TandemVids 2018 with Magix Vegas 15 is twice as fast as TandemVids 2016. From SD card to USB stick in the customer's hand takes less than three minutes.

Magix Vegas 15 includes a new encoder, which uses your graphics card for rendering. TandemVids 2018 exports photos using the third party ffmpeg utility.

The same six minute tandem video with identical music and configuration was used for all of the benchmarks here. Nearly 200 photos are included on the USB.

This initial summary of benchmarks uses normal hard drives for the work area, source media and destination. Slower SD card readers and USB drives are benchmarked below.

• 04:46 - TandemVids V2016 : Sony Vegas 13 : Video and photos
  
• 01:52 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : Video and photos
  
• 01:37 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : Video only
  
• 00:31 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : Photos only
  

If reducing times to deliverables is important, I recommend buying a decent central processing unit (CPU) and a decent graphics card (GPU). You can also shave an extra minute by using decent quality USB 3.0 sticks.

Use CPU Benchmarks  to select a solid CPU with a passmark score above 10,000.

These CPUs are excellent value for money.

• Intel Core i7-8700K @ 3.70GHz - Passmark 16,228
  
• Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.20GHz - Passmark 12,083
  
• Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.00GHz - Passmark 11,110 (Used for these benchmarks)
  

For Notebooks, follow the same advice aiming for a passmark score above 8,000 and avoid the chips with a 'U' prefix for ultra portable. They have great battery life but abysmal performance and even modern Notebooks with these CPUs can take 30+ minutes to run these benchmarks. Several Swoopware customers have been caught out with expensive slow notebooks.

I can recommend the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU used for these benchmarks but a little research on the Vegas forums  will uncover rendering benchmarks using less expensive cards.

Use GPU Benchmarks  to select a solid GPU. Research before purchasing.

• GeForce GTX 1080 - Passmark 12,156
  
• GeForce GTX 1070 - Passmark 11,061 (Used for these benchmarks)
  
• GeForce GTX 1060 - Passmark 8,850
  
• GeForce GTX 1050 - Passmark 4,451
  

RAM is not really a concern. A typical tandem video uses around 2GB of RAM (see screen shot) so two instances will use 4GB. Aim for 8GB in your system and it should be plenty.

There is little difference when using an SSD for your working folder. The bottle necks are the SD card and USB stick. I recommend an SSD for your system drive and a 2+ TB SATA dive for your work area and customer storage folders. Archive as you go to a NAS or use RAID for storing customers. I had a brand new 8TB hard drive fail after 26 days last year. It does happen. I lost data even with excellent backups in place. I have better backups now.

System used for testing:

• CPU - Intel Core i7-6700K CPU @ 4.00GHz (Over clocked to 4.40GHz)
  
• GPU - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070
  
• Source media from GoPro at 1080p 25fps
  
• End video rendered to 720p at 10MBs with length 6:19
  
• 184 captured 1920x1080 photos

I was a little confused when I initially posted this. The GPU acceleration option in Vegas shown in the screenshot below does not affect rendering. It only affects playback on the timeline and rendering of any Vegas effects. Third party effects may or may not use GPU acceleration but this will be independent of the Vegas setting.

Using the Sony AVC/MVC rendering engine set to 720p and 10 MBs

• 07:29 - TandemVids V2016 : Sony Vegas 13 : Vegas photos : SD card media : SATA work area : USB 2.0 destination
  
• 05:42 - TandemVids V2016 : Sony Vegas 13 : Vegas photos : SD card media : SATA work area : USB 3.0 destination
  
• 04:46 - TandemVids V2016 : Sony Vegas 13 : Vegas photos : SATA media : SATA work area : SATA destination
  
• 04:38 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : Vegas photos : SATA media : SATA work area : SATA destination
  
• 03:40 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : Ffmpeg photos : SATA media : SATA work area : SATA destination
  

Using the MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 rendering engine set to 720p and 10MBs. This renderer is slower than Sony AVC when encode mode is set to Mainconcept AVC instead of NV Encoder - see reply post.

• 05:21 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : Mainconcept AVC : Ffmpeg photos : SATA media : SATA work area : SATA destination
  
• 04:34 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : NV Encoder : Ffmpeg photos : SD card media : SATA work area : USB 2.0 destination
  
• 02:47 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : NV Encoder : Ffmpeg photos : SD card media : SATA work area : USB 3.0 destination
  
• 01:52 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : NV Encoder : Ffmpeg photos : SATA media : SATA work area : SATA destination
  
• 01:48 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : NV Encoder : Ffmpeg photos : SSD media : SSD work area : SSD destination
  
• 01:37 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : NV Encoder : No photos : SATA media : SATA work area : SATA destination
  
• 00:31 - TandemVids V2018 : Magix Vegas 15 : No video : Ffmpeg photos : SATA media : SATA work area : SATA destination
  

Related posts:

You need a new customised template to enable the NV Encoder in Magix Vegas 15.

This describes creating a HD rendering engine for an Nvidia graphics card.

1. Close TandemVids and open Vegas 15 on it's own
   
2. Open an existing project or add video and audio tracks with empty events. (enables the rendering options)
   
3. File | Render as | Select the MAGIX AVC/AAC MP4 engine
   
4. Choose a suitable template for your region (For Australia start with "Internet HD 720p 25fps")
   
5. Set a suitable bit rate (10 MBs is a good compromise between speed and quality)
   
6. Select NV Encoder as the encode mode
   
7. Change the name of the template and save it
   
8. Close Vegas and open TandemVids
   
9. Select the custom renderer you just created from the USB tab
   

While setting up a customer's computer, we used the GPU built into many of the Intel CPU's.

It worked well and definitely accelerated the rendering. You may not need a dedicated graphics card to see some speed benefits.

I plan to benchmark the Intel GPU soon.