Ideas for speeding the program up?

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Solved by

Aug 12, 2011 20:07

I'm still in the trial version of the program. I want it to work for me, but keep getting issues.

Previously I had a problem of sound bursting into loud static. That seems to be resolved.

But now I've just finished editing my first full project - and I have to say, this is the Slowest video program I've ever used. It's even slower than Premiere, and that's saying something. I thought the whole selling point of Power Director 9 Ultra 64 is how zippy and power charged it is--.

I'm on a brand new computer, 64 bit, Windows 7, 8 gigs RAM, 6 core, 3 Ghz. That certainly meets the minimum requirements. After a not very good experience today, I double checked to make sure my NVIDIA driver is current--it is.

But while editing, every time I moved the cursor to a new location in the time line, it took, and I counted, a full 5 seconds for the preview screen to catch up, and before play back was possible. Constantly I would get the Windows spinny thing while the program tried to catch up, and I wasn't doing anything unusual--just trying to work my way through the project.

The program also crashed 3 times while editing, and threatened to more times than that. I'd see a flash of "not responding"--then it would go back to working.

While making a menu template to work with, it flashed and danced crazily on the screen, and took a really long time to save the template.

Right now I'm burning this test to a folder, and my CPU meter is hovering around 90%--Is that normal? The RAM meter is at 36%--why isn't it using more RAM--?

I can't find detailed settings to improve things. But surely there have to be some things I can change in order to make this run fast as advertised. An INI file or something I can tweak--?

rbowser

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Aug 12, 2011 20:41

Your concerns about speed start with YOU doing something for US...

Post your DXdiag by reading PART B.

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/7958.page

Performance issues start with the DXdiag. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Aug 12, 2011 21:06

Quote: Your concerns about speed start with YOU doing something for US...

Post your DXdiag by reading PART B.

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/7958.page

Performance issues start with the DXdiag.

Thank you very much for the reply, Barry - I thought maybe there were some generic tweaks without detailed info. That reveals how Consumer and non-techno I am.

I've run two diagnostic reports, as per the link you posted and am attaching them to this post. It'll be great if something can be detected that I can do something about, so PD9 will run up to the speed I was expecting. Thanks!

rbowser

Filename	64rbowserDxDiag.txt	Download
Description
Filesize	44 Kbytes
Downloaded:	218 time(s)

Filename	rbowserDxDiag.txt	Download
Description
Filesize	79 Kbytes
Downloaded:	216 time(s)

RobertJ/OZ

Senior Contributor Location: Melbourne Australia Joined: Aug 14, 2006 02:26 Messages: 1209 Offline

Aug 12, 2011 21:19

Hi rbowser,

I also have that other program you mention, plus some very high end editing programs and I can assure you that, depending on the complexity of your project, PowerDirector (64bit) is up to 10 times faster when rendering than your other program, which is only 32 bit.
What format is your video, if HD make sure you disable shadow edit files, you do not need them, your machine has sufficient resources.

Robert

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Aug 12. 2011 21:24

Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

PDtoots

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Aug 12, 2011 21:36

Your driver is actually not current, go to Nvidia, do not use the Windows driver search.
I'm not saying it's the answer, but it could help.
Free up some space on your C drive.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Aug 12. 2011 21:37

HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

RobertJ/OZ

Senior Contributor Location: Melbourne Australia Joined: Aug 14, 2006 02:26 Messages: 1209 Offline

Aug 12, 2011 21:43

Barry is correct, you do need to free up space on C drive

Robert Intel i7 930, 16GB ram, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb,Ver. 14.12 Win7 64 bit
Intel i7 7700 HQ, 16 GB ram Nvidia GTX 1050Ti 4GB dual drives 1 TB SSD + 1 TB HDD Win 10

PDtoots

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Aug 12, 2011 22:41

Thank you for the follow-ups, guys. Let me see what I can do, and I'll be back to ask for more advice, or report what my success has been.

rbowser

rbowser

Contributor Joined: Aug 08, 2011 16:48 Messages: 515 Offline

Aug 12, 2011 23:45

VAST IMPROVEMENT - Thanks to you guys, Barry and Robert.

I went to NVIDIA and saw a new driver was indeed available. Mine was from May of this year, the newer one is from this month, August. Installed it - and when I went back to the project, I no longer had the 5 second wait between pushing Play and getting playback.

Also, I noticed I had the preview resolution set to "High Preview Resolution" instead of "Normal"--changing that to Normal boosted response a lot also, and the difference in preview quality doesn't matter to me at all.

As far as freeing up space on my C drive - I thinned a teeny bit out, but that's just my program partition, not my files. I have just the minimum of programs I need. Some are rather large because my main use of the computer is in producing music, and those programs aren't small. But there's nothing else I can throw out.

I've used just a bit more than half of that partition, 90 gigs are free out of 195. You mean I should waste 90 gigs of space--? Should I start a new partition for any more programs I install maybe? But video projects, music projects, aren't going into the C drive.

I do have a new issue, I'll start another thread - I've now looked at my first DVD file from PD9, and it's not looking very good. The poorest quality I've seen, in fact. It has the dreaded horizontal line effect - So far I can't see many options for setting the quality of a burn. I'm accustomed to having quite a few different choices, but in PD9, all I really found are the choices of HP, SP, LP and Smart Fit. I used Smart Fit since it automatically sized the project to fit on a disc--I didn't really think there was another choice. Standard was too small, LP was absurdly small, and HQ was too large.

To answer a question from Robert, this is a standard 4:3 project. The original source file is only 3.1 gigs in size.

rbowser

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Aug 12. 2011 23:47