Yes, I have the latest drivers, and the drivers that came with the Gigabyte card, same result.
I have no real interest in the NVIDIA/AMD debate, I'd just like to get my new NVIDIA card working. According to basic graphics benchmark, it's the 4th fastest card on the market:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
Yet at present it is no quicker than a $10 card as far as Sony is concerned.

Good luck on getting Nivida newer cards to work with Vegas. Many people gone out purchased Nivida newer cards came with same disappointment. If your main focus is Sony AVC with gpu acceleration, then your really only option is to use the older gtx580 or amd 6970 because these card are the fastest in gpu acceleration on Sony avc encoding your are after. Just take this in consideration. Newer nivida cards are not your friend.

"Anyone know the fastest Nvidia card that Sony AVC codec supports?"

Nvidia GTX 580. There may be some exotic "turbo-charged" variety (overclocked, extra memory, whatever) of it that is the very fastest. I saw many such things when I was looking on eBay.

Thanks.
I had a GTX 650 card which was slower than my i7 3770K CPU rendering, so no point in those older cards.

Thanks, that GTX580 is a fair bit faster than my old GTX650, so might be worth checking to see if it offer anything worthwhile.
But I tried an almost identical benchmark Radeon 7850 using OpenCL and it was once again slightly slower than the CPU rendering.

The GTX580 is a Fermi chipset, two generations behind
My GTX 650 card with the newer Kepler chipset works with Movie Studio 13, so does that mean any Kepler chipset card will work?

We have established that the latest Maxwell chipset (GTX970/980) doesn't work.

I used GTX580 in my system and it is the fastest Nvidia card for Vegas, period! Kepler and later GPUs from Nvidia are not supported and will only use the limited OpenCL capabilities they offer. This all with regards to the MC AVC encoder and Sony AVC. GTX650 is not Fermi hence it will not work properly. GTX580 is extremely fast when you select CUDA in the MC AVC render template because the encoder was written for the Fermi GPUs and has never been updated ever since.

And how about your experience of playback performance? How does the GTX580 work here?

Playback is good but not as good as my 2x R9 290 I currently use. Nvidia's cards don't handle OpenCL as well as AMD cards because they are designed for CUDA. CUDA is a proprietary architecture and completely different from OpenCL. There is only a few high level professional software that fully supports CUDA, most of those are 3D CAD programs. Most other software uses OpenCL and most of the Vegas Plugins support OpenCL rather then CUDA. I had no issue with my GTX580 until I got into 4K and wanted something better. Even multicam projects worked well when source was HDV or 1080i. Plugins such as NewBlu FX, BCC, NeatVideo where working but very slow. If you good performance and don't care so much about fast MC AVC encoding then a R9 290 or 290X is a better choice; I switched.

Hello Mark,

Thank you for contacting NVIDIA Customer care.

My name is Yugendar and I will be assisting with your query.

From the email description, I understand that you are looking for a driver that supports CUDA.

I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please be assured that I will do my best to help you.

The root cause is that we are moving from NVCUVENC API to NVENC, and the application developer needs to adopt NVENC in their software. Visit the link below for more information:

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3602

I am sorry, driver version 337.88 is not compatible with GTX 970. The only option is to get in touch with the application developer and ask them to intent the NVENC within the application to support the driver that is compatible with GTX 970.

Please get in touch with us, if you need further assistance and I would be happy to help you.

Best Regards,
Yugendar
NVIDIA Customer Care

not that it's of much comfort but i think a great many users are wondering what exactly scs is going to do about this situation....

i have no intentions of updating vegas until all aspects of gpu implementation are sorted out. i would hazard a guess that many others are of the same mind.

SCS may well completely move away from CUDA, which is proprietary and concentrate on OpenCL... but who really knows.

I agree with @Oldsmoke, but I think SCS has already done this. I can respect choosing to base your code on something that appears to support multiple manufacturers, however, in the end it’s more about getting stuff done. If SCS was active in developing, I would think we would see upgrades that support the latest versions of OpenCL. As it stands we are stuck on OpenCL 1.1, where 1.2 & 2.0 offer some abilities that would seem to speak to video editing computations. The fact that we see no bump in Vegas computational performance with dual GPUs, shows a very limited OpenCL implementation, possibly even a 1.0 implementation.

NVidia must be doing something to their driver support, such that they pass the OpenCL version qualification, then gimp the actual release driver to show CUDA as a better option. I find it hard to believe that if NVidia actually supported OpenCL that their cards would not perform better and with less troubles in Vegas. NVidia in the end supports OpenCL only for marketing reasons, so that they do not appear less than AMD in that area. Smoke and mirrors people…

My guess is Sony can see all of our configurations when we register the software, and what they see is OpenCL 1.1 has the widest support. Laptops, which are very popular with creative types, are also the dregs of PC specifications and performance. Sony is in trouble image wise, and if you look at the internal staff videos on their YouTube channel, and their most recent NAB demos, you will see that they are not working with the best and brightest. Vegas at one point a few versions back seemed to be in lock step with the cinema and broadcast divisions. Now we see version go by without support of the latest cameras on the market. We have a rudimentary REDCODE raw workflow support, but no direct drag and drop support for F-series raw. For that support they expect you use a different product, then import an intermediate format.

At times you really have to wonder who is in charge of strategy at SCS, and are they competent. Looking into my crystal ball over here, it seems like PC support for Vegas is ending. I think SCS is working on re-branding with new applications, and possibly looking into tablet device support that will leverage network connectivity, possibly Apple OS versions or ARM support. Why else ignore user complaints on stability & media management,and release web based rough cutting and Apple control surface tablet toys. I believe SCS views Vegas as purely a consumer product that is unable to attract the super pros that actually work on big productions with the most cache. Ironic really when you consider Imageworks is on Sony’s side. I interviewed at Imageworks, and knew the former head of IT, and I can say that there was no Sony hardware or Vegas anywhere in use at that time. I think that was a serious missed development opportunity to be a true software/hardware leader.

CUDA is supported by most VFX, Adobe, Autodesk and many other NLE's, Compositors and 3D applications. DAZ Studio will support a free unbiased renderer based on CUDA in future. AMD hasn't made the most of OpenCL where as NVidia is pushing CUDA in a very progressive way.

Regardless of whether CUDA/OpenCL is favoured by an individual, Sony should make the latest cards compatible with Vegas.

I went here and specifically asked that they consider supporting the new Maxwell architecture since it is such an improvement in both power and efficiency over previous generations. I could see skipping some of the previous generation chips (if low on manpower) since they only provided marginal improvements over the 500 series. But, Maxwell is such a significant improvement in just about every way conceivable, that if they plan to add support for one new chip this year, Maxwell should be the one.

i in a major complaint to sony re misinformation on graphics cards and asked for compensation on the fact i have wasted money on the gtx970. i was toil to uninstall vegas pro 13 and they will give me my money back.. trying to find out the CEo of sony creative software to complain direct

@ " Sony should make the latest cards compatible with Vegas. "


How much would you be willing to pay to make that happen?

"How much would you be willing to pay to make that happen?"

The same as Adobe charges for Premiere Pro. At the end of the day Vegas Pro is supposed to be for their "pro' audience, so I don't think their lax gpu support is acceptable in 2015. I can understand for their more consumer level software but c'mon now, if they want to play in the professional space then they need to step up their gpu support, especially considering how many 4k cameras Sony sells.

I would think that real pros would buy the tools they need to get the job done, rather than purchase a tool that has shortcomings, and hope the manufacturer will make it better after the fact..

You can't really expect "real pros" to always buy separate computers for every piece of software they want to run. For example, what about someone working primarily in Unreal Engine 4, but wanting to edit video in Vegas Pro. You can make a pretty good argument that nVidia cards are the primary choice for game development. Also laptops are impossible to upgrade.

If Sony has a budget limitation, they should at least aim for bringing Vegas up to date with the latest GPUs every 4-5 years (about the lifespan of a cutting edge workstation). If that is some how impossible and they can support only a single brand, then they should at least pick the dominate brand, which has been nVidia for the last 10 years.

I realize Sony was probably hoping that OpenCL would be the single unified API that worked great across all brands, but it's turning out to be more like its an AMD specific API. So they are essentially still choosing to support one brand over another. My vote would be for supporting nVidia first, then if they have extra resources support AMD.

" I would think that real pros would buy the tools they need to get the job done, rather than purchase a tool that has shortcomings, and hope the manufacturer will make it better after the fact.."

I stick with Vegas Pro because I desperately needs it's scripting. Without that I would quite literally have to either shut down three of my websites or hire staff to handle the extra workload which I don't want to do. Vegas Pro 13 with it's scripting let's me run my fleet of websites all by myself, so in that respect I am using the tool that works best for me overall. But that doesn't take away from the fact that having such poorly documented gpu support and only supporting Fermi for encoding in 2015 is ridiculous. I would jump ship to Premiere Pro if it had powerful scripting like Vegas Pro does because I tried it's free trial and it's gpu support was far superior to what Vegas Pro 13 offers.

Also remember that many of us here have been using Vegas pro for over a decade, from back before it was bought by Sony so we have evolved with it. Back then working with sd footage was fine but as time went on we moved to hd and now 4k, and Vegas Pro just keeps falling behind in it's ability to process this type of footage even though Sony keeps cranking out cameras with increased resolution and bitrates. Their software division is not keeping up with their hardware division and it's making it incredibly difficult for me to recommend Vegas Pro to others, in spite of the fact that it's still the best solution overall for me. So in that respect I didn't purchase a tool with shortcomings, Vegas Pro worked just fine years ago but it's been slowly falling behind over the years and revealing it's gpu shortcomings as video footage got larger and more processor intensive year after year. That leaves people like me for whom the software was awesome years ago to be in the position of the software just falling behind and starting to look around for alternatives. At the moment there are none as far as I can see that have scripting as powerful as Vegas Pro so I'm stuck with it, but I'll still complain about it in hopes that they catch up with modern times.

They will have to catch up at some point because even their consumer level 4k cameras like their new $999 4k video camera will drown Vegas Pro on a typical computer because it records in 4k at 100mbps, which Vegas Pro 13 will struggle with on a persons typical laptop. Meanwhile Premiere Pro eats through that footage in comparison on the same hardware. At some point they will have to fix this if they want people to actually be able to buy and use their 4k video cameras.

to Pete Siamidis - with all due respect to your post above - you seem to be missing some very key points in your assertion.
1) SCS Software is as different a company from say Sony Broadcast as if you were comparing Proctor and Gamble from General Motors. Yes, they are that different by design! No relationship really!
2) Sony continues to design cameras - and the marketplace competition is forcing a faction of the division - meaning that Sony Cameras would be designed around specific workflow criteria - for example the new Catalyst Edit suite. This is to counter what JVC has done for years with Apple and FCP or that of Panasonic and their suites for post production.
3) Sony as a single company is about to go into bankruptcy and reformation into different entities to take over sub-markets.


I grant that you make a point about VegasPro scripting being valuable. But how does that feature of the internals relate to managing multiple websites? I would invite you to post the rest of us on what could be a new application - then perhaps it would enlighten SCS on what market they might pursue with Vegas Pro as it is.

I am prodded into thinking about JVC again - as a deliver of a 4k camera that can simultaneously shoot work files for the web. That concept works very well into say a news website where you are shooting invaluable footage but need the immediacy of web delivered files. That workflow speaks nothing of "scripting". Let us hear more.