Quote: I've always used ATI, but wondering if PD works better with nVidia. Any thoughts? Seems like nVidia has better support with other video software.

I have seen many posts that some computers and some versions of Powerdirector has issues with Nvidia that does not happen in ATI/AMD cards.

BUT, ATI has their own issues, that depend on the version of the driver software.

The fact is, both Nvidia and ATI have issues in Powerdirector. What the exact issue is depends on the software driver version.

I am using ATI Catalyst 12.1 which is an older version that the current version. The Current ATI version seems to have some issues with Powerdirector 11.

Right now my system is very stable with PD 11 Ultimate. System specs are in my Sig.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

AMD just released 13.1 driver not long ago. PD 11 seems stable with it so far. I have older HD5550 card so that may make a difference. Have been thinking about upgrading to HD7770 or maybe nVidia 660Ti. ATI will release HD8000 series soon so hoping prices will drop again on HD7000 cards. Intel i7 4770k, 16GB, GTX1060 3GB, Two 240GB SSD, 4TB HD, Sony HDR-TD20V 3D camcorder, Sony SLT-A65VK for still images, Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
Gary Russell -- TN USA

I am using an Nvidia 660 Ti with no issues.
I have it hooked up to my laptop via a ViDock 4 Plus out to an external 24" monitor and it works.
PD 14 Ultimate Suite / Win10 Pro x64
1. Gigabyte Brix PRO / i7-4770R Intel Iris Pro 5200 / 16 GB / 1 TB SSD
2. Lenovo X230T / 8GB / Intel HD4000 + ViDock 4 Plus & ASUS Nvidia 660 Ti / Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIZw3GPwKMo&feature=youtu.be

I have read, on some forums over the last 15 years, that Nvidia cards have fewer issues compared to AMD.

My computer uses the Nvidia GT430 1GB, especially recommended for video editing by Nvidea.

And it handles 4K video w/o problems, converting it down to 1920x1080.

Among it's attributes are lower power consumption, less heat, small size and surprisingly low price.

However, this card does not do well for gaming. It has been used in my computer for about 2 1/2 years now.

I did change to Nvidea products nearly 10 years ago, and have had no issues.

Eugene

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Thanks Eugene, but I have been using ATI for almost 20 years with no issues. In all that time, I've owned only one nVidia card and constantly had driver issues. That's why i switched back to ATI. I'm sure both platforms are more mature. The only reason I was considering nVidia was because there seems to be more video editing software that supports CUDA than ATI Stream. However, it seems the future is OpenCL which both graphics companies support.

I'm asking how well does PD11 support CUDA. HAs anyone run Hidef video rendering tests with PD11 and nVidia card? IS there any software for nVidia cards that show how the GPU is being utilized While rendering?

With my HD5550, I run the AMD System Monitor while rendering HD video. PD11 does utilize the GPU, but usually about 25% only while the CPU is at 90-95% on all four cores. When I get into full frame Bluray 3D editing, GPU hardware rendering will be more important. Intel i7 4770k, 16GB, GTX1060 3GB, Two 240GB SSD, 4TB HD, Sony HDR-TD20V 3D camcorder, Sony SLT-A65VK for still images, Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
Gary Russell -- TN USA

See following link: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/23553.page
for more info on this.

I have also found that using the cpu to render gives much better quality as mentioned.
It will take a bit longer to render- but output is much higher quality over the GPU enabled renders from all the tests I have done. Which is a shame since SVRT and Tue Velocity was an interesting buying point.

You can also get the latest free GPU Z to keep on eye on what the NviDia or AMD GPU is doing if you don't have it already http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Rob
PD 14 Ultimate Suite / Win10 Pro x64
1. Gigabyte Brix PRO / i7-4770R Intel Iris Pro 5200 / 16 GB / 1 TB SSD
2. Lenovo X230T / 8GB / Intel HD4000 + ViDock 4 Plus & ASUS Nvidia 660 Ti / Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIZw3GPwKMo&feature=youtu.be

The video quality is not impacted when using a SVRT capable format, there is no rendering of original video, you get the original video. One BIG reason I use PD11.

So there is no rendering in my 1920x1080 60P videos with the exception of transitions, titles etc.

Eugene 73s, WA6JZN ex DL9GC
CYBERLINK PLEASE ADD UHD BLU RAY BURNING SOFTWARE
PD14,
Win10,64bit.CPU i7 6700,16GB ,C= 480 GB SSD ,GPU GTX1060 6GB 1 fan. Plus 3 int, 4 ext HDD's for video etc.LG WH16NS40 reads UHD.
4K 24" ViewSonic monitor.Camera Sony FDR-A

Quote: The video quality is not impacted when using a SVRT capable format ...

Quoting that single line to add clarity to this. Cyberlink states the following:

"CyberLink’s SVRT is available during production when the frame rate, frame size, and file format of each clip are the same. The bit-rate should also be similar. In this case, SVRT is used to render the files. If any clips do not meet the above criteria, they are fully rendered without SVRT."

So users should be aware of this. PD 14 Ultimate Suite / Win10 Pro x64
1. Gigabyte Brix PRO / i7-4770R Intel Iris Pro 5200 / 16 GB / 1 TB SSD
2. Lenovo X230T / 8GB / Intel HD4000 + ViDock 4 Plus & ASUS Nvidia 660 Ti / Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIZw3GPwKMo&feature=youtu.be

Have been reading and comparing PD11 hardware rendering to other editors. Other software mentions ATI OpenCL instead of ATI Stream. Which does PD11 support? I couldn't find it.

Also the other software required ATI HD5700 or better. Guess it's time to upgrade my HD5550. LOL I'll have to read more about ATI cards, too. Intel i7 4770k, 16GB, GTX1060 3GB, Two 240GB SSD, 4TB HD, Sony HDR-TD20V 3D camcorder, Sony SLT-A65VK for still images, Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
Gary Russell -- TN USA

Quote: Have been reading and comparing PD11 hardware rendering to other editors. Other software mentions ATI OpenCL instead of ATI Stream. Which does PD11 support? I couldn't find it.

Also the other software required ATI HD5700 or better. Guess it's time to upgrade my HD5550. LOL I'll have to read more about ATI cards, too.

It is a short sentence in the specs.
http://www.cyberlink.com/products/powerdirector-ultra/specs_en_US.html

Graphics Card

128 MB VGA VRAM or higher (1 GB or higher VRAM and OpenCL capable are recommended)

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

GG,

Not sure if you have downloaded the trial version- it's worth it to play around to get a feel.
I try to always do this before I spend money on a software product. (I have tried most of them- actually bought one then didn't like it and now switched to PD instead- much better and intuitive for me.)

Click on the little Gears looking icon in the top- which is the setup User Preferences
Then click "Hardware Preferences" tab on the left hand side- it has two options:
1. Enable OpenCL technology to speed up video effects/preview render
2. Enable hardware decoding.

PD supports OpenCL, Intel SSE4 encoding, Multiple GPU encoding (aka True Velocity 3)

Note: I always turn off the fast video rendering technology which turns off the Hardware video encoding when producing the final video. I find this gives me the best video quality. I only use fast video render to get a quick video render to see if there are any errors before re-edit then final production render.

Rob
PD 14 Ultimate Suite / Win10 Pro x64
1. Gigabyte Brix PRO / i7-4770R Intel Iris Pro 5200 / 16 GB / 1 TB SSD
2. Lenovo X230T / 8GB / Intel HD4000 + ViDock 4 Plus & ASUS Nvidia 660 Ti / Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIZw3GPwKMo&feature=youtu.be

Thanks - my HD5550 does support OpenGL 3.2, 3.3, and 4.0 . No idea why the other software specified HD5700 or better.

Rob - I did try out the trial version before I purchased, but I check for speed and didn't even think that the quality would be affected which is unfortunate.

My video card is about 4 yr old and have been thinking about upgrading anyway when I build a new computer. nVidia GTRX660ti or ATI HD7870 Hoping the ATI prices will drop after the HD8000 series is released. Intel i7 4770k, 16GB, GTX1060 3GB, Two 240GB SSD, 4TB HD, Sony HDR-TD20V 3D camcorder, Sony SLT-A65VK for still images, Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
Gary Russell -- TN USA

Today I ran some tests with Hardware Accelertion on and off.
Test project was pretty simple - 1 min long, 6 clips, some transitions and 1 effect, 1 title - somewhat like it is usually in real life, just way shorter.
Rendering in different formats gave me different CPU and GPU usage levels, for example:

MPEG-4 Custom profile (1920x1080; Frame rate 50p; 13 Mbps bitrate, 100Mb output file size)
Fast video rendering technology - ON; Hardware acc - ON; - 42 seconds. CPU usage - approx. 30-90% GPU usage - none.
Fast video rendering technology - OFF; Hardware acc - OFF; - 1min13sec. CPU usage - approx. 90-99% GPU usage - none.

AVC (1920x1080; Frame rate 50i; 24 Mbps bitrate, 170Mb output file size)
Fast video rendering technology - ON; Hardware acc - ON; - 45 seconds. CPU usage - approx. 50% GPU usage - 15-30%.
Fast video rendering technology - OFF; Hardware acc - OFF; - 1min01sec. CPU usage - approx. 85-97% GPU usage - none.

WMV (1920x1080; Frame rate 25p; 10Mbps bitrate; 77Mb output file size)
Fast video rendering technology - grayed out, unable to switch on. Hardware acc - ON; 2min47sec. CPU usage - approx. 70-80% GPU usage - none
Fast video rendering technology - OFF; Hardware acc - OFF; same results 2min47sec

I tried other formats as well, and got very various results. Sometimes GPU usage was around 5-6%.

During tests with AVC, I found out that it doesn't matter whether you switch on or off hardware acceleration in settings menu. Results change only if you switch Fast video rendering technology (Hardware video encoder) in Produce screen. I didn't try this with others formats.

So all this thing called Hardware Acceleration in PDR 11 is still a little mysterious and puzzling for me.

I didn't notice any quality changes if Hardware acceleration were applied or not. Different story was unusable AVC videos which were rendered in interlaced mode - Windows media player crashed, VLC played with serious combing. But this isn't connected to hardware acc, like I said - different story.

Another reason for these tests was to find best quality/file size relationship. Of course everything looks excellent when 50p are used, but since mostly I upload my videos to YouTube, then its no big deal in the end, since YT downgrades videos to 30 FPS. And AVC format has better sound, since Dolby Digital 5.1 can be applied, bet same story with YT here - it downgrades it.

Hope there is some use from this. My rig specs are below. i7-3770 | Gigabyte GTX 660 | Asus P8H77-V | Kingston HyperX 16 Gb RAM | Intel 330 180 Gb SSD | 2 Tb Seagate HDD | FSP Raider 550W 85+ | Nexus Prominent R case

I would like to test the integrated graphics HD4000 as well since I read somewhere that it provides even better results than discrete GPUs, but my geek level is too low for finding out how to switch beween two i7-3770 | Gigabyte GTX 660 | Asus P8H77-V | Kingston HyperX 16 Gb RAM | Intel 330 180 Gb SSD | 2 Tb Seagate HDD | FSP Raider 550W 85+ | Nexus Prominent R case

Quote: I didn't notice any quality changes if Hardware acceleration were applied or not.

My test was down converting 1080p to 480p. I noticed that although produce was set at DVD HQ (8Mbps), the output file ended up at much lower bitrate like 5.3-6Mbps. I use the free Media Info to check the files. It can give you lot of info like bitrates and encoding methods.

I didn't test any hidef output. Intel i7 4770k, 16GB, GTX1060 3GB, Two 240GB SSD, 4TB HD, Sony HDR-TD20V 3D camcorder, Sony SLT-A65VK for still images, Windows 10 Pro, 64bit
Gary Russell -- TN USA

Martin,

Those are some good benchmarks and figures to have an idea of what is actually happening.

I did some initial testing with my Intel HD 4000 and as far as I can remember the time and quality of the renders were basically the same as what I have now. Which is good thing, not a bad one. I let the CPU do most of the number crunching when rendering- so it would not have changed at all.

Rob
PD 14 Ultimate Suite / Win10 Pro x64
1. Gigabyte Brix PRO / i7-4770R Intel Iris Pro 5200 / 16 GB / 1 TB SSD
2. Lenovo X230T / 8GB / Intel HD4000 + ViDock 4 Plus & ASUS Nvidia 660 Ti / Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIZw3GPwKMo&feature=youtu.be