Jump to content

How can I speed up rendering time? (VideoPad 2.4.1)


TecnhoViel

Recommended Posts

Hello,

I am working with QuickTime .MOV files from a Nikon camera ibn 720p, 29.7 fps. Renderning time for a less than 3 minute test video is 30-38 minutes (depending on output format), so more than 10x real time. I have tried rendering to .mov, mp4, avi and asf - it's alway 30min+, with avi seeming to be the fastest option (~30min).

 

I know my PC is not a great video editing platform (AMD 64X2 4200+, Asus M2a-VM, integrated graphics AMD 690G (i.e. Radeon X1250 based), 4GB RAM.

But other programs like Cyberlink are ~4 times faster.

 

Is there anything that might be wrong in my configuration? Any specific output format that's specifically efficient?

 

Or is VideoPad just that slow on my hardware?

 

Does VideoPad make any use of the GPU - i.e. would it help, to add a better graphocs card, so CUDA, APP or the like can be used?

Any ideas for speed-up are highly welcome. I love the programm and working with it is very pleasant and fluent - but the rendering time is a show stopper for me. For 1h+ movies it won't even complete rendering over night :-(

Cheers,

Klaus

 

PS: Is there any way to correct my user name in this forum? I introduced a stupid typo, it should read "TechnoViel"...

PPS: I found out that I am running 3.0 - finding out which version one is downloading from NCH is impossible until you check the version in the installed program. I'll start a soperate thread on this...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

If you are creating an avi on your PC then click the "Save Movie" tab and select "Computer/data"

 

Although the default preset window may read Custom, click the down arrow for this choice and select the HD option at the top of the list. (either HD 1080 or HD 720)

The remaining windows will now show the defaults.

Click the Decoder Options button.

The video compressor will now show H264 (Native)

Click the Video Compression settings...

You should now see a Video Quality (Ratefactor) slider.

Rendering will be very much faster if this set to the far right (value 51) but the quality will be rubbish.(blocky)

Try it out with a short sequence to see how you think the result looks.

The default value is around the middle of the range but even a little shift to the right may make a difference to the rendering speed without affecting the result too much.

If you set the slider to the far left, rendering will take for ever and you may not see much improvement.

 

If you select a different format (e.g MPEG4 Native) you can play about with the bitrate.

 

Nat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Nat,

thanks for our detailed description. I have played with the qualioty reatefactor. The result on the file size is quite impressing - VideoPad maintains a surprisingly good quality even when squeezing a lot - but the render time almost stays the same :-(

 

Any way to accelerate this by adding a GPU?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have made a few more tests and came to astonishing results: I rendered the same video on two different PCs, a laptop sporting an Intel Core 2 Duo P8800 and my HTPC with an AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU. Both CPU are theoretically ~30-40% faster than my desktop, but render the Video using Videopad dramatically faster: The laptop needed a tad less than 10min, the HTPC just 7:52! That's factor 3-4!

 

It seems VideoPad performs extremnely poor on my desktop system, while other programs (like Cyberlink, Magix) show a much better performance. On the other PCs I tried the difference is much smaller.

 

How can I analyse the issue of my PC and VideoPad? Maybe it's just one bottleneck that I could fix, maybe even a misconfiguration? Any advice or ideas are highly appreciated!

[update: The slow PC only shows ~75% of CPU load on both CPU cores, while the HTPC showed close to 100%]

 

I would love to use VideoPad as I like the efficient user interface, small footprint (Cyberlink dowloads about 15 times more for instalation!) and the ease of operation.

 

Oh, BTW, I have been using 3.0 from the start. Strangely enough, if I let my browser guide me to the German NCH website, I'm offered 2.31! And both files have exactly the same name... Please NCH folks, make version info (also change log) more visible!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

Hi

 

I haven't a clue what I'm doing here, but I have videopad 3.14. I have 5 movie segments (wmv) amounting to 56 mins and it's taking 4 hours to render. Does that sound aa long way out?

 

I have ASUS 6GB ram, intel core i3-2120 CPU @3.3GHz, 64 bit system.

 

Thanks a lot

 

DR

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi

 

MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit SP2

Intel Core Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20Ghz, 2.0GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GS

VP 3.29

 

"I have 5 movie segments (wmv) amounting to 56 mins and it's taking 4 hours to render. Does that sound aa long way out?"

 

That doesn't sound to bad. Using the computer specs outlined above I used the mpeg2 files from a previously completed project to make a comparison.

 

There were 248 mpeg2 clips loaded to the media list. This generated 778 files in the cache.

 

Dragging and dropping all these clips to the sequence line with no transitions or any other additions (no blanks, effects or splits). resulted in a project of 1hr 22mins 42.7 secs duration which generated 1837 files in the cache with a volume of 2.61 Gigs.

 

VP was set to create an HD720 avi file H.264 format.

 

This took 5 hours 23 mins to render, with the processor working at about 96% on average.

 

 

Nat

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I compared build and render times of VideoPad to Movie Maker (just as an example and because I happen to still have it installed).

 

Project stats:

video resolution: 1280x720

video length: 5 hrs 38 mins

.mov clips: 147

edits: none

other programs running: none

 

VideoPad:

build time (all clip progress bars on timeline green): ≈ 1 hour

CPU load during output render: average 99%

.mov out (H264, rate factor at default (23.0), 30fps): 1:1 movie/render ratio (every second of video takes 1 second to render) = 5 hrs 38 mins render time (or close to it)

.mov out (H264, rate factor 1.0, 30fps): 1:5 render ratio (every second of video takes 5 seconds to render) = over 25hrs render

.mp4 out (H264, rate factor 10.5, 30fps): 1:4 ratio (every second of video takes 4 seconds to render) = over 20hrs render

 

Movie Maker:

build time (all clips loaded and ready): ≈ 8 minutes

CPU load during output render: average 85%

.mp4 out (H264, bitrate 10.13Mbs, 72.44MB/min, 30fps): render time under 2hrs

 

 

Verdict:

VP offers extremely poor performance, even compared to the arguably cheesy Movie Maker.

CPU loads combined with slow render times show how ridiculously inefficient it is.

 

And that's too bad, because I do like the interface -- it needs a little polishing, but only a little.

Were it not for the random crashes and lousy processing rates, I'd be using VP exclusively. But, there's just no way I'm going to wait a day for a render that a different program can produce in 2 hours.

 

I'll watch the forums and version notes to see if this gets fixed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...