Quote So i am using PD17 with latest beta patch (2224) and as i imported a 15 GB video file in the timeline (and not doing anything else) i have noticed that PD17 is using between 40% and 60% of my CPU to (probably) shadow rendering from my 1440p to 720p (as i have set in preferences).
Why is not using my GTX1080's NVENC hardware encoding..?
Thanks.

Yes, PD only uses the CPU for generation of shadow files if in fact that is your CPU load. It's been suggested over the years to consider a change but nothing ever adopted, like the suggestion here back in PD14: https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/46732.page#post_box_242512

They have however significantly unthrottled the process over the releases (primarily PD14 and PD15 changes) which has significantly improved shadow file generation times.

Jeff

Hi, I have also noticed that CPU utilization is very high when creating a shadow file. Can someone please tell me how (other than checking CPU utilization) I check when shadow file generation has finished?
If I hover my mouse over a newly dragged & dropped clip in the Media Room, a label shows which says 'shadow file generating...', but it also says the same thing on all the other clips as well which were added to the media room days before.
Thanks.

Quote Hi, I have also noticed that CPU utilization is very high when creating a shadow file. Can someone please tell me how (other than checking CPU utilization) I check when shadow file generation has finished? If I hover my mouse over a newly dragged & dropped clip in the Media Room, a label shows which says 'shadow file generating...', but it also says the same thing on all the other clips as well which were added to the media room days before. Thanks.

When the movie strip icon in the lower left corner of the video clip in the media library turns green from orangish, the shadow file has been generated successfully.

Jeff

I know this thread is about 1.5 years old, but throughout all of the software updates, it seems like shadowfile generation still has a long way to go to truely be efficient.

I don't mind high CPU usage, in fact i'm a little upset that I have a 12 core/24 thread CPU and the shadow file generation only appears to use 6 threads maximum. I'm hoping bringing this thread back to the top will help put it on the radar of the development team. Please optomize the shadow file generation to either use GPU or at thte very least, ALL of the available CPU power to speed the process up. Waiting for shadow copies on 2-3 hours of H265 video with only 6 threads and 0 GPU usage is a huge time waster.

This is a longstanding issue. Shadow file processing seems to be designed as a compromise between not wanting users to have to wait until they're finished to start editing, and using so many resources that their creation slows down editing.

There is no user control to set them as a priority, but that's something you can request using Rate Us & Provide Suggestions under PD's File menu.

There are other methods of getting easy-to-edit versions of clips into PD, and this thread leads to a discussion of them.

You can also manually create low res versions of your main clips upfront using PD or Handbrake or VirtualDub2 and do the normal editing with PD. When you're ready to produce, close PD and swap out the low res versions in the folder with the identically-named original clips and let PD produce the project at full quality.