Anyone ideas?
What are the critical components for good rendering performance with VideoPad, besides CPU?
I actually got a new CPU, an Athlon II X4 640 quad-core. Other rendering software (for example Cyberlink Powerdirector) makes full use of it's power, runs 2-3 times faster than with the old CPU, all cores almost at 100% busy. Rnedering time for my 3-minute test clip: 3 minutes.
But with VideoPad, I see an average of 30% CPU load, the rendering is only down from 30 minutes to ~20 minutes for the same 3 minute clip (720p, 2 Quicktime .mov files from Nikon camera as source, 2 cross-fades, avi with H.264 as output - different output formats had little impact on rendering time).
I have tried and checked quite few things:
- plenty of RAM free, Videopad.exe only uses ~500MB, h264enc5.exe ~70-80MB
- hardly any load on hard discs and network according to resource manager
- I am using 3 physically distinct drives for source, temp and output (two IDE HDs, one fast NAS for output)
- I have also tried with source material from a fast USB stick - no change in rendering time
Question: Which of the three needs most performance: Source, temp or output?
The HTPC mentioned above with its much less powerful X2 250 CPU runs about 2.4 times faster!
The Win7 resource manager basically tells me that my system is bored with just 30% CPU load and very little load on anything else I can see.
This is really frustrating... any help is highly appreciated.
Update: I have now also done a test run with all relevant data in a RAM disk (i.e. all source material, output and Temp Dir). Resource Monitor confirmed that there was virtually no disk load. Still, the rendering was as slow as ever, CPU only used ~33%. So my disks are definitely NOT the bottelneck...
I have also tried with Virus-Scanner deactivated, no change either.
I'm running out of ideas of what to try next....