Powerful computer, terrible PD15 performance

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Solved by

Nov 27, 2016 05:37

My 6.5-year-old computer struggled a little with PowerDirector 14 - it suffered from lag when I tried to move the playhead around, etc, and would pause for a few seconds between closing one process (eg PiP Designer) and starting another (eg timeline editing).

PowerDirector 15 performs worse than that on my new Windows 10 64-bit, 6-core, 12-thread Intel Core i7 5930K Haswell-E/EP computer with SSD, 32GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics card.

In a project shot in full HD but with only one track of video clip material except for the occasional static image overlay or even less frequent video overlay, the video can't be played back in the timeline in any way that allows me to actually see what the video would look like. All audio cuts out for the full duration of every transition, and the video display freezes for most of that time and then "fast-forwards" to catch up with where the audio should be after the transition - just as the audio cuts back in. This happens even when I set video display to the lowest resolution.

If this continues, it will make PowerDirector pointless to use. If anyone has ideas on what can make PD15 so appalling when meanwhile the latest version of Premiere Pro functions without lag even on my 6.5-year-old i7 860, I'd really appreciate some guidance.

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 27, 2016 05:48

Quote My 6.5-year-old computer struggled a little with PowerDirector 14 - it suffered from lag when I tried to move the playhead around, etc, and would pause for a few seconds between closing one process (eg PiP Designer) and starting another (eg timeline editing).

PowerDirector 15 performs worse than that on my new Windows 10 64-bit, 6-core, 12-thread Intel Core i7 5930K Haswell-E/EP computer with SSD, 32GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics card.

In a project shot in full HD but with only one track of video clip material except for the occasional static image overlay or even less frequent video overlay, the video can't be played back in the timeline in any way that allows me to actually see what the video would look like. All audio cuts out for the full duration of every transition, and the video display freezes for most of that time and then "fast-forwards" to catch up with where the audio should be after the transition - just as the audio cuts back in. This happens even when I set video display to the lowest resolution.

If this continues, it will make PowerDirector pointless to use. If anyone has ideas on what can make PD15 so appalling when meanwhile the latest version of Premiere Pro functions without lag even on my 6.5-year-old i7 860, I'd really appreciate some guidance.

Another problem is that the playhead won't move at all whenever I first open the current project. Then, when I unlock the locked tracks, the playhead starts moving again. I can't imagine how this would be a feature rather than a bug.

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 27, 2016 06:38

Quote

Quote My 6.5-year-old computer struggled a little with PowerDirector 14 - it suffered from lag when I tried to move the playhead around, etc, and would pause for a few seconds between closing one process (eg PiP Designer) and starting another (eg timeline editing).

PowerDirector 15 performs worse than that on my new Windows 10 64-bit, 6-core, 12-thread Intel Core i7 5930K Haswell-E/EP computer with SSD, 32GB RAM and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics card.

In a project shot in full HD but with only one track of video clip material except for the occasional static image overlay or even less frequent video overlay, the video can't be played back in the timeline in any way that allows me to actually see what the video would look like. All audio cuts out for the full duration of every transition, and the video display freezes for most of that time and then "fast-forwards" to catch up with where the audio should be after the transition - just as the audio cuts back in. This happens even when I set video display to the lowest resolution.

If this continues, it will make PowerDirector pointless to use. If anyone has ideas on what can make PD15 so appalling when meanwhile the latest version of Premiere Pro functions without lag even on my 6.5-year-old i7 860, I'd really appreciate some guidance.

Another problem is that the playhead won't move at all whenever I first open the current project. Then, when I unlock the locked tracks, the playhead starts moving again. I can't imagine how this would be a feature rather than a bug.

Here's my dxdiag file.

Filename	DxDiag.txt	Download
Description
Filesize	77 Kbytes
Downloaded:	379 time(s)

SoNic67

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

Nov 27, 2016 09:02

Did you enable Hardware Acceleration in "Preferences"?

What I see in your DXDiag that different from mine is this:

Mine: "Graphics Preemption: DMA Compute Preemption: DMA"

Yours: "Graphics Preemption: Pixel Compute Preemption: Dispatch"

My card is a GTX960, previous Maxwell 2 generation, not exactly like yours and Pascal Preemption is suposedly "improved":

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/10

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Nov 27. 2016 09:15

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 27, 2016 14:22

Quote

Did you enable Hardware Acceleration in "Preferences"?
What I see in your DXDiag that different from mine is this:

Mine: "Graphics Preemption: DMA Compute Preemption: DMA" Yours: "Graphics Preemption: Pixel Compute Preemption: Dispatch" My card is a GTX960, previous Maxwell 2 generation, not exactly like yours and Pascal Preemption is suposedly "improved": http://www.anandtech.com/show/10325/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-and-1070-founders-edition-review/10

Yes, I have hardware acceleration enabled and "Enable NVIDIA CUDA technology to speed up video effect preview/render". I've updated drivers and also tried both of these settings turned on and off.

SoNic67

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

Nov 27, 2016 15:27

Quote
Yes, I have hardware acceleration enabled and "Enable NVIDIA CUDA technology to speed up video effect preview/render". I've updated drivers and also tried both of these settings turned on and off.

If you see "CUDA technology" instead of "OpenCL", reinstall the latest video drivers from nVidia site. That CUDA is there for older nVidia videocards.

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 27, 2016 16:27

Quote

Quote
Yes, I have hardware acceleration enabled and "Enable NVIDIA CUDA technology to speed up video effect preview/render". I've updated drivers and also tried both of these settings turned on and off.

If you see "CUDA technology" instead of "OpenCL", reinstall the latest video drivers from nVidia site. That CUDA is there for older nVidia videocards.

The drivers are up to date. According to Microsoft. Which, I guess, as usual, means nothing.

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 27, 2016 16:49

Quote

Quote
Yes, I have hardware acceleration enabled and "Enable NVIDIA CUDA technology to speed up video effect preview/render". I've updated drivers and also tried both of these settings turned on and off.

If you see "CUDA technology" instead of "OpenCL", reinstall the latest video drivers from nVidia site. That CUDA is there for older nVidia videocards.

The drivers are up to date. According to Microsoft. Which, I guess, as usual, means nothing.

My computer is also less than 1 month old. I just updated the NVIDIA driver anyway. PowerDirector now displays the OpenCL option instead of CUDA on the hardware acceleration screen, but it's making no difference to the problem.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 27. 2016 17:16

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Nov 27, 2016 17:17

Whatever the problem I am sure Sonic67 will help you solve it.

The 5th thread of this post show a formatting issue in which it appears that text extend below where it should not be. See the attached screenshot. Does you have a clue as to why it happened. I would like to report it to the Community Forum Issue.


Filename	Text extended.jpg	Download
Description	Text entend to area reserved for the Reply button.
Filesize	257 Kbytes
Downloaded:	57 time(s)

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 27, 2016 17:22

Quote Whatever the problem I am sure Sonic67 will help you solve it.

The 5th thread of this post show a formatting issue in which it appears that text extend below where it should not be. See the attached screenshot. Does you have a clue as to why it happened. I would like to report it to the Community Forum Issue.

No, I've got no idea, sorry.

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 28, 2016 02:35

I tried going back to PowerDirector 14, and have found it doesn't have the transition problem I've talked about in this thread. But I can't edit my projects there, because version 14 won't open version 15 files.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 28. 2016 02:36

SoNic67

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

Nov 28, 2016 05:20

Quote
The drivers are up to date. According to Microsoft. Which, I guess, as usual, means nothing.

Did I say Microsoft??? Use the nVidia drivers, don't rely on MS to provide you the nVidia drivers!

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 28, 2016 05:24

Quote

Quote
The drivers are up to date. According to Microsoft. Which, I guess, as usual, means nothing.

Did I say Microsoft??? Use the nVidia drivers, don't rely on MS to provide you the nVidia drivers!

I don't know whether you saw my comment further up, but I did get the nVidia update. The result was it changed the available settings in hardware acceleration in PD15. What it didn't change was PD's appalling level of dysfunctionality.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 28. 2016 05:25

Biaggi_orz

Newbie Joined: Aug 22, 2011 21:27 Messages: 8 Offline

Nov 29, 2016 00:17

How about set the preview quality to High from HD?


Filename	high.png	Download
Description
Filesize	592 Kbytes
Downloaded:	58 time(s)

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 29, 2016 00:22

Quote How about set the preview quality to High from HD?

Unfortunately no change in the preview quality makes any difference to the problems I'm reporting.

SoNic67

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

Nov 29, 2016 08:36

What format are your HD files (mediainfo)? If it is quicktime, then you have your answer...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 29. 2016 08:36

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 29, 2016 14:42

Quote What format are your HD files (mediainfo)? If it is quicktime, then you have your answer...

Sorry - could you explain a little more what you mean by that? Are you saying PowerDirector is not compatible with footage from Canon and Nikon cameras?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 29. 2016 14:45

SoNic67

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

Nov 29, 2016 17:34

Quote
Sorry - could you explain a little more what you mean by that? Are you saying PowerDirector is not compatible with footage from Canon and Nikon cameras?

Quicktime (MOV) format is owned by Apple. They purposelly crippled the Windows app for that format, kept it at 32 bit, denied other deveopers to create another app for this format. More, now they abandoned the Windows version, right when it was discovered a big security flaw.

The software client in PD that deals with Quicktime (and every other windows software) is bad, still 32 bit, not updated from 09.2015. Convert the MOV files to another format before editing or don't buy any devices that uses this horrible format. Or... buy a Mac.

You can try also to rename the .mov to .mp4. MOV format is a container and if the actual video content (payload) is compatible with mp4, it might work.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 29. 2016 17:40

James2016

Newbie Location: Queensland, Australia Joined: Oct 19, 2016 06:53 Messages: 37 Offline

Nov 29, 2016 18:00

Quote

Quote
Sorry - could you explain a little more what you mean by that? Are you saying PowerDirector is not compatible with footage from Canon and Nikon cameras?

Quicktime (MOV) format is owned by Apple. They purposelly crippled the Windows app for that format, kept it at 32 bit, denied other deveopers to create another app for this format. More, now they abandoned the Windows version, right when it was discovered a big security flaw.

The software client in PD that deals with Quicktime (and every other windows software) is bad, still 32 bit, not updated from 09.2015. Convert the MOV files to another format before editing or don't buy any devices that uses this horrible format. Or... buy a Mac.

You can try also to rename the .mov to .mp4. MOV format is a container and if the actual video content (payload) is compatible with mp4, it might work.

Well, that's appalling, and typical of what was Steve Jobs' vengeful attitude towards other platforms. But thanks for the information on it. PD15 officially supports the .mov format, including the DSLR output of Canon and Nikon cameras, so if the software has bugs - and PD15 has severe ones - then it's Cyberlink's problem as much as any user's.

pmikep

Senior Member Joined: Nov 26, 2016 22:51 Messages: 285 Offline

Nov 29, 2016 18:06

I use a program called "QT Lite" instead of full blown QuckTime. I'm using ver 4.1.0, which seems to be the latest, according the web.