No H.A when using effects per default.

jan den hollander

Newbie Joined: Sep 18, 2015 15:54 Messages: 49 Offline

Solved by

Sep 26, 2015 22:21

As other posters already suspected I can confirm no H.A is used when effects are used in a project.

When I render a file from the timeline just as it is with no modifications at all I get up to 80% speed

on my GTX 980 TI,as soon as any effect is applied everything is ported to CPU..HA reduced to just 4%.

This means HA is only involved when no effects are used in a project.

Now..for me this epic flaw in PD14 renders the whole editor useless/meaningless.

This way the S.W can only be used as a file converter using H.A and for that there are many other app"s.

I can't understand how C.L can advertise P.D14 as being able to use H.A when they must know it can't

because of the effect in project not being H.A capable..is false advertising.

So..They have my money and I can go back to Vegas that has nearly every effect with H.A but is unable to

render the whole project with H.A and is therefore to slow to render HD/UHD.

Currently,with P.D it's the exact opposite..it can render a file with H.A but only when no effects are used.

With effects (which is the whole point of any editor) it's only C.P.U and therefore to slow to render H.D/UHD.

So..potentional buyers BE AWARE of this epic shortcoming when you are looking for H.A with P.D.

It will NOT work no matter what graphicscard in use,because of this effects issue one is always forced

to use C.P.U only!

Unbelieveable and C.L must be aware of it..if not they're just a joke.

Don't buy until this has been fixed..if ever.

jan den hollander

Newbie Joined: Sep 18, 2015 15:54 Messages: 49 Offline

Sep 28, 2015 08:47

Hard to believe no comments on my post.
Because I told you right...right?
What is this here?
Is it because I'm new here?
Anyone here could check out the thruth of my post easy.
Just load a file onto the timeline and render it without effects.

Then look at the speed using gpu..z or any other monitor.
load the same file using any effect and see the difference.
In speed using just cpu.

Are you blind?

Just posted the same issue to support.
No answer yet..as expected.

Talk to me about it peeps.
Don't just ignore me .
You know better?
Tell me about it.

Thank you.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Sep 29, 2015 02:16

I'm thinking no one has responded because you've made a lot of assumptions and come to some pretty outrageous conclusions.

I don't think other people have seen anything like what you're describing, including people with years of experience with PowerDirector, so maybe you could pack up your test project and attach it or post a link to a cloud drive where other people can test it on their machines.

There are plenty of members here who are willing to look at what you've found if you're willing to give us more details. You ranting about how CL is doing XYZ based one some unknown testing and you stating that they're a joke is a good way to push lots of people away who might otherwise be interested in hearing what you've found.

If you're not happy about things you're seeing and you want to understand if there's something going on under the hood with PD14 or with your system, I guarantee that people will volunteer to help. If you're only here to bash PD or complain about things that you aren't willing to explain, then this will probably be the only response you get.

How this proceeds or ends is up to you.

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PepsiMan

Senior Contributor Location: Clarksville, TN Joined: Dec 29, 2010 01:20 Messages: 1054 Offline

Oct 01, 2015 10:36

Quote:

As other posters already suspected I can confirm no H.A is used when effects are used in a project.

When I render a file from the timeline just as it is with no modifications at all I get up to 80% speed

on my GTX 980 TI,as soon as any effect is applied everything is ported to CPU..HA reduced to just 4%.

This means HA is only involved when no effects are used in a project...

welcome to the forum.

your observation isn't a mirrage. not everyone have PC like yours.

i have experienced your observation. since i am not technically inclined so i'll use someone's...

Quote:

I notice that your rendering is only about 0.3x for both. Ie. 3 minute rendering on a 1 minute clip. That is likely because you are

using some effects in your project, which are run on the CPU, not offloaded to the GPU. Only the compression is offloaded to the

GPU. So, IMO, your test is not a good one for HA. If you try to simply put a clip on the timeline without any effects or changes, and

then render with the hardware encoding, that will be a better test for HA. I doubt that the GTX 960 is going to encode H.264 any

faster than the GTX 750 Ti. The main thing you gain is that there is extra silicon in the GTX 960 to encode H.265 in hardware also.

And there is also silicon in the GTX 960 to decode H.265 in hardware, but it's not clear that PowerDirector 14 is properly taking

advantage of it according to other threads...

key here is, what Julien is saying is, ' your test is not a good one for HA ' ' simply put a clip on the timeline without

any effects or changes, and then render with the hardware encoding, that will be a better test for HA... '

there, now you have a homework.

Quote:

Yep, in my experience that's the program in-efficiency. A faster CPU helps preparing and feeding more data to the

GPU, but at some point it hits a bottleneck.

happy editing.

PepsiMan

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Oct 01. 2015 10:48

'no bridge too far'

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jan den hollander

Newbie Joined: Sep 18, 2015 15:54 Messages: 49 Offline

Oct 02, 2015 07:31

Thanks for the welcome..

But I stick to what I said.
It seems You don't understand what's going on here.
The proof is in monitoring the performance of the graphicscard
with and without any effects added to a file in the timeline and
try to render it,there is no such thing as H.A with effects.

So..if you want that,don't use pd 14 as a editor,just as a file converter.
Then and only then the S.W behaves as expected and paid for.
Period.

And as for experienced use goes..I'm a user of PD 12/13 and now 14
myself for years..none of them actually delivered the advertation blurb.

I regret to say,but it's true.
My system specs are not added yet,since I just got here.
So what are you talking about?

What is this..P.D fanboy talk or what?

What is it with you peeps ready for some conclusion about me,
but blind to the shape of the S.W you are using and paying for?

Even the great and free of charge handbrake does far better when it
comes to H.A renders,although of course it's not an editor.

I can use it in Vegas with the frameserver and achieve far better
results in renderspeed compared to P.D14.

Bla..bla..bla..I could go on about this.
but I guess it's enough for now.
just don't treat me like some ignorant fool.
who doesn't know what he's talking about.
thank you.

jan den hollander

Newbie Joined: Sep 18, 2015 15:54 Messages: 49 Offline

Oct 02, 2015 09:05

Soon there will be a version of Avid composer for free....this year.
Waiting for it...and with the current free version of resolve it might
be able to blow anything else out of the water.

including and for sure anything consumer S.W like P.D 14.
Stay tuned for it.

MountainSoftware

Newbie Joined: Nov 02, 2013 12:05 Messages: 32 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 12:18

Yes, I can confirm PD14 does not use hardware acceleration if any effects are applied. If I produce a file with simple titles and transitions the GPU load on my GT750 graphics card averages around 60%-80%. However, if I adjust the color (white balance for instance), GPU load drops below 4%, usually at zero.

I have also noticed this on the timeline. As long as I don't apply any color adjustments, I can set the preview quality to high. If I apply color adjustments, I have to drop the preview quality to normal to prevent stuttering.

I did confirm that PD14 can convert a file faster than any other program I have, thanks to the CPU and GPU working together. Just don't change the colors. A 30 minute clip took nearly four hours to output.

I still find PD14 easier to use and more stable than Pinnacle Studio or Vegas, so I will keep using it. Especially since I just dumped so much cash on the upgrade and a new graphics card.

Hopefully they will improve hardware acceleration in future updates. Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 13:31

Quote: Yes, I can confirm PD14 does not use hardware acceleration if any effects are applied. If I produce a file with simple titles and transitions the GPU load on my GT750 graphics card averages around 60%-80%. However, if I adjust the color (white balance for instance), GPU load drops below 4%, usually at zero.

That's not really correct I don't believe. Maybe a little bit of terminolgy. For me, "effects" would be from the PD "Effect Room" and any effect from this room with the GPU logo in the left corner can be GPU accelerated for preview and render via OpenCL, this depends on user pref setting. This has been explained many times in the forums and from CL here, http://www.cyberlink.com/support/product-faq-content.do?id=12777&prodId=4&prodVerId=-1&CategoryId=-1&keyword=effect+acceleration

Color adjustments, or "Fix / Enhance" adjustments when applied are CPU based. You can still use the "Hardware video encoder" but a significant cost of the encode process is to apply the individual frame adjustments with the CPU prior to the frame encode handoff so overall speed gain really depends on CPU and GPU capability. For many systems the CPU activity to apply the adjustment overwhelms any perceived benefit of the GPU "Hardware video encoder" process.

Jeff

MountainSoftware

Newbie Joined: Nov 02, 2013 12:05 Messages: 32 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 13:57

Jeff,

Yep, I probably have my terminology wrong, I don't use any of the "effects". Just titles, basic transitions (fade mostly), and sometimes color adjustments (with or without the help of ColorDirector).

In any case, the fix/enhance operations (specifically color adjustments) bring the produce time to a crawl, even with an i7-4790K, two SSD drives, and 16GB RAM. Wish there was a way to speed those up. Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 14:01

Using shadow files and/or setting the preview resolution to High instead of HD or Full HD and working in non real-time preview (when you need to see the full motion but don't need audio and don't care if it runs slowly) are the standard workarounds for situations like yours where there are lots of adjustments needed.

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MountainSoftware

Newbie Joined: Nov 02, 2013 12:05 Messages: 32 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 15:18

Quote: Using shadow files and/or setting the preview resolution to High instead of HD or Full HD and working in non real-time preview (when you need to see the full motion but don't need audio and don't care if it runs slowly) are the standard workarounds for situations like yours where there are lots of adjustments needed.

Unfortunately, any preview above "normal" (which looks terrible) is unusable for me once I start making color adjustments. PD14 stops and jumps constantly during playback. If I'm just editing raw clips (no color changes) I can use "high" preview.

I haven't had much luck with shadow files either, even with PD13. It just takes too long to generate the shadow files, especially if I have several gigabytes of video from a week long vacation or something.

I haven't tried non-real-time yet. I'll give it a try to see if it will work for me.

Right now, I just use "normal" real-time preview. It looks bad, but is usually adequate to see where I need to make cuts and whatnot. Then I get a bit of a present at the end when I see the final produced video in full living color and high resolution.

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 15:30

Julien Pierre

Contributor Joined: Apr 14, 2011 01:34 Messages: 476 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 17:52

Quote: [
That's not really correct I don't believe. Maybe a little bit of terminolgy. For me, "effects" would be from the PD "Effect Room" and any effect from this room with the GPU logo in the left corner can be GPU accelerated for preview and render via OpenCL, this depends on user pref setting. This has been explained many times in the forums and from CL here, http://www.cyberlink.com/support/product-faq-content.do?id=12777&prodId=4&prodVerId=-1&CategoryId=-1&keyword=effect+acceleration

Color adjustments, or "Fix / Enhance" adjustments when applied are CPU based. You can still use the "Hardware video encoder" but a significant cost of the encode process is to apply the individual frame adjustments with the CPU prior to the frame encode handoff so overall speed gain really depends on CPU and GPU capability. For many systems the CPU activity to apply the adjustment overwhelms any perceived benefit of the GPU "Hardware video encoder" process.
Jeff

+1

The effects have to be applied first, before the compression.

The main CPU usually becomes a bottleneck for these effects. Most of them are very slow to process.

The hardware encoder will still be used after the effects are processed. However, the cost of encoding is usually minuscule compared to the cost of the effects. Thus, the use of the hardware encoder does not end up really "accelerating" much when you use effects. That does not mean the hardware encoder is not used.

The OP's complaint, if it has any validity, is that the effects are too slow to process in PD. I have not compared the cost of effects processing with any other video editor. I did however compare the cost of just encoding, and PD beat everything else I tried by a wide margin. Nothing else came close. MSI X99A Raider
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SoNic67

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 27, 2014 14:14 Messages: 1308 Offline

Oct 03, 2015 19:26

Exactly, when effects that are non-GPU accelerated are used, the CPU is bogged by those effects to the pint that it cannot "feed" the hardware encoder anymore the needed data. So that encoder will have to "wait" for data and the usage drops.
A faster CPU or a dual CPU (Xeon setup) might help.

I am not saying is right, but that is what happens.

PS: Sony Vegas is even worse. It can use OpenCL for SOME effects, but for encoding it cannot use newer GPU's, because their MainConcept based encoder wasn't updated since 2010.

jan den hollander

Newbie Joined: Sep 18, 2015 15:54 Messages: 49 Offline

Oct 04, 2015 11:11

Quote: Exactly, when effects that are non-GPU accelerated are used, the CPU is bogged by those effects to the pint that it cannot "feed" the hardware encoder anymore the needed data. So that encoder will have to "wait" for data and the usage drops.
A faster CPU or a dual CPU (Xeon setup) might help.

I am not saying is right, but that is what happens.

PS: Sony Vegas is even worse. It can use OpenCL for SOME effects, but for encoding it cannot use newer GPU's, because their MainConcept based encoder wasn't updated since 2010.

True..vegas is history,and that's the reason peeps are looking for something better.

You don't have to explain what I already know.

We are talking 2015 here,and it seems like no S.W is ready for it.

Those so called devs are walking wayyy behind hardware abilities to day.

They are still cashing in on yesterdays papers.

That's what's it's all about.