Death by Titles? (Not fully solved)

optodata

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

Solved by

Dec 18, 2018 01:58

I'm wondering if anyone else has had difficulty when using several tracks worth of titles in PD17. I'm doing an extended project and for a couple of scenes I wanted to bring up a list of words to match the narration.

I've tried making the title as a separate project and inserting it into my main one, but everything bogged down too much. I also was having difficulty with extreme slowdowns when working with titles when I was running Windows Insider builds, so this is a brand new clean install of Win10 RS5 (2018 Fall Update) and PD17 2314.

This packed project (download it from here) contains only a 9 sec 60p HD clip with one static image and 7 titles ballooning up. Here's the entire timeline:

The problem is that it takes anywhere from 10 to 90 seconds (avg delay = 35 sec!) for PD to respond after almost any action: clicking on a new timeline location, clicking on a clip, dragging a clip, editing the text, changing the duration of the effect.

That last one is brutal, especially for the title on the lowest (title) track. Most times I tried that edit, PD just locked up and didn't respond for at least 5 minutes before I killed it. This is happening on a brand new i9-9900K system and it took over an hour of teeth ganshing perseverance to even get the project to this level of completeness.

The size of the PDS file also seems enormous for such a trivial project, and it may be that parts of my original project are somehow embedded in the file. The PDS file had several references to a huge AVI file from my original project that is not used at all here, and I renamed the clip and told PD to ignore that clip when it couldn't find it, then I saved and packed the project.

I'd appreciate any input from other people who'd like to download and test this project, and also whether you think it's something specific to this project or titles effect or if you run into massive delays simply by having 6 or more titles overlapping.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at Mar 03. 2019 19:21

PowerDirector Tutorials

Senior Member Location: Tennessee Joined: Sep 29, 2014 20:25 Messages: 192 Offline

Dec 18, 2018 02:36

Hi

I tried to DL it to test it on my system I was curious. But it says can not find download. PowerDirector Tutorials Team

PowerDirector Tutorials

Senior Member Location: Tennessee Joined: Sep 29, 2014 20:25 Messages: 192 Offline

Dec 18, 2018 02:39

Had to right click and then it let me DL. I loaed it into PD17 and all that is in video is the girl talking no text elements at all PowerDirector Tutorials Team

PowerDirector Tutorials

Senior Member Location: Tennessee Joined: Sep 29, 2014 20:25 Messages: 192 Offline

Dec 18, 2018 02:54

Ok There is actually 2 files you can download in that place. I DL the project and its missing 1 images. I loaded it and compiled it.
I did not reboot my computer at all. I was playing Division 2 beta for the last 12 hours on the system. I also edit 4 videos today and Working in Paint pro for 3 hours also. With watching youtube videos and checking out facebook. So I had like 18 windows in firefox and 9 more in chrome.

I then loaded your project and what you see in the video below is the result this is unlisted video which I will delete soon.

PowerDirector Tutorials Team

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Dec 18, 2018 05:11

Hi optodata -

Your titles project played back pretty smoothly here. No "death by titles" to speak of.

After playing with it a bit and shifting title positions, there were times when there was a little lag, but nothing major.

Screen capture shows original project then with titles slightly moved to sync better.

Cheers - Tony
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optodata

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

Dec 18, 2018 11:37

Thanks everyone for testing this out. Strange the the packed project didn't correctly set the location for the SnapShot.png image, which is present in the packed project folder.

The main issue I have is not in playing back or producing the clip, it's making ANY changes to it, especially after making 2 or 3 initial changes.

This is what I'm talking about: I dragged the back end of the lowest title, then opened Title Designer and changed the text location, then clicked OK and opened Title Designer again. Somehting that should have taken a few seconds at most dragged on for almost 2 minutes

EDIT: I've just manually removed the path reference for the SnapShot.png clip in the packed PDS file, so anyone downloading it now will have the image load correctly. That's clearly a Pack Project Materials bug, but maybe it's a clue to why my computer is having so much trouble working with this project.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Dec 18. 2018 11:49

PowerDirector Tutorials

Senior Member Location: Tennessee Joined: Sep 29, 2014 20:25 Messages: 192 Offline

Dec 18, 2018 13:16

I see no problems with editing

PowerDirector Tutorials Team

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Dec 18, 2018 14:53

Hi optodata -

Sorry - I mustn't have read your initial post properly.

Yes - there's definitely lag happening with that scenario, shown in the screen capture below. The annoying thing is that what has to be processed is not all that complex!

As an alternative, I reconstructed the titles so they're all in one track. i.e. all duration/sync editing need to be done in Title Designer. I found that more responsive & less taxing.

Here's the packed project. Maybe that approach is worth considering.

Cheers - Tony
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optodata

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

Dec 19, 2018 12:10

Quote Hs an alternative, I reconstructed the titles so they're all in one track. i.e. all duration/sync editing need to be done in Title Designer. I found that more responsive & less taxing.

Here's the packed project. Maybe that approach is worth considering.

Cheers - Tony

Hi Tony

Thanks very much for tidying this up! I had moved all the titles onto the top 3 tracks in order to get any editing done, so the depth of titles seems to correspond to death by titles, especially on my brand new platform. I tried editing my original project on a second PC, and it was laggy like you've seen, but not excruciatingly so.

If I have time, I may experiment with some settings and see if I can identify any that are the major culprits/triggers.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Dec 19. 2018 18:27

optodata

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

Jan 31, 2019 11:18

This morning I was elated to see that the long-awaited update for subscription users was released!

There's nothing posted here yet from the Moderator and nothing shows up on the CL software updates page regarding the changes, so I went ahead and tried out the worst case project - this one. I'm really hoping the patch addresses most of the significant issues that have been discussed elsewhere on the forum, but somehow, trying to edit my simple Death by Titles project is even worse! And this is with an 8 physical core CPU:

I've recorded 9 1/2 min of agony if anyone wants to share in my suffering...

tomasc

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

Jan 31, 2019 14:12

It has been a while and I don’t remember spending time with the project. There might be any easy fix for this. Turn off hyperthreading in the bios and try it again.

I was reading some articles that hyperthreading can give 5 – 30% greater performance but sometimes hinder performance. This remind me of the Janes FA game that ran well in my P3 500 Mhz W98 gaming pc. It was full of hangs and freezes on my homebuilt P4c 3 Ghz machine. In a forum the suggestion was to turn off hyperthreading. That fixed it.

optodata

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

Jan 31, 2019 15:24

Quote It has been a while and I don’t remember spending time with the project. There might be any easy fix for this. Turn off hyperthreading in the bios and try it again.

I was reading some articles that hyperthreading can give 5 – 30% greater performance but sometimes hinder performance. This remind me of the Janes FA game that ran well in my P3 500 Mhz W98 gaming pc. It was full of hangs and freezes on my homebuilt P4c 3 Ghz machine. In a forum the suggestion was to turn off hyperthreading. That fixed it.

Tomasc You sir, are a $#^%&% GENIUS!

That is the 100% definitive answer! Talk about night and day - here's a 1 min clip, and please watch all the way to the end

Thank you so much!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jan 31. 2019 15:26

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Jan 31, 2019 20:28

How does turning off hyperthreading affect the rest of the program? Producing?
And how does it affect other programs? 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

optodata

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

Jan 31, 2019 21:58

Quote How does turning off hyperthreading affect the rest of the program? Producing?
And how does it affect other programs?

Surprisingly, it's only about a 5% hit, and if you use HW encoding to produce, there's no difference at all!

Coincidentally, I ran a whole bunch of tests a week or so ago after realizing that some things I posted on another thread about hyper-threading were waaayyy off base. For some reason, I had a completely naive view of what HT was ever since I bought my first serious i7-4770k PC 5 years ago.

Now, I (finally) wanted to really understand how it worked and what role specifically HT might play in PD's domain. Like tomasc, I saw some mentions about performance taking a hit under some circumstances, but I didn't ever connect that with the titles in PD. It just seemed like it was something with the titles since I didn't see any consistently terrible performance anywhere else. Now I know!

Take a look at the attached Passmark and producing scores with HT enabled and disabled. My test was producing a single 20 min HD 60p H.264 MTS clip with no edits.

YMMV w/ or wo/ HT, but as long as I can actually use PD17 on those kinds of projects now, I'm happy to turn it off. For now, at least.


Filename	Passmark HT comparison.jpg	Download
Description	CPU scores
Filesize	231 Kbytes
Downloaded:	29 time(s)


Filename	HT comparison.jpg	Download
Description	HT/noHT comparison of 5 produce profiles
Filesize	211 Kbytes
Downloaded:	30 time(s)

JL_JL

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

Feb 02, 2019 12:21

Quote Surprisingly, it's only about a 5% hit, and if you use HW encoding to produce, there's no difference at all!

Coincidentally, I ran a whole bunch of tests a week or so ago after realizing that some things I posted on another thread about hyper-threading were waaayyy off base. For some reason, I had a completely naive view of what HT was ever since I bought my first serious i7-4770k PC 5 years ago.

YMMV w/ or wo/ HT, but as long as I can actually use PD17 on those kinds of projects now, I'm happy to turn it off. For now, at least.

Kind of funny, I don't think you realized anything, I think you were politely prodded that your 2X improvement you've mentioned in several threads for HT benefit was in fact bogus for PD which probably led you to finally do a few PD tests yourself.

HT does affect HW encoding as well, but it's hardware and more specifically timeline content and decode options influenced. But yes, as mentioned previously, HT when beneficial to PD encoding is typically in the 5-10% area on producing and when detrimental, again about 5-10% deficient.

I'm not sure I'd call this title issue solved, I'd think a real solution would be for CL to have a look at the code surrounding titles and fix in an upcoming patch, that would be a solution. Many COTS system purchased by default have HT active so PD compliance I'm sure would help end user frustrations. Although details appear to be missing for PD17, prior PD versions would state "optimized for CPUs with MMX/SSE/SSE2/3DNow!/3DNow! Extension/HyperThreading/AVX2 technology" It's obvious something amiss with CL titles coding with WIN scheduling of the threads, could be even a simple oversubscription when a thread simply enters a sleep state.

Jeff

tomasc

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

Feb 02, 2019 21:54

Optodata – Thank you for publishing your tests showing HT comparisons with your Nvidia video card. I will bookmark this valuable info which show that I should have one should I ever decide to go to h.265 encoding. BTW: My TV can display can display 4k 60p hevc perfectly from a memory stick.

Hyperthreading from what I remember in Byte magazine is something an engineer came up with when he analyzes how programs should be written to the way the average programmer actually writes the programs. He found a single thread could have a lot of idle time on a core. Starting a second thread on the idle time can speed things up. Using predictive analasis a thread can be discarded and a new one started if the old one did not follow the prediction. In some cases it can be as good as having a second core. It looks like the developed algorithm used works fine now for four cores that many of us uses but maybe not for eight cores for now. Maybe a new stepping on a processor can change things. I don’t know if a programmer can write a program that works equally well on a hyperthreaing four and eight core processor at the same time. That was interesting reading at the time I built my Pentium 4c hyperthreading pc many years ago.

optodata

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

Mar 03, 2019 19:30

With all due credit and appreciation to tomasc for the HT idea, it turns out that's not really the cause. Clearly things were very good when I first tested PD with HT turned off, but I started noticing that the problem was still present.

Eventually I determined that having HT on or off was not the biggest factor, rather it was whether Edge was running or not.

I did all kinds of testing with debugging and monitoring tools but couldn't determine what's actually going on. However, I can say that whenever I close Edge (regardless of how many/which pages are open), PD and titles behave much better.

I will post back if I find anything more out, but at this point if anyone is seeing unexpectedly long lag times (especially when opening projects, having PD unexpectedly "go away" for long stretches while editing, or working with titles), try closing Edge and see if that makes a noticeable difference.

BTW here's what some of the testing I did looked like:

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 03. 2019 19:45

tomasc

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

Mar 05, 2019 12:26

I almost always have IE open on my pc without ill effects as well as in testing the death by titles project early on. In my initial testing of edge on win 10 four years ago found a feature that allow malicious websites to open the next time edge is open again. I had to manually remove them. After that I only open IE and chrome and they don’t have the edge stored feature. Maybe using Chrome instead of Edge may help as I don’t notice any slowdown with it open. My video editing pc still runs on win 7. My laptop is on win 10.

Maybe writing a support ticket could help as Jeff suggested.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 05. 2019 18:56

Harmen

Newbie Joined: Nov 01, 2018 15:29 Messages: 37 Offline

May 04, 2019 02:39

I have a similar problem.

In my current project editing certain title elements makes the program freeze. Clicking on (or editing) a misbehaving title makes several other tracks disappear. See video https://youtu.be/ezJ3BKXFJrA This doesn't happen with all titles though.

I noticed that when I click this malfunctioning title my pc's processor keeps running on a relatively high load and the memory usage is also gradually increasing (see video). It starts at around 1.2GB but when I just wait and do nothing (one of my many qualities) the memory approaches 2GB. The program becomes sluggish in time and will crash when I try to edit a title. Replacing the title with a new one does not help. I have a high-end pc (AMD Ryzen-7 2700, 32GB memory, GeForce RTX2080) but my very low-end laptop has the same problem.

Since I have an AMD cpu I can't turn off hyperthreading. There is a similar option called SMT but turning that off doesn't solve the problem.

I don't use M$ Edge but I did notice it was running in the background so I killed it. Didn't solve my problem either. I contacted customer support.

Harmen

Newbie Joined: Nov 01, 2018 15:29 Messages: 37 Offline

May 04, 2019 12:39

There must be a memory leak or something. I just let the program run for an hour without doing anything other than enjoying my dinner and when I came back this its memory consumption was more than 2.5GB and CPU at around 25%. Starting a new project does not release the surplus of memory.