3.12 render of timelien often doesn't start!

[Dougie]

I mentioned this before and got no rewponse. Sometimes I will put a clip on the timeline (it can be the very first clip, or several clips down the line) and it literally takes several minutes for the green line (clip render line) to start moving. Other times it renders quite quickly. This happens wether it's a very short project or a long one.

 

I usually delete the cache(s) before I start new projects, so I doubt that's the case. From reading this forum, I find I'm not alone with these kinds of problems. Someone recently posted that these problems started after version 2.41, so what did they change in the software code that is causing this?

[Nationalsolo]

Hi Dougie

 

I don't know what algorithm is used to get the clips to come up on the timeline once they are dropped there or a project is loaded but I have noticed that the green bar quite often stops as a soundtrack is loaded, and this might be a soundtrack from a clip elswhere on the timeline.

Overall I find this slooooow and seldom renders in the order that the clips were added.

 

e.g. Starting with an empty cache: I placed 6 MPEG4 clips onto the media list.

They loaded in the reverse order 6,5,4,3,2,1 but rendered to thumbnails on the media list in the order 1,6,4,3,2,5

I thought this might have been due to their size but the small to big order was 4,5,2,1,3,6 so no correlation at all.

 

Dropping the lot en mass to the sequence line they rendered logically 1,2,3,4,5,6 but the soundtrack started with 1 and then stopped half way through until all the thumbnail clips had rendered and then continued quite rapidly by finishing 1 then 6,5,4,3,2.

The whole process took several minutes, presumably since the cache was empty. Total video time 2 mins.

 

Saved as a project and then reloaded without touching the cache file, it loaded in a matter of seconds.....Great but going on to

just split one of the clips it took several minutes before the green bar, thumbnails and sound tracks for the two halves had rendered. Altogether this is too slow and one of the main drawbacks to this version of the program.

I have three projects currently on the go and I'm using 2.41to do them.

 

Nat

[Dougie]

Reading all these fault posts on versions 3.xx gives one the feeling that perhaps these versions were a quick response to user complaints (particularly the 'I won't buy it this way' type), and perhaps they should have gone through longer beta testing before their release. It really started going downhill after 2.41!

 

Perhaps NCH should collect all these complaints, and sit back to take whatever time is required to come up with a good, well working version before the next release. I'm willing to wait!

[borate]

Reading all these fault posts on versions 3.xx gives one the feeling that perhaps these versions were a quick response to user complaints (particularly the 'I won't buy it this way' type), and perhaps they should have gone through longer beta testing before their release.

 

Performance (or lack of it) gives the impression that, since 3.0, they have ALL been BETAs. But 3.10 isn't labeled as such, and may well be the best in that series to date.

That said, some failings may be exacerbated by deficiencies or characteristics of the user's system.

[Dougie]

We've been over that before and I doubt it's the problem. I use several pro-type editors as well on this same machine (Edius 7 and Premiere Pro 6.5) without these problems. I use Videopad for fast projects that don't need high precision, in which it's quite useful. I agree with you that 3.10 has been the best of the 3.xx's, and hope we can eventually get the latest version features with the reliability that 2.41 had.

[Nationalsolo]

Hi

 

Even allowing for the speed etc. of the computer being used, after 2.41 the whole program became slow. I suspect that with the multiple videotracks and the alpha channel data also having to be saved for each along with many more thumbnails etc. that this might be the source of the problem, but it doesn't explain the slowness experienced when a single video track is used as in 4.21.

There is also the "introduced" fault that when images are used the final one (or the one after the last video clip) ifails to render in the exported film. This didn't happen previously.

 

Nat

[Dougie]

I agree. I want to make it clear that my agenda is not simply to put down Videopad. It's a nice little editor with a lot of potential. But there's just something quirky about the written code of the software that is creating these problems. And really what it comes down to is the experience of the end user. The most beautiful peach in the world is worthless if it's sour. I plan to stay with it, but it certainly needs more work.