PD11 Trial - MP4 encoding without hardware acceleration

tilimil

Newbie Joined: Sep 30, 2012 12:13 Messages: 5 Offline

Solved by

Sep 30, 2012 12:34

I am trying out the PD 11 trial before I buy. I am trying to produce a video with the MP4 profile. The software keeps telling me that it won't let me encode anything with H.264 unless my card supports hardware encoding. I have an ATI Radeon 6870 and I have installed the latest drivers and the media codec package. Cyberlink support is being very unhelpful and I am hoping someone here can help me understand what is going on.

Does this card (Radeon 6870) support hardware acceleration? It appears it might not but I am not sure how to know for sure.
Why are they not allowing me to produce a H.264 encoded file without hardware acceleration available? Seems like they would be losing a good size of their potential market here.
Are there any workarounds to be able to produce an MP4 file even if my card indeed does not support H.264 hardware encoding? Producing it in another format and then converting to MP4 with ffmpeg or Handbrake seems less than optimal.

Thanks in advance for any help.

tilimil

Newbie Joined: Sep 30, 2012 12:13 Messages: 5 Offline

Sep 30, 2012 12:36

Oh, and DxDiag attached...

Filename	DxDiag.txt	Download
Description
Filesize	25 Kbytes
Downloaded:	434 time(s)

tilimil

Newbie Joined: Sep 30, 2012 12:13 Messages: 5 Offline

Sep 30, 2012 13:37

Ok, I found the answers to my last two questions finally. I see that the full version does have software encoders for H.264.

So I guess now I am left still trying to understand why I can't get hardware encoding to work. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

Michael8511

Contributor Location: U.S.A. Indiana Joined: Jan 14, 2012 16:12 Messages: 374 Offline

Sep 30, 2012 18:48

I have the full version and I can encode with or with out hardware. If I remember right I had to activated mp4. Intel i7 5960X overclock to 4 Ghz 16 GB of ram.
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BarryTheCrab

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

Sep 30, 2012 20:03

The trial may be restricted. 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

tilimil

Newbie Joined: Sep 30, 2012 12:13 Messages: 5 Offline

Sep 30, 2012 20:47

It clearly says the trial should allow me to do hardware encoding of H.264 at the following URL:
http://www.cyberlink.com/downloads/trials/powerdirector-ultra/download_en_US.html

BarryTheCrab

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

Sep 30, 2012 21:43

http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector-ultimate/specs_en_US.html
This page also refers to your series. 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

AdyR

Newbie Location: UK Joined: Sep 10, 2009 09:13 Messages: 10 Offline

Oct 03, 2012 19:22

Quote: Ok, I found the answers to my last two questions finally. I see that the full version does have software encoders for H.264.

Does that mean you have found somewhere it states the trial does not support software H.264 encoding?

I have been back and forth with support trying to find out why I can't produce H.264 videos in the PD11 trial and they have not mentioned this to me

I even asked them why I can't use software encoding like I do in PD10. Trouble is support never answer the questions I ask and don't listen to the information I give them which is very frustrating.

I have the full version of PD10 and that can only produce H.264 videos with the software / SVRT encoders. I get an error message when I try to use the hardware for H.264 but it does work for MPEG 2, etc so I guess the ATI 5800 card does not support H.264 acceleration.

I have been holding back buying the upgrade as the trial appeared not to work but maybe it is just a trial limitation?

I wonder if this is also why the SVRT is not working for me in PD11. PD10 takes about 5 seconds to analyse my latest 2 hour video and suggests 1 profile that I can select. PD11 takes about 15 minutes to do the analysis then suggest over 400 profiles and will not allow me to select any.
If this is just a trial limitation then I will be happy to go for the upgrade.

Best regards,
Adrian.

tilimil

Newbie Joined: Sep 30, 2012 12:13 Messages: 5 Offline

Oct 03, 2012 21:25

Yes, I did find that documented somewhere but do not recall exactly where now. I also bought and installed PD11 and can confirm that the software encoders work.

As for the hardware encoding, that still is not working and Cyberlink's "customer support" is proving to be very poor. Not quite sure why they have this whole ticketing system if they aren't going to respond.

AdyR

Newbie Location: UK Joined: Sep 10, 2009 09:13 Messages: 10 Offline

Oct 04, 2012 14:49

Thanks for the feedback tilimil. I guess I will just have to pay up and hope for the best.

I know what you mean about "customer support". I have two tickets open, one about the problem producing H.264 and one about slower performance than PD10 when it comes to loading projects and SVRT. The response I get on both tickets has followed exactly the same responses / request for information, all of which I provided in the first place. Both question are being handled by the same person according to the name in the replies. I get the feeling that they just follow a script of questions until you give up and go away or they run out of questions and just close the ticket. The only reason I put up with it is that PD is the best in the price range.