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I have so much hatred for Power Director 14, where to begin
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Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 06:22
I used to use Final Cut, when I was a Mac person. I switched to PC, and I picked up this software based on reviews on Amazon. I've been hating this software ever since.

First off, why is it so slow and stuttery during playback? I have a fast computer, dual GPU EVGA 2 x 980Ti's, 32 GB ram, all SSD drives, 4790k i7. I've contacted tech support and they are worthless.

I edit 1920 x1080 vids, no more than 15 minutes in length, and it can't playback fullspeed without stuttering after maybe 10 seconds. I have to pause and then resume constantly. It is impossible to playback video at full speed. This is inexcusable. I've tried it at low res, it doesn't matter, it always stutters. Thats the biggest problem.

2nd problem, when playing back and editing video, if I get to the end of the video, playhead goes back to the beginning. WTF? How can I edit video, if everytime it reaches the end, it jumps back to the beginning. There's no way to turn this off so it just stops at the end? What idiot programs software like this?

3rd. Last time I tried to update this software, my screen is filled with advertisements. So I had to revert back to the older version. If I buy software, I don't want to see your ads in the corners. This type of marketing, means I will never buy anything from you again.
Longedge [Avatar]
Senior Contributor Joined: Apr 28, 2011 15:38 Messages: 1504 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 07:50
.............

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 09. 2016 10:34

collie581 [Avatar]
Member Location: Aberdeen Scotland Joined: Oct 21, 2015 11:43 Messages: 92 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 08:48
Hi Krugster I know what you mean re the timeline leaping back to the start. I found this annoying too. What I do is put a small clip beyond the end of my true end leaving a bit of space between the clips. PD then never reaches the timeline end and thus does not leap back to the beginning. I obviously delete the temporary clip before I finally produce the file. I maybe have not explained this very well but hope you understand.
Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 09:23
Quote: Hi Krugster I know what you mean re the timeline leaping back to the start. I found this annoying too. What I do is put a small clip beyond the end of my true end leaving a bit of space between the clips. PD then never reaches the timeline end and thus does not leap back to the beginning. I obviously delete the temporary clip before I finally produce the file. I maybe have not explained this very well but hope you understand.


Yes, thats makes perfect sense. I'll have to do that from now on, thanks for the tip.
BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 09:39
As for "jumpy" playback, that can be a sore spot, and has been mentioned repeatedly by users for many versions and build of PD. You have several choices to get smoother playback.
1. Use a 3rd-party tool to convert your videos to a less compressed format.
2. Reduce the quality of your playback preview (you've done that).
3. Edit in steps, for instance if your clips need to be stabilized or color-corrected, do that first, produce those clips, then go ahead and edit.

NOTE! I forgot to mention #4, Use proxy/shadow files function built into PowerDirector (see Preferences).

Now those ads. Cyberlink had always placed ads within the software windows, they get flack for it, but not enough to make them rethink the practice. You can block the program from accessing the internet, but I do not recall exactly how, and there may be inconvenient side-effects.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Aug 28. 2016 12:24

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
Skibum
Member Joined: Nov 10, 2009 01:41 Messages: 97 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 10:06
You should read this Asus X79-Deluxe, Intel i7-4930K, EVGA GTX 980ti, G.Skill memory 16GB, Corsair HX1000 PSU, OCZ Vertex4 SSD, OCZ Vector180 480GB, (2)Western Digital Black 1TB(RAID0), Western Digital 2TB, LG Blue Ray Burner, Lite-on DVD Burner, Logitech G19 keyboard, Window
BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 10:21
It may also he helpful to know are you doing a lot of trickery, FX, stabie, multiple timelines during the poor performance?
Perhaps you would care to provide us with a dxdiag of your machine, as described here in part B
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/45453.page 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
Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 10:35
Quote: As for "jumpy" playback, that can be a sore spot, and has been mentioned repeatedly by users for many versions and build of PD. You have several choices to get smoother playback.
1. Use a 3rd-party tool to convert your videos to a less compressed format.
2. Reduce the quality of your playback preview (you've done that).
3. Edit in steps, for instance if your clips need to be stabilized or color-corrected, do that first, produce those clips, then go ahead and edit.

Now those ads. Cyberlink had always placed ads within the software windows, they get flack for it, but not enough to make them rethink the practice. You can block the program from accessing the internet, but I do not recall exactly how, and there may be inconvenient side-effects.


Well I'm using PD 14 version 14.0.2707.0 and there are no ads whatsoever in this version. This version was the first update since I bought PD14. Some time ago, I updated a 2nd time, don't remember the version, and the ads started appearing. Luckily I always save software updates, so I immediately reinstalled this first update version, and the ads went away. So they haven't always had ads in their software. They started with the ads shortly after this version though, maybe within a few months, I want to say back in May or June?

Anyway, with regards to number 1, I don't compress at all as far as I can tell.

See I do animations, and I create single frame 1920x1080 PNGs in my 3D program, at a rate of 30 frames per second. I then take those thousands of individual frames and I use Quicktime Pro to convert them into manageable 10-20 second clips, which are then imported into PD 14 completely uncompressed quicktime/mov format. In quicktime, no compression is taking place as far as I can tell. In fact just the opposite. The final .mov clips are actually double the sum total size of the original .png files which would seem to indicate the exact opposite of compression is taking place.
Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 10:57
Quote: It may also he helpful to know are you doing a lot of trickery, FX, stabie, multiple timelines during the poor performance?
Perhaps you would care to provide us with a dxdiag of your machine, as described here in part B
[url=http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/45453.page
]http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/45453.page
[/url]

I don't do what I consider lot of trickery in PD14, just the basics. Usually all the real work is done in my 3D program.

Usually just importing a bunch of 10-20 second clips, which tend to be around 5.5 GB in size for each 20 second clip. Typically the final animation is anywhere from 5 minutes to 15 minutes in length.

I'll typically be adding a background layer, or simple effects, credits, basic transitions, cuts and fades, a single sound track, a sing;e sound effects track.

Mostly I'm just using PD14 to string everything together. But the stuttering playback when working with animation is a big problem, as sometimes i make mistakes in animation that I need to correct in final editing by adjusting the speed of individual clips, either speeding them up or slowing down a clip.

Here's a music video I did about a month ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnKE9z_VOio

attached are my diag files
 Filename
DxDiag.txt
[Disk]
 Description
 Filesize
37 Kbytes
 Downloaded:
416 time(s)
 Filename
64DxDiag.txt
[Disk]
 Description
 Filesize
52 Kbytes
 Downloaded:
400 time(s)
BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 11:29
5.5GB for 20 seconds!!!
YIKES, what is the camera?
Or is it screen capture software?
Your bitrates are astronomical for HD video. 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
tomasc [Avatar]
Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 12:02
20 second video clips of 5.5 GB in size = minimum transfer rate of 275 MB/sec. required. You are using a consumer Seagate desktop hard drive with a slow data transfer rate : https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-SATA-3-5-Inch-Desktop-ST4000DM000/dp/B00B99JU4S .

This whole pc consist of consumer grade components and is underpowered. Don’t believe that PD14 was ever created to work with this type of video clips. You probably need a workstation for your needs.
Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 12:25
Quote: 5.5GB for 20 seconds!!!
YIKES, what is the camera?
Or is it screen capture software?
Your bitrates are astronomical for HD video.


It's not a camera or screen capture software.

I create animation with a 3D program called DAZ Studio, which renders my animation as individual image frames. So for example, for 20 seconds of animation, after my computer cooks for about 10 hours, I'm left with a directory of 600 individual image.png files. Each of these 1920x1080 images is about 3.5mb in size.

When I first started editing with PD14, I used to just import all those images directly into PD14. But then I ran into a problem. There is a hard limit of 2500 items which can be imported in PD14 in one project. Which means you are limited to 83 seconds of animation if you do it that way (2500 / 30 = 83.3 seconds) Thats fine for a short project, but obviously I needed to find another way. Not to mention, the stuttering problem was actually worse then.

So then I tried various software options for stringing together my animation frames before bringing them into PD14. After much forum searching, and many hours of trial and error with various settings, the best way I found was to use Quicktime 7 Pro which has an animation compression export option while maintaining transparency, which is necessary in the animation I do.

When Quicktime is done doing its thing, my 20 sec clips can vary from 4.5 to 5.5 GB. I'm not sure what kind of voodoo is going on during this process, that makes the final file size actually double in size, it could be an internal turf war taking place between Apple and Microsoft battling for my hard drive space, lol.
Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 12:43
Quote: 20 second video clips of 5.5 GB in size = minimum transfer rate of 275 MB/sec. required. You are using a consumer Seagate desktop hard drive with a slow data transfer rate : https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-SATA-3-5-Inch-Desktop-ST4000DM000/dp/B00B99JU4S .

This whole pc consist of consumer grade components and is underpowered. Don’t believe that PD14 was ever created to work with this type of video clips. You probably need a workstation for your needs.


Win 7 is on my SSD drive. So when I works it should be shadow filing to the SSD drive, no?

Underpowered and consumer grade, well thats laughable, I don't know what you consider pro grade. You must have deep pockets. I built this thing specifically for 3D animation which is much more intense than video editing, and its great for that. I render for 30 hours straight sometimes, and without so much as a hickup, it also worked great when I first had it setup as a Hackintosh and used Final Cut. So I know that video editing software is capable of working with this setup, the problem is PD 14.
tomasc [Avatar]
Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 13:37
Quote: Win 7 is on my SSD drive. So when I works it should be shadow filing to the SSD drive, no?


I have never seen shadow files generate on image (png) files. They don't generate on my pc.
Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 13:58
Quote:
Quote: Win 7 is on my SSD drive. So when I works it should be shadow filing to the SSD drive, no?


I have never seen shadow files generate on image (png) files. They don't generate on my pc.
'

But they're not png files when they get imported (I was only importing png files directly into PD14 when I first started out, before I discovered the 2500 file limit).

The method I use now is outlined above, but maybe I wasn't clear earlier:

TThe still frame png sequence files are dumped into Quicktime in batches of 600 to 720 frames at a time (20 to 24 seconds worth), then they are converted to quicktime video files via the export feature in Quicktime. These quicktime .mov files are then imported to PD14.

So only those quicktime mov files are imported into PD14. Granted these are big files, so if these aren't being shadowed on the SSD drive when they are on an slower drive, then maybe I need to test and move the project files directly onto my C drive and see if that helps. I can try that later tonight.
BarryTheCrab
Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 22:25
Krugster,
just to be clear on the shadow files, and to cover all the bases...did you enable shadow files in Preferences?
With Shadow files enabled do you see a yellow marker/icon on the thumbnails of the HD Library Media?
Do you wait until the yellow icon turns green before trying to edit?
I know, maybe silly, but you never know... 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
ynotfish
Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 23:25
Hi Krugster -

Without wading too deeply into your issues, there is a simple way around that mysterious 2500 import limit that should work for you. It may alleviate some of the issues you're having with the QT processed files.

Import the first 2500 images - drop them in the timeline - clear the library - import the next 2500 images - drop them in the timeline - clear the library... repeat till all your images are in the timeline.

Cheers - Tony
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Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 23:39
Quote: Krugster,
just to be clear on the shadow files, and to cover all the bases...did you enable shadow files in Preferences?
With Shadow files enabled do you see a yellow marker/icon on the thumbnails of the HD Library Media?
Do you wait until the yellow icon turns green before trying to edit?
I know, maybe silly, but you never know...


I definitely have shadow files enabled in the preferences, but as far as the yellow icon turning green on the thumbnails as an indicator, I'll have to check on that, its not something I was aware of or paid attention to.
Krugster [Avatar]
Newbie Joined: Jan 26, 2016 20:34 Messages: 15 Offline
[Post New] Aug 28, 2016 23:51
Quote: Hi Krugster -

Without wading too deeply into your issues, there is a simple way around that mysterious 2500 import limit that should work for you. It may alleviate some of the issues you're having with the QT processed files.

Import the first 2500 images - drop them in the timeline - clear the library - import the next 2500 images - drop them in the timeline - clear the library... repeat till all your images are in the timeline.

Cheers - Tony


Appreciate the tip Tony. I wasn't aware of that option, so that gives me something else to try. Although, to be honest, I think it would be kind of nightmarish to edit with 27,000 frames in the timeline. I remember it being pretty tough just dealing with 2500 frames so I'd prefer to get this quicktime import thing working as its easier to deal with bigger chunks. But I'll test it out.
Dafydd B [Avatar]
Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline
[Post New] Aug 29, 2016 04:21
Hi Krugster,
You've got an interesting issue and production method.
I see ynotfish has pointed to the 2500 image workaround already and I can understand your feelings to editing 2500+ in the tracks. Your option to use 3rd party (QT) software is a better route for you.
Members could do with some additional info please.
1. A screenshot of the Edit workspace with your project insitu. Part E & F in the guide.
2. MediaInfo on the imported project video. Part J in the guide.
Guide: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/45453.page

Mov's (carrier format) have been giving PDR issues for years, often the selected video codec, the audio format, the overly high bitrate. The MediaInfo will show us (help us) what you're creating/importing. Perhaps, if possible, select a different format (and a different software to create the project video, first stage). For example an mp4 with an mp4 codec is a better option to import etc.

Advertisements have, as Barry has stated, been in PowerDirector (including 2707 of PDR14) for a good number of years. If you have uncheck/denied PDR the ability to auto update or stopped it accessing the internet previously that would explain why you have not seen the adverts until after you manually updated (and giving access to the program). Re-install the update is my suggestion.

What is the PSU in your computer? I use a 1000w.
What cooling system did you put in, sufficient to drop the heat within your box? When was the last time you cleaned out the dust?
The above are all factors that might cause a juddering of a system when editing. Lack of power supply, overheating CPU slows the processing of data.

Dual gpu, useless for PDR.

Just an opinion and suggestion that may help.
Dafydd

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Aug 29. 2016 04:22

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