Queue Process Threads question

[Nationalsolo]

Hi

 

It may be my PC but VP 4.45 seems to take ages to generate thumbnails and even stops showing the green progress bar, bringing editing to a stop. PC also pauses and sometimes beeps when I try to make a selection.

If I come out of VP after a stopping while I see a progress screen labelled Stopping Queue Process Threads. What are these? As the progress bar is always only about 1/3 or so along the window it seems odd. I never saw this in earlier versions. Is this a bug? I would have thought that after a long wait VP would have completed anything it was doing.

 

Nat

[c_major]

Hi Nat,

 

VP has a few background thread running to generate cache, thumbnails and process sound and images. That message is shown when you shutting down VP. It only shows of VP waiting for a background threads to end.

 

VP 4.45 seems to take ages to generate thumbnails and even stops showing the green progress bar, bringing editing to a stop.

 

Which version are you comparing to?

[Nationalsolo]

Hi Sam

 

I've used most of the earlier versions back to 2.41 but the last one was 4.40. and I can't remember seeing the message then. However I am using and older Vista PC for my editing so I suppose it is showing its age. :-) I can hear it whirr up and struggling when the timeline is being processed. Image files don't have a problem but Video clips, even mpgII are now sometimes slowing the program down to a stop. Is there any mileage in only showing 1 thumbnail per clip as with WMM and would this make processing faster? (Not advocating WMM :-)) though )

 

I can easily reload an older version when I edit stuff for myself and sometimes do but helping someone on the forum means I have to open 4.45.

 

Just checked...Whilst loading a saved project having numerous mpeg2 clips; project loads and puts in the icons in the media list and the clip joins on the timeline in a matter of seconds but then it slows to a crawl as the sound profiles are generated followed by the thumbnails to replace the icons on the media list and finally the thumbnails etc. on the timeline. During this time the PC is running at 100% ....So I can't see it doing things any faster. It's a dual core PC...

 

Nat

[c_major]

We've recently change the video processing pipeline to multi-threaded. It could be an issue if so many threads running at the same time on 1 or 2 CPU cores. Especially for thumbnail - each thumbnail is generated by a separated processing pipeline.

 

I'll investigate this problem and try fall back to single threaded if not many CPU cores available.

[Nationalsolo]

Hi Sam

 

"I'll investigate this problem and try fall back to single threaded if not many CPU cores available."

 

Thanks for the info and indeed, that might be welcome.

I have just done a ruthless cull of programs that I don't use and in particular those that were set to run at startup. (Using CCleaner)

The processor usage has now dropped from 52% on average when the machine was not in use (apparently) to 1% when running Firefox browser; Videopad and this forum together!

 

I shall run a re-edit on a recent project and see how VP 4.45 now performs. Loading files still pushes it up to 100% but it produced the TNs in the media list window in only a few seconds and then dropped back to 0-5%. (Instead of 51%) Adding clips to the timeline produced a similar result. (Up to 100% and back down again after less that 30 seconds)

Processor is now running at 1-2%. A vast improvement.

 

It may be something to suggest to those users who have experience stoppages and very slow performance. OK I know it's a logical thing to do...........

 

 

Nat

[borate]

Another thing that might help is freeing up disc space. Using Windows Explorer (file manager) right-click on the C: drive and then on DISK CLEAN UP.

[c_major]

Thanks Nat for telling your experience.

 

I think it's good to have it on our support FAQ.