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Aresby

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Posts posted by Aresby

  1. 22 hours ago, borate said:

    And what about the "use hardware-accelerated video effects" ?  Did switching that ON or OFF make any difference?

    Have you cleared Windows TEMP files lately?  Here's a handy free utility.

    I've learned that my PC has no hardware acceleration to speak of. So it's off. Permanently. 

    I've not cleared out the TEMP file but I'm confused why that is relevant? I use a special folder for all VP files for temporary cache files. 

  2. 10 hours ago, c_major said:

    Are you always getting "Building Preview" on a specified type of transition?

    It's probably more likely on a zoom (I zoom into a portion of the screen in about 1 second, stay zoomed in for maybe 10 seconds, then back out again). However, even on pretty standard crossfades it can happen. I don't use that many effects so if it's going to happen it will happen on a very limited set anyway.

  3. 4 hours ago, borate said:

    Does clearing the CACHE help or hinder?

    To be honest, although I occasionally clear out unused cache files (by clicking that button) I find that if I clear the cache it takes forever just to build all the preview timeline snapshots again so I tend to avoid doing this. I'm 90% certain I tried this in the past (probably as a result of someone here suggesting it!) and it made no difference.

  4. But the question remains, why does it say (on my videos, at least) that it's "Building Preview" each time I try and preview past some transitions? Not all transitions, but on the ones where it does state this, it stubbornly refuses to ever let me preview that bit of the video in real time (I just hope, and review the final exported video).

    I've found that once I've been editing for about 20 minutes (in which time I've probably got several dozen cross-fade transitions where I remove "Erm" and "Ums" and other such mutterings) this is when it all goes a bit "Building Preview" crazy. I've (sort of) learned to live with this constraint but it's still quite annoying. I've downgraded the preview resolution past the point where I can read any on printed matter, such as eBay listings (so that's not acceptable) but it made no difference anyway.

    I realise that my graphics card is bottom of the list but there's no upgrade path for me there in my Ultra Small Form Factor PC. (sad face).

  5. @MattDUsing either of those settings how long does it take you to generate, say, a 10 (or 15, or 30 - so I can extrapolate) minute video? I've got a less powerful PC than you, an i5 Quad Core (no hyperthreading) 2.9GHz 16Gb and it still renders in far more than real-time (so a 10 minute video takes about 20 minutes, in H264 1080P 25fps). 

    If I generate a MPEG4 video at 20 fps .mp4 it takes about 75% of real-time (so a 30 minute video takes about 20 minutes to render, or thereabouts).

    Hmm, I've just seen that AMD are to bring out a 16-core monster in the summer to rival Intel's i9... :o

  6. On 2017-5-1 at 3:22 AM, MattD said:

    Working fine for me on PC. I don't think 5.0.1 was available on PC?

    I only see occasional drops to 50%, and even then the duration is short. I suspect it has something to do with hyperthreading.

     

    jjgDJK1.png

     

    Ah ha! that screenshot explains a lot (of both your effusing and my grumbling). I don't generate H264 videos; I use .mp4 because when I started with VP it took forever to generate a 20-minute H264 video (I mean, hours). So I'm generating .mp4 which doesn't use the x264encoder hence why my CPU % is a bit like yours shown against VideoPad Editor. Worse than that, 5.01 (yes, for the PC) was so bad even generating .mp4 videos that I have dropped my framerate to 20fps, not ideal but good enough for my YouTube channel. I wanted to revert to 4.xx but my video was edited using 5.01 which does the transitions differently, meaning not backward compatible.

    Maybe I should retest 5.03 generating one of my existing videos using H264? :huh:

  7. That's interesting (and what I have been waiting for - I'll give it a try tonight and see if I get the same result).

     

    UPDATE

    I tried updating from 5.01 to 5.03 and my .mp4 video of 30 minutes rendered in 23:08 mins at 20fps, 8192kbs, 128kHz audio - I think this is the same as in 5.01. Additionally, CPU did not exceed about the 42% mark (overall CPU utilisation at the time 76%). Oh well, maybe the next release...

     

  8. v5.01

    If I add (centered) text where the first line is 13pt and the second line is 23pt the space between those lines can be HUGE - and there's no easy way of reducing it.

    I've tried adding a line in-between them of, say, 5pt or less, to get the spacing correct which appears to work in the preview. Save and reload the project and the spacing is back to the huge leading again.

    I'd first of all like to see this behaviour fixed so that each line just printed whatever point size has been selected (like Word) without huge spaces between lines of text.

    Secondly, as a feature improvement, I'd be hugely grateful in being able to create text overlays where the leading (space between lines) can be manually specified (again, like Word). It would be even better if each line of text could be moved about to get the exact placement just right - currently there is no way that I know of to get text left-aligned with, say, a 5cm margin. It's either left, or right or centred but I would like my bulleted text to be 5cm from the left margin, for instance.

    Anyway, enough of the wish list, any plans to fix the weird behaviour of the current text placement / leading between lines of different point sizes?

  9. So the decrease in rendering time was (mainly) due to to the reduction in frames actually being generated rather than a reduction in computation time in converting a 20fps source to 25fps. Oh well.

    However, as I said, my video quality still looked good, there's little movement (so no blurring) in the video anyway (I do make the video sound boring but I'm hoping it's not!) so maybe I should stick to 20fps until NCH release a version of VP that consumes 101% of my CPU and can generate a 20 minute video in 5 minutes ;) (I live in perpetual hope).

    If you want to watch it, it's called "Watching paint dry, part 8". A real winner. :D

     

  10. Hey guys

    As you know I've been concerned about the speed of exporting videos with release 4.58 and above (before then they seemed to generated more quickly).

    I know NCH is aware that not all CPU power is being taken by the export (and will hopefully speed it up soon) but that aside Borate (or possibly one of the other tech specialists) mentioned that the export fps could affect the time if the video output was not the same fps as the source video(s).

    So this week I generated my entire video with an fps of 20 (for both cameras) and exported with the same fps (usually I export at 25fps as per YouTube recommendations). It definitely seemed to export more quickly - quicker than real time which was my recent experience with VP. Can this be true? Incidentally the video quality at 20fps vs 25fps was (to my older eyes anyway) indistinguishable. So my 20 minute video finished in about 15 minutes this week, hurrah!

    Just to muddy the water a little, this was the first video I generated with 16Gb installed (instead of 12Gb) but I didn't really see much more memory being used anyway so maybe this had no effect?

    Anybody know about fps and export speed, either NCH or other users?

    Video generated: .mp4 format, 8192 bps, 128 kHz audio, 20fps

  11. 10 hours ago, c_major said:

    Video compression are lossy. To trade off between quality and size you can adjust the codec options. The codec options can be found by clicking on "Encoder Options" in the export video dialog. There are different options for different codecs.

    We up raised codec output quality recently so it will take longer to encode. You can also speed it up by lower the output quality in codec options.

    Does this apply when generating a video in non H.264 mode, as I generate in .mp4 at 8192bps (mainly because it is much quicker and the end result is "good enough" for YouTube)? In other words, if I generate at a "lower quality" of, say, 6000bps now, will the quality be as good as the old (pre 4.58) 8192bps?

  12. 10 hours ago, c_major said:

    Prizm is a one to one file converter and does not need to process the images in the video stream. It use a totally different pipeline to VideoPad. You can't have overlays, effects and transitions etc. in Prizm.

    We are always working on improve performance. We will make adjustments as soon as we see a chance to make it faster without breaking something else.

     

    Thanks for clarifying the differences, c_major, between the two methods of generating videos in two products.

    I guess the point here is that NCH obviously understands our need for speed and has it on their backlog. That's all we can ask for. Stability first, of course. Now that I've found the root cause of my BSODs (bad memory stick) I'm generating my VP videos with gay abandon again as I'm not on tenterhooks waiting for the crash!

  13. And Bob has the machine that I aspire to get; but he (well, VP) also has the problem that prevents me from even thinking about it.

    Now, NCH say some of the processing is done by the GPU and VP's been made more efficient generally, but I still second Bob's desire to configure VP like the Prizm Video File Converter; render a 40 minute video in under 10 minutes whilst you're having a coffee.

    Re-exporting when you discover a mistake is then not so onerous.

    Any plans on this front NCH?

  14. Final update on the Windows 10 BSOD saga: It's not VP causing it.

    After lengthy investigation (crashes were sporadic) MemTest86 identified a stick of Crucial memory that was to blame, which I'm hoping to RMA as they have a lifetime warranty (for the original purchaser).

    So, nothing to worry about on the VP front, I'll get this stick replaced and get another to bring the total to 16Gb that may help general Windows (and more specifically, VP) improve performance.

  15. Right, I understand about the 16Gb, as you rightly say Win10 and everything else that runs will certainly make use of more memory anyway (previously I had 12Gb) and will make less of use of a swap file.

    Regarding the bit about offloading the processing onto the GPU, does that apply to all GPUs even my rubbish Intel Graphics (that you positioned one step above a 32K VGA card I believe)? I'm not sure my GPU is going to help (rather hinder) but it raises the question about upgrading my GPU to something more meaty.

    Put it another way: if I were to upgrade to a modern Intel i7 Quad Core (eg Intel (Haswell-E) Core i7 5960X) with NVIDEA Gforce GTX1080 (just a random card) would I expect to see a significant reduction in export time (I render not in H264 but mp4 as it's quicker, at a constant 8192bps and 25fps)?

  16. 12 hours ago, c_major said:

    Sometimes we want to keep the number of threads limited. More threads means more resource(mostly memory) required.

    We've added a mechanism recently to detect if memory is running low, VP will reduce the number of threads to ensure the export can be finished.

    Also, when you say 30% - 70%, do you meant the overall CPU usage or VP process only?

    I mean VP process varied between 30% - 70%. There was still capacity (% idle) left. 

    Regarding your point about memory usage, I can totally understand that you don't want to my PC to run out of resources but I'd like to know how to increase the performance (reduce the export time). For example, I've removed what may be a faulty RAM stick from my PC so now I'm only running on 8Gb (barely sufficient for Win10 and VP). If I purchase another RAM stick to bring the total to 16Gb will VP increase the threads to take advantage of that extra memory or am I wasting my money?

    Any pointers gratefully received!

  17. I generating my most recent video using V5.01 (and tried out the "censored" filter whilst I was at it, pity you cannot move and resize the block on screen rather than via the sliders, a future enhancement perhaps?).

    I was disappointed that despite your previous response to my post about slow exporting, this version did not use all available CPU on my i5 quad core machine. It seemed to render in more-or-less real-time (35-minute video took roughly 35m to render, and the CPU varied between 30% - 70%).

    I don't understand why the export rendering process cannot be made more CPU intensive - under the control of the user. That is, if I want to just go and make a coffee whilst exporting because my PC is, effectively, 100% busy with VP exporting then that's my choice. On the other hand, if I do want to still use my PC and accept that VP will export more slowly that should be my choice too.

    I reckon my PC used to generate a 30 minute video in about 20 minutes using 4.48 and it used 100% CPU. Why not now?

  18. Because they are selling software almost as a service. Whilst your current version will work forever (?), the new version requires a new payment which I was happy to do given it's been a year since I paid anything.

    Pretty standard to do this although I must admit to expecting a bigger step change between v4 and v5.

  19. 17 hours ago, Nationalsolo said:

    Hi

    My "Clear out" volume is set to 3000 (3 Gb)  Try changing the value and see if it cures the problem. I don't think it IS the problem as it only clears out unused files. i.e. those not in the loaded project. But give it a try anyway.

    Nat

    Mmm. Interesting. I added my clips in the usual fashion. They tried to start generating the green line but gave up about 30% of the way through (the green line generated so far disappeared).

    I then increased the "cache clear out" setting to 3Gb and guess what? They started generating the green line again and succeeded. Coincidence? Only NCH support will be able to tell us whether that clear out value is in some the maximum size of the cache directory. Is this the answer?

  20. On 12/02/2017 at 4:55 PM, Aresby said:

    Many times, in fact. I even moved the cache folder around. VP used to be so stable...

    On the plus side, it did export my 30+ minute video, first time, without crashing or anything! 

    Did that, even moved the cache folder to a different drive, no difference. I'll be making another video this weekend so I'll let you know if the symptoms repeats...

  21. 2 hours ago, Aresby said:

    I've cleared the cache, restarted VP, but the behaviour persists. Is my cache too small? I've set it to clear out unused cache files once it hits 1Gb.

    Many times, in fact. I even moved the cache folder around. VP used to be so stable...

    On the plus side, it did export my 30+ minute video, first time, without crashing or anything! 

  22. Hi Guys

    Another video, another surprise from VP.

    This time, I noticed the preview was being particularly awkward, with it freezing with a fixed picture many times, especially after I had cut it. I've cleared the cache to force it to regenerate but it happened many times. I even changed the resolution of the preview to ensure it really was regenerating the cache. 

    I also noticed that when I added video clips to the project, no preview seemed to be generated; that is, you could play the clip, but no green line appeared below the clip to indicated it was (or had) generated the preview.

    Many of my clips now have partial green lines (I left it for several hours) with several gaps. Here's a (partial) screen shot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqht4s0lovy0jxx/VP_PreviewLineWithGaps.png?dl=0

    I've never seen this sort of behaviour before with VP (all my clips in all my other 70+ videos all generate the green line as soon as added to the project, with no gaps).

    I've cleared the cache, restarted VP, but the behaviour persists. Is my cache too small? I've set it to clear out unused cache files once it hits 1Gb.

    Any ideas?

     

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