the time; it scales basically linearly. But there's nothing you can do with the Vega II (even by adding another) that will speed up the encoding.
 
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goMac

Contributor
Apr 15, 2004
7,662
1,693

H.264 encoding is handled by T2.

Your GPU is most likely maxed out rendering, and not encoding. You mentioned that you are doing a lot of color grading.

The Vega Duo could help you. Hard to tell why the Vega 2 is maxed out without knowing more about your color grading.
 
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OkiRun

macrumors 65816
Oct 25, 2019
1,005
584
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H.264 encoding is handled by T2.

Your GPU is most likely maxed out rendering, and not encoding. You mentioned that you are doing a lot of color grading.

The Vega Duo could help you. Hard to tell why the Vega 2 is maxed out without knowing more about your color grading.
GoMac ~
I think that Apple created 7.1 with workflow of Metal, FCPX, ProRes, Afterburner, to help editors not have such bug issues like the OP is creating for themselves. Am I wrong in this conclusion?
 

Rr697

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2019
56
9
Yea I just want faster performance I feel like it’s slow for what I was expecting. So having the Duo what kind of gains would I be looking at on render and export?
 

jasonmvp

macrumors 6502
Jun 15, 2015
421
345
Northern VA
Yea I just want faster performance I feel like it’s slow for what I was expecting. So having the Duo what kind of gains would I be looking at on render and export?

Ultimately you need to figure out why everything feels "like it's slow". Is it the rendering or transcoding? Unfortunately a couple of NLEs improperly mix those two terms and overload them. Rendering: composing the video, frame by frame so it "looks and sounds" like how you want. Including any effects, scaling, transitions, etc. Transcoding, which happens during the export is simply: turn this rendered (composed) video into some other format (eg: h.264).

Both are compute heavy. GPU rendering happens with the shaders on it. GPU hardware exporting happens with the built-in encoder on the GPU. One has nothing to do with the other. When the shaders are being beaten on, you'll see the "GPU load" go up. When the encoder gets exercised, you probably won't see anything happen with respect to GPU load; that depends on which stats app you're using to watch.

Now, here's a curve ball: if your NLE decides to render AND transcode at the same time, then you will be beating on both parts of the GPU at once.

What to do? There are a few stats gathering apps you can install to watch your GPU and CPU load. I use the commercial version of iStats. I keep an eye on the respective loads while I work and can see that playback and rendering of my 6K Canon RAW Lite files in Resolve sends my GPU to +95%. When I transcode to h.265, the load drops dramatically because the composition is done, and at that point the software is just feeding the hardware encoder frames to write out (I'm over-simplifying). The confusing thing is, BMD calls that entire process "Rendering". Which ... it isn't. It's transcoding. :)

I know Resolve will gobble up any and all GPUs I can throw at it. Meaning the +95% GPU load that I see when I compose and play back my vids in the NLE will get spread to two GPUs. But the encoding part at the end is a single GPU's job; only one hardware encoder can be used; it's not a parallel operation.

Ultimately this is going to take some homework on your part. Actually watch the GPU (and CPU, if you want to) load while you're editing, composing, playing back, and then transcoding your videos. When and where do the load averages go up? That will give you an idea if a 2xGPU setup will help, or if you need a faster hardware encoder (eg: the W5700X), etc.
 
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Rr697

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2019
56
9
Ultimately you need to figure out why everything feels "like it's slow". Is it the rendering or transcoding? Unfortunately a couple of NLEs improperly mix those two terms and overload them. Rendering: composing the video, frame by frame so it "looks and sounds" like how you want. Including any effects, scaling, transitions, etc. Transcoding, which happens during the export is simply: turn this rendered (composed) video into some other format (eg: h.264).

Both are compute heavy. GPU rendering happens with the shaders on it. GPU hardware exporting happens with the built-in encoder on the GPU. One has nothing to do with the other. When the shaders are being beaten on, you'll see the "GPU load" go up. When the encoder gets exercised, you probably won't see anything happen with respect to GPU load; that depends on which stats app you're using to watch.

Now, here's a curve ball: if your NLE decides to render AND transcode at the same time, then you will be beating on both parts of the GPU at once.

What to do? There are a few stats gathering apps you can install to watch your GPU and CPU load. I use the commercial version of iStats. I keep an eye on the respective loads while I work and can see that playback and rendering of my 6K Canon RAW Lite files in Resolve sends my GPU to +95%. When I transcode to h.265, the load drops dramatically because the composition is done, and at that point the software is just feeding the hardware encoder frames to write out (I'm over-simplifying). The confusing thing is, BMD calls that entire process "Rendering". Which ... it isn't. It's transcoding. :)

I know Resolve will gobble up any and all GPUs I can throw at it. Meaning the +95% GPU load that I see when I compose and play back my vids in the NLE will get spread to two GPUs. But the encoding part at the end is a single GPU's job; only one hardware encoder can be used; it's not a parallel operation.

Ultimately this is going to take some homework on your part. Actually watch the GPU (and CPU, if you want to) load while you're editing, composing, playing back, and then transcoding your videos. When and where do the load averages go up? That will give you an idea if a 2xGPU setup will help, or if you need a faster hardware encoder (eg: the W5700X), etc.


Jason! I did my homework editing a bunch of videos and here are my real world averages. Export time is twice the length of the video. I used iStat to get all these number below.

FCPX with 8 Bit 4K 24fps Sony A7RIV mp4

Rendering effects/Luts etc

GPU memory 50%
GPU Processor 75-95%

CPU 75%

RAM 25%


Exporting To MOV

GPU memory 50%
GPU Processor 2%

CPU 50%

LOAD is average 19-26 for both
 

jasonmvp

macrumors 6502
Jun 15, 2015
421
345
Northern VA
Rendering effects/Luts etc

GPU memory 50%
GPU Processor 75-95%

CPU 75%

RAM 25%


OK. This would indicate a second card/second GPU would likely help, yes. You're clearly getting your money's worth out of that single Vega II. :)

Exporting To MOV

GPU memory 50%
GPU Processor 2%

CPU 50%

This almost smells like you're doing software encoding with FCPX, assuming you are, in fact wrapping h.264 inside that .MOV container. Have you poked through FCPX and/or Compressor to figure out how to force hardware encoding instead? That might speed the export up a good chunk.
 
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h9826790

macrumors P6
Apr 3, 2014
16,609
8,536
Hong Kong
Jason! I did my homework editing a bunch of videos and here are my real world averages. Export time is twice the length of the video. I used iStat to get all these number below.

FCPX with 8 Bit 4K 24fps Sony A7RIV mp4

Rendering effects/Luts etc

GPU memory 50%
GPU Processor 75-95%

CPU 75%

RAM 25%


Exporting To MOV

GPU memory 50%
GPU Processor 2%

CPU 50%

LOAD is average 19-26 for both
For testing purpose, do you mind to try export HEVC via hardware encoding and see what's the loading?

This video shows how to export HEVC from FCPX via hardware encoding.

You may also turn on "Allow frame reordering" to use software HEVC encoding, and compare the hardware usage / export time.

For H264, I am not 100% sure if it's the same for 7,1 and 5,1. But if choose "share" -> "Master File" -> "H264", FCPX should use hardware encoding by default (unless outside the limit, e.g. the resolution is higher than 4K, then it will automatically fallback to software encoding). That's how I do it on my Mac Pro 5,1 with the Radeon VII for hardware encoding.
 
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Rr697

macrumors member
Original poster
May 11, 2019
56
9
For testing purpose, do you mind to try export HEVC via hardware encoding and see what's the loading?

This video shows how to export HEVC from FCPX via hardware encoding.

You may also turn on "Allow frame reordering" to use software HEVC encoding, and compare the hardware usage / export time.

For H264, I am not 100% sure if it's the same for 7,1 and 5,1. But if choose "share" -> "Master File" -> "H264", FCPX should use hardware encoding by default (unless outside the limit, e.g. the resolution is higher than 4K, then it will automatically fallback to software encoding). That's how I do it on my Mac Pro 5,1 with the Radeon VII for hardware encoding.

will do!
 
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