Speeding up version 3.xx on slower PCs

[Nationalsolo]

Hi

 

One of the main criticisms of VP 3.xx is slowness in creating thumbnails and rendering the changes made to the timeline. The general concensus is that it is probably due to the inability of the slower PCs to deal with the extra data processing required quickly enough for these multi track versions particularly as Borate has checked the minimum RAM required for adequate processing speed and found it should be at least 4 Gigs.(HD mpeg4 clips)

 

If you are running Vista on a PC like mine...

 

MS Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit SP2

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

 

...it may be useful to remember that you can increase the RAM by using a USB data key of up to 4Gig as a Readyboost.

I'm not sure if later versions of Windows has this feature, but with Vista it's simply a matter of plugging in an empty USB chip into a spare socket and taking the Readyboost option that comes up. The 32 bit Vista can apparently use up to 4 Gigs of extra RAM in this way.

 

It's something I hadn't thought about and am in the process of trying out. It does seem to show an improvement, so much so that, as I have a new project to deal with I may try editing it with VP3.12 instead of 2.41. (which works OK without the Readyboost chip in place.)

 

It might be something others might like to try, or give an opinion on.

 

Nat

[borate]

...it may be useful to remember that you can increase the RAM by using a USB data key of up to 4Gig as a Readyboost.

I'm not sure if later versions of Windows has this feature, but with Vista it's simply a matter of plugging in an empty USB chip into a spare socket and taking the Readyboost option that comes up. The 32 bit Vista can apparently use up to 4 Gigs of extra RAM in this way.

 

Yes, Nat. Readyboost does appear as a tab on the properties menu for removable drives, under Windows 8/8.1.

[Dougie]

I have 16 gigs memory in a fast 4 core computer, and while I like Videopad, any of the 3.xx versions always run quite slow on it. At least in my case, it doesn't seem to be memory related.

[Nationalsolo]

Hi Dougie

 

Despite what Microsoft has to say about Readyboost speeding things up...I feel a little disappointed now as I have just completed some comparisons with the 4meg USB chip in as well as out. I initially thought that clips loaded faster and displayed quicker but to be quite honest I now don't see a great deal of difference. Initially I used only a few MPEG4 1280 x 720 clips so perhaps that was the reason for my being optimistic...it just seemed faster.

 

I tried 92 mpeg4 clips (all about 10-15 second) . They loaded (indexed) to the media list in 2minutes 30 seconds and the last one displayed fully in the left hand preview pane after 6 minutes. (Nothing added to the sequence line.)

There was only a few seconds difference when the USB chip was plugged in for the same processes. (I started with an empty cache each time.) So..... :(.. Thought it might have improved things!

 

MPEG2 conversions from the same 92 files however, loaded to the media list (indexed) in 50 seconds and finished as above in 3 mins 30 seconds, so simply converting the files to mpeg2 format makes a lot of difference. But adding these clips to the sequence was taking so long I gave up trying to time it! So,.... still be using 2.41.

I think you are right....This version (3.xx) is just too slow.

 

Nat

[Dougie]

Yea, there is some approach to how VP works that is different then most editors I've tried. Many allow for editing with effects, transitions, etc without the need to re-render every clip or effect after every change, but rather renders during the actual export. This, of course, means often much longer exporting times, but greatly helps speed up the editing process. Others can be sped up by using smaller, less resource intensive proxy files that don't require heavy use of cpu time. I use Adobe Premiere that way and it's much faster on the same machine. Some even have proxy programs built-in. Then others (Edius with it's Edius HQ format is one example) allow for conversion to a program specific format designed to work quite smoothly with-in that editor (and detail is not lost). VP is apparently an all-at-once attack on the resources design, and I believe that is it's problem.

 

All I know is that 3.00 through 3.14 have all promised to fix this issue and none really have. Perhaps the programmers need to reconsider their approach.