NVENC bitrate

A few issues noticed while experimenting with Vegas Pro 20.0 and VoukoderPro v0.7.1.4:

• NVENC VBR target video bitrate is not being observed, although the max bitrate seems to be working. This affects both HEVC and h.264. Didn't try AV1. Tried to set a target video bitrate of anywhere from 2500-512000 kbps etc., but actual output is 200-400 kbps. If 2-pass is enabled, things get even worse (< 200 kbps).
• AAC encoding setting of 96 kb/s CBR gives 128 kb/s. Other bitrate settings seem correct. This could possibly be an issue with the MediaInfo app.
• If Vegas' output file name and VoukoderPro's output file name are not in the same folder/drive, the render hangs.
• If you are creating multiple output files without specifying a unique name for each file, VoukoderPro will write both streams to the same file, resulting in a corrupt file.

• 96kbps AAC confirmed working.
• Duplicate filename behavior confirmed working.
• I can't reproduce the different-folder bug now, even doing what I did before (Vegas destination was default Documents folder on C: drive, VoukoderPro destination was set to D:\temp). Not sure what the difference is now. Free win, I guess?

NVENC bitrate

• The 2 attached files are encoded using supposedly identical settings, one using Voukouder v13.0.2, and one using VoukoderPro v0.7.1.5. Both videos are 1080p and have a target bitrate of 2.5 Mbps. Screenshots of the settings used are included.
• Water videos.zip
• I'm not aware of any user-defined minimum bitrate setting for NVENC VBR in either Voukoder or VoPro. There are only target (average), max, and buffer bitrates. As mentioned, the max rate is being observed, but the actual output bitrate is much lower than the commanded target rate.

Now it won't render at all (v0.7.1.6). When trying to render, immediately throws an error window that says "Unable to start VoukoderPro: Undefined error!"

Also, in Scene Designer, double-clicking on the top NVENC h.264 node (the VBR one, see preset below) will now cause Designer to crash. If you delete the node and create a new one, it will initially allow you to set the parameters, but if you try to access the node properties for a second time, it will crash Designer.

temp scene.zip

One other (unrelated) minor issue is that in the installer options, the Vegas Pro 20 plugin is deselected by default.

Deleted scene.json. Realized this action had just wiped all my saved scenes. Downloaded and imported the file from my previous post. Will rebuild the other lost scenes from memory at a future time.

Scene Designer behavior unchanged, even in a fresh layout with a new encoder node. Render behavior also unchanged.

Update: This info is from the most recent VoPro log file.

(from C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\VoukoderPro\logs\)

2023-08-05 15:08:30 (info)    [EncoderNode.cpp:200] Opening video encoder plugin: h264_nvenc
2023-08-05 15:08:30 (trace)    [FFmpeg:0] Unable to parse option value "-2013260544" as boolean
2023-08-05 15:08:30 (trace)    [FFmpeg:0] Error setting option bluray-compat to value -2013260544.
2023-08-05 15:08:30 (error)    [EncoderNode.cpp:207] Opening the encoder plugin failed with error code: -22
2023-08-05 15:08:30 (error)    [Router.cpp:274] Open phase failed: -22
2023-08-05 15:08:30 (info)    [VoukoderPro.cpp:589] Unable to start VoukoderPro: Undefined error!

NVENC VBR bitrate now confirmed working in v0.7.1.7, both with h.264 and h.265. Thanks.

Clearing the error can also be achieved by deleting the broken h.264 encoder node in Scene Designer and creating a replacement node.