I love my new Virb Ultra 30 but the incredibly slow speed at which it exports video in Ffmpeg is pretty shocking to the point where I can't get videos out the same day and I'm seriously considering getting a GoPro instead. It took 2 hours and 20 minutes to export 23 minutes of 1080p video at 30fps, and that's with my multi-core processor overclocked and running 8GB DDR3 ram with Samsung SSD in W7. I've a fast computer but graphics card is perhaps outdated. Would a new graphics card do much to speed up exporting edited videos with G-Metric overlays? I don't want to sacrifice quality. Minimum is 1080p 30fps on High (maybe medium for some videos). Also why do they strip the sound from my slow-motion videos? Even my cheap smart phone shooting in 120fps and Movie Maker keeps the sound! Please sort this Garmin! It can't be that hard. Thanks all.
The amount it will speed up depends on the output quality you desire. Starting in version 5.0, virb edit started offloading some processing to gpu for all export qualities. But there was a bug that made medium, high, and max exactly the same quality. Starting with 5.4.2, garmin updated the quality settings. Low and medium still utilize the gpu for encoding. High and Max only use the cpu to encode now.
So if you are ok with the quality and bitrate that medium quality gives you, then yes a new video card would speed things up. But if you are going to be choosing high or max quality, then no it wouldn't help any with the encoding, only with decoding.
If you do upgrade, I would recommend you go nvidia route. I'm not sure that garmin supports gpu offloading with other manufactures cards yet. I have a 1070 and it is actually overkill for virb edit. So you don't need to get the biggest.
Once I get a chance I'll find some 1080p@30fps source files I have and I'll let you know how long my setup takes to export.