There have been several concerns expressed about PDR performance and disappointment with it's advertised 4k editing support and the impact improved GPU support may have. I've done some research and think we may have unfair expectations.

There is little info out there on the effect of using GPUs for editing vs gaming. In an attempt to better understand how NLEs work I looked at professional software. Professional video editors have had more time with 4k cameras and editing than we consumers. It's a different market to PDR as a consumer level product - but I was interested in their performance and technology and how GPUs affected performance for editing and rendering. Again - no benchmarks. The results suprised me. THIS IS NOT A TECHINCAL EVALUATION.

There is not a lot of info out there on PDR performance. This is all based on the info I've found. I use "4k" to refer to 4k and UHD. I also use the term "NLE" to refer to video editing software and "PDR" for Power Director.

HD pushed the limits for most NLEs and consumer level PC hardware. Anything above HD and all NLEs recommend expensive professional workstations. Software has it's performance limitations. Adobe Premiere and Edius have been around for decades and both are used by the Pros. Both were CPU based for many years and have only recently added GPU support.

PDR was ahead of most when they added Intel Quick Sync (Intel HD Graphics) support. Edius (considered the fastest NLE) only added Quick Sync support in their latest Ver 8 and claim 5X faster render for H.264.

Adobe added GPU support by "The GPU-accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine, co-developed by Adobe and NVIDIA, leverages NVIDIA GPUs and the NVIDIA® CUDA® Parallel Computing Platform to deliver interactive, real-time editing and up to 24x¹ faster performance on final rendered exports."4k editing is a challenge on most NLEs. Even with expensive hardware and pro software there are limitations when you start adding multiple 4k layers, effects, etc.. Adobe test mentioned above was done with a Xeon (8 cores) at $2k and dual Quadro M6000 GPUs at $5k each! http://www.nvidia.com/object/adobe-premiere-pro-cc.html#. That's a $15k+ workstation for realtime 4k editing!! One test shows two Xeons with two Quadros are even better!

Video codecs and software edit effects may or may not be optomised for GPU and can affect Edit/Render performance.So, in summary, the claim that PDR supports 4k editing is putting unreasonable expectations on the software as a consumer grade product. Professional software supporting 4k also struggles with 4k on the timeline.So - how do others handle 4k editing without spending $15-20k on a professional PC?

The biggest challenge is realtime editing/playback on the timeline. There are other solutions and work-arounds being used - and could be easily added to PDR to solve the 4k challaenge.

Proxy Editing Several programs now support "Proxy Editing" internally. Proxy files are created via transcoding as temp files within the program at a lower resolution and used on the timeline for edit. Ie if you are editing 4k you might use a 720p lower bitrate proxy format. Advantage - fast smooth realtime edit as the program is editing 720p and not 4k/UHD. If your consumer PC can edit 720p - it can edit 4k! Once editing is finished the program substitutes the 720p files in the timeline for the original 4k files to render. Disadvantage - it takes a little time to wait for proxy files to be created before you can start editing and timeline preview is limited to 720p proxy file resolution. If you have a second 4k monitor you cannot preview your edit effects in 4k resolution - may be a problem for the Pros - but most are happy with a 720p preview. It is integraded in the edit software. PDR15 could easily add a transcode option to a user specified resolution before you start editing as one solution for 4k editing on a consumer PC similar to shadow file creation.

Here's an example of Prroxy Editing on Adobe Premiere Pro CC. https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/how-to/proxy-media.html and here on a lowly laptop Edit 4K video on the 12" MacBook with Final Cut Pro X. It's not rocket science but it works. Note that's it's integrated into the software.



Use Edit Friendly Codecs - Simply put, the formats used by our cameras like H.264 are great for compressing video into small file sizes with minimal quality loss to fit on an SD card. Each compressed frame is not a full image but only records a small partial image which is basically only the differences between frames. Edit software has do a lot of work to do in order to to get frame accurate images. "Edit Friendly" codecs produce files that are too large for most camera storage. They are also known as "Intermediate codecs" as they are not commonly used for output of a finished project.

One of the reasons claims "EDIUS Pro 8 is the fastest and most versatile real-time editing software — period" is that they have always had a proprietary codec for editing called GV HQ/HQX and Edius 8 automatically generates intermediate files in this codec for editing nad render which decompresses your MP4 files on your PC. The difference between transcoding into a 720p Proxy and an Intermediate Codec is thet the proxy is smaller and lower quality but the Intermediate Codecs retain the 4k quality and the files are much larger. You can get realtime editing with a high quality preview for more accurate editing. Every frame is now a keyframe so editing is much faster and things like colour correction more accurate.

These well known professional intermediate codecs were licensed and expensive so not available to us. Now Edius GV HQ/HQX, Cineform, Apple ProRes, Avid DNxHD, and others are now free to downlod and use. If you have a GoPro and have used GoPro Studio you will see that it transcodes your camera files into Cineform AVI files automatically before you Edit. Cineform is now integarted into PPro, DaVinci Resolve and many other NLEs now support these intermediate codecs. They work in PDR (we tested it) as does any VFW codec.

Here is an example using PPro Edit 4K Footage Easy with Adobe Premiere Pro and Cineform. Cineform is also GPU accelerated which improves performance. Transcoding to an intermediate codec make 4k editing with high quality preview posible on a consumer PC. It was proven to work in PDR14 with a user developed transcoder (Magic+PD Solution in the forum) using the MagicYUV codec. I use it for 4k editing on my Core i5 and PDR14. Files are large but I delete them when I'm finished. PDR could easily add transcoding to an intermediate codec as an option before edit as long as you have downloaded and installed any of the intermediate codecs mentioned above and they are VFW codecs.

Here are more links for further reading:

How to Work Efficiently with 4K Footage on Old Computers

Faster Editing in DaVinci Resolve 12.5 Using Optimized Media

Proxy Workflow: Edit Large 4k RAW files on a Laptop! Premiere Pro CC 2015.3

Sony Vegas - MagicYUV codec coming on strong for 4K

Why you should use Avid DNxHD and Apple ProRes

The Intermediate Codec Thread

Summary

1. There is currently NO software out there that can edit 4k on a consumer level PC smoothly. When you add 4k clips in multi layers to the timeline and add some effects any NLE software is going to struggle or freeze without very expensive hardware. It is unreasonable to expect Power Director as a consumer grade NLE to do any better. Whether you spend a hundred dollars or or a thousand dollars for an NLE you need more to edit 4k.


2. GPU acceleration is also limited to the effects and codecs written to support it - not only the NLE software. Improved GPU support won't guarantee 4k realtime editing but as Jeff (JL_JL) has shown it can improve performance.


3. Professional NLE software on high end hardware supports and uses transcoding to Proxy Files and Intermediate Codecs for smooth 4k editing. Power Director can easily do the same to enable users to edit 4k on a consumer level core i5 or i7 PC. 4k editing will never be a reality for most PDR users until they do.

Sooooooooooo - for those (me included) who have expressed their disappointment with PDR performance - other NLE software may not solve your problems. Furthermore, upgrading your PC CPU/GPU may not give you 4k editing - unless you have a very large budget.

Does that mean you can't edit 4k now? Not at all! You can transcode your 4k videos to a lower resolution using third party software You can also try the user developed Magic+PD solution in the PDR14 forum to transcode your 4K clips to a fast intermediate codec but both are time consuming and difficult for most users - but they do work.

I left out render speed intentionally as it's really another topic. 4k render is not a problem in PDR. At lot of software is adding Intel QuickSync support. PDR has had it for some time, Edius added it with Ver 8 and Resolve has recently added it as well. Here is a an independent evaluation of render speeds http://www.dvc.uk.com/acatalog/Edius_quicksync.html



Al



PS - Please excuse my typing. I like the new forum look but can't believe there's still no Spell-check, cut, paste etc. Power Director 13&14 Ultimate, Photo Director 6, Audio Dir, Pwr2Go 10
Win 10 64, Intel MB DH87MC, Intel i5-4670 CPU @ 3.40GHz, 16Gb DDR3 1600, 128Gb SSD, 2x1Tb WDBlue 7200rpmSATA6, Intel 4600 GPU, Gigabyte G1 GTX960 4GB, LG BluRay Writer