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Wow thats quite the research. I like canon myself I do not make anything past 15 min. You should like your making film for the big time. 
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There is word that cannon 90d is coming out in the spring and it might have 4K. Canon duel focus is amazing. I have the canon 80d and its so nice. When they do put 4k in the duel focus thats the one you want.
I don't produce anything >15 either, but I do need to record that long or much longer when I practice my classical music takes.
Constantly stopping and restarting the camera, even with a remote, is a PITA. I end up with tons of video files to deal with later on if I do that.
If I don't manually stop it, then the camera stops by itself in the middle of a take and the take is lost.
The only thing that's suitable for me is really a camcorder or a DSLR without recording limit like the GH5. AFAIK, it is unique in that sense. There have been some firmware hacks for some Sony A7S II cameras to do >30 min, though. Those cameras are reported to overheat, though. They also cost more, no 60 fps, and no 10-bit color. They do have larger APS-C sensor.
For me the GH5 is a lot closer to my needs, I think. I tried a Sony FDR-AX33 camcorder and hated it. Not a sharp picture, and low-light sucked. Not surprising with that size sensor.
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There is word that cannon 90d is coming out in the spring and it might have 4K. Canon duel focus is amazing. I have the canon 80d and its so nice. When they do put 4k in the duel focus thats the one you want.
I need a camera without a 30 min video recording limit. AFAIK, Canon has never produced a DSLR that could record >30 min, let alone a 4K DSLR that could do that. The GH5 can. I really want 60 fps also, and the GH5 can do that too. The GH5 checks all the boxes for me, except the 4/3 sensor is small compared to my 5-year old Pentax K-30 DSLR (which is great for stills, and no good for video). And in fact DXO comparison shows that ...
https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Pentax/K-30
https://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Panasonic/Lumix-DC-GH5
Very similar scores, except the low-light ISO is much better on the Pentax APS-C. I don't shoot sports, but do shoot indoors, so I care. However, I shoot mostly on a tripod and can adjust the exposure. Also, the GH5 can record in 10 bits so in theory you could correct the video in post without losing too much, as you do today with 8 bit video. Not sure if PowerDirector supports those GH5 10-bit video or not.
And then there are rumors like this :
http://www.4kshooters.net/2017/11/27/panasonic-to-launch-new-gh5-model-soon-and-more-cyber-monday-deals/
GH5 with better low-light performance would be exactly what I want. Not sure I want it to cost twice as much, though 
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Personally, I decided to upgrade from PD14 based on performance alone.
I tried my largest project, which is just under 12 minutes, and has a number of effects and many separate clips. Rendering time with PD16 was 35% shorter, just under 5 minutes with PD16 vs over 7.5 minutes with PD14 (did not write down the exact times).
And this was using the hardware H.264 encoding on my GTX960. The main difference appears to be that the effects are faster, and that is welcome. I did not see any compelling new features for me in PD15, which is why I skipped it last year, and I'm not sure that there are any either in PD16, but time will tell. The upgrade deal on cyberweek was very inexpensive so it was a no-brainer.
Now if I can only find the money to buy a decent 4K camera. Was hoping for a Lumix GH5 price drop on Black friday/Cyber monday. Unfortunately, couldn't find any, except bundles with unnecessary accessories.
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Seems like you already got your rig. In my experience with the ADATA SP550 240GB, the write performance sucked. After writing a few GB (really, only a few seconds), it dropped to much slower than HDD performance.
Not sure if this is the case on your SP900 also.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R1KWYKK7FCS7HI?ref_=pe_623860_70668520
I returned it for something better. The machine that I was using was an HTPC running Skylake. Replacement is a Patriot Ignite, and does not have any problem sustaining writes at 200 MB/s +.
Anyway, this might not necessarily matter for editing . It's a shame when copying video files from the camera when the SD card (95 MB/s UHS-1 or 200MB/s UHS-II) is faster than the SSD .
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Those links only show v2820 from 2016/05/15 . v4207 is not there.
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Hi Members,
PDR14 v4207 patch has been released today 04/07/2017.
Build Info:
- Version: PowerDirector 14
- Build number: 14.0.4207
- SR number: VDE170519-01
Software Update Pages:
Release notes:
- Note: This patch is not for PowerDirector Live subscribers, OEM versions, or versions purchased via Steam.
Patch Instruction :
- Updates PowerDirector 14 to build 4207 - Installing this patch update enhances the program stability.
Release note:
- Fixes the issues when uploading video to Facebook and Youku.
Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator
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In my opinion trying to play 4K over an Ethernet cable will result in a very jumpy experience.
It really depends what version of Ethernet you are using. 10 Base T would definitely not be fast enough.
100 Base T may or may not, depending on the bit rate of your 4K files.
1000 Base T (Gigabit ethernet) should definitely work, however. I have been on Gigabit ethernet for more than a decade.
Not sure if any of the smart TVs feature Gigabit ethernet, but if not, it's a shame.
Of course these days, they should really have 10 Gig ethernet, too.
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welcome to the forum
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...
So the key is what mobile graphics card is needed for PD14?
' with GTX 965M, GTX 970M & GTX 980M, i'll choose GTX 970M for middle ground... '
these are equip with second gen Maxwell GM204 and only do H.265 decoding
will encode with nVidia's nVenc which PD does not support...
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PD13 and PD14 most certainly do support nVenc for encoding . Earlier versions can only use the CUDA encoder.
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FYI, here is my test data on Skylake i5-6600k & Haswell i7-5820k, with GTX 750TI and GTX960 respectively, and also the iGPU on the Skylake.
Both machines have 32GB RAM. But the Skylake has 2x16GB DDR4-3000, ie. dual channel, whereas the Haswell-e has 4x8GB DDR4-2666 (RAM is overclocked at 2800). Both CPUs are overclocked.
The project is 11:48 with all HD 1080i H.264 source material with a few titles, but otherwise no effects.
On the i5 box, 2 monitors are running off the GTX 750 Ti, and one monitor off the iGPU, Intel Graphics 530.
When I tested QuickSync on lines 8, 9 and 20, I had both GPUs enabled in the device manager, and all 3 monitors connected.
On the other hand, when I tested the GTX 750Ti, on lines 12, 13 and 22, I had the Intel Graphics 530 disabled in the device manager.
So, perhaps I did not get to test the Multi GPGPU mode at all. Would that require leaving both GPUs enabled in device manager, but disconnected the monitor from the Intel Graphics 530 ? It makes little sense that the rendering mode in PD should depend on which monitor is attached or not.
For H.264, the GTX 750Ti is faster than the Intel Graphics 530, yet there seems to be no way to force PD to use the faster GPU, short of disabling the Intel GPU in device manager. But that also means I lose my 3rd monitor. I still have one output left on the 750Ti, and could run that monitor off the GTX 750Ti too. But then, would Quicksync be available at all, for H.265, where I actually want it ?
For me, the optimal performance on the Skylake i5 system is obtained by using the GTX 750Ti for H.264 encoding, and using the Intel Graphics 530 for H.265 encoding (since the GTX 750Ti does not support H.265 encoding at all). But there is no way inside PD to make the GPU selection for the rendering. Enabling/disabling a GPU in device Manager seems to be the only way. This is really not very practical.
That said, the combination of the i7-5820k and the nVidia GTX 960 clearly trounces the Skylake i5 with either the GTX 750Ti, or the Intel Graphics 530.
Software rendering is also much faster on the i7-5820k, no doubt due to the 6 cores, as well as larger cache, and quad channel memory.
I am not happy at all with the stability of the Z170 chipset also, even at stock settings (without any overclock). The Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI motherboard I have has a very problematic BIOS. I may return it and exchange it for another model of motherboard.
For the i7 5820k Haswell-E, I'm using an MSI X99-A Raider motherboard, and that is a much more polished platform along with a much better BIOS.
I hope this data helps. I will also test the project listed in the original post. EDIT: can't do that since it's only a Youtube link, no project data to try.
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Does it really have to be a laptop ? A desktop is much better option, in general.
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FYI, I now have 2 Intel machines - one i5-6600k (OC at 4.5 GHz) with GTX 750Ti + iGPU, and one i7-5820k (OC at 4.3 GHz) with a GTX 960.
In my tests, the i7 Haswell-E box trounces the i5 Skylake box by 70% to 100% in rendering time. This is true regardless of using QuickSync or multi GPGPU on the Skylake machine, or just the nVidia GPU. It is also true for pure software encodes without acceleration. I have tested both H.264 and H.265 and this holds true as well.
What is nice about the Skylake is that the QuickSync supports H.265 hardware acceleration, so I can keep the old 750Ti GPU and still be able to encode H.265 with acceleration. But the QuickSync H.265 is still much slower than a GTX 960. Now, if Youtube would start supporting H.265 uploads...
I will post more detailed data about my tests data later.
But to anyone who is shopping for a CPU/GPU, I would recommend the X99 platform with quad channel RAM, and a discrete nVidia GPU, vs a Skylake with only dual-channel RAM and the iGPU. Of course, the X99 platform will cost more in general. There were some good sales around black friday, though. I would have bought a Skylake i7-6700k rather than the i5-6600k I got, but just couldn't find a chip in stock at a reasonable price. The cost of the 6700k has skyrocketed from the $300 range to $400 - $500, and there seem to be shortages. Whereas the 5820k goes on sale more regularly for under $300. I paid $276 for my 5820k, and $229 for my 6600k.
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There is not a feature in PD to make a 100% compatible disc, PAL/NTSC. However, for DVD, it's been published that ~95% of the world's standalone DVD players can read NTSC. For playing NTSC DVDs in Europe - all PAL DVD players output NTSC, and MOST PAL TVs will display NTSC with no problems. Conversely, most NTSC players can't play PAL discs but this depends heavily on the age/brand of the player.
It certainly wasn't the case for a very long time that most TVs in Europe accepted NTSC input - at least in the days of CRTs and sing composite or s-video connections, it was not . This may very well have changed now. Most of the old TVs in France only accepted PAL or SECAM on their video inputs, but not NTSC. This was the case well into the mid-2000s.
However, many TVs then featured RGB SCART inputs, which provided much better color reproduction than composite or s-video, and better than component video as well.
From what I recall, many DVD players in Europe don't actually output NTSC on s-video or composite connections but a bastardized "PAL60" format that many (but not all) TVs are able to accept.
However, composite and s-video are rarely used anymore, at least, not if you want the best picture. So, the PAL/NTSC becomes meaningless. On component and HDMI connections, there is actually no PAL or NTSC color encoding. But the signal can still be 50 or 60 frames per second, at various resolutions. And the TV's scaler needs to be able to accomodate the various formats. Most HDTVs support a large number of modes over HDMI, at both 50 or 60fps, so, if using a player with an HDMI connection and a modern LCD TV with a scaler, it really doesn't matter whether the source material is in 50 or 60fps, or even 24fps. I would use what matches the source camera the best.
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BWX,
I think many of the criticisms about slow editing performance in PD are valid.
The UI in PD compared to other products is sluggish, in a way that competing products like Sony Movie Platinum or Vegas, are not.
For example, there are no good excuses for almost every single dialog/window being modal in PD, as they are. The PD UI does not make good use of threading - it often does processing while doing UI repaint, which clearly doesn't belong, and should be done in the background .
Unfortunately, the UI has gotten more and more sluggish over time, as Cyberlink has added features.
On the other hand, my experience is that the rendering time in PowerDirector in most cases is much faster than anything the competition provides, often by factors of 3-5x. I periodically download trial versions of the competing programs and I'm always surprised how bad their rendering speed is.
If you are more concerned about the time it takes to edit than render, perhaps the competing products are a better option. Personally, I find there are some features in PowerDirector that the consumer versions of competing products have yet to catch up to, for instance, the ability to automatically synchronize multiple clips by audio analysis - either from multiple cameras, or separately recorded audio file.
I would love to have a product with the simplicity of use of Powerdirector, useful feature set in PD, editing speed of Sony Movie Platinum / Vegas, and rendering speed of PowerDirector. The editing speed is the weak part in PD, but is tolerable IMO if you are only doing occasional editing, and are not a professional. But of course, that's for every individual to judge on their own.
I have edited for years on hardware similar to yours. I think an SSD is likely to help a little bit with the editing speed, vs using an HDD.
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The editing performance in the retail version is the same as the trial. Rendering perf may be better, and some software codecs are unavailable in the trial due to licensing reasons. With the retail version, you can apply the latest patches, also, which I don't think you can with the trial.
It is likely the effects that are bogging you down. I have not used the lens correction. But color correction adjustments are pretty expensive in my experience. Even on HD material, with a similar FX-8350 CPU, the rendering time is often 4-6x the duration of the project when using a few effects.
The effects are also applied in the preview and thus slow things down during editing.
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To be honest, I've monitored the stress that rendering videos in PD puts on my GPU, and its dissapointingly negiigible. Around 4%. I'm not sure why, because PD is supposed to take advantage of your GPU to quicken the process, but it just doesn't do it. I'm using an R9 270X.
It depends on your project and whether you use some effects that run only on the CPU. If you do, then the CPU often becomes the bottleneck. If you just have a clip on the timeline and are just compressing it with the GPU, you should see higher GPU utilization, and your GPU should speed up the compression.
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Julien,
I agree with your assessment.
If I had more confidence I would have gotten a faster CPU to reduce that bottleneck. However my main concern is to render 265 in a reasonable amount of time and about 2x real time I consider great, remembering that what now takes perhaps two hours used to take days.
Yes, the GTX960 is certainly a great tool for H.265 rendering. I wonder how expensive the rest of the rendering is though - other than compression. Things like stabilizer, color and lighting adjustments, etc. These usually rely more on CPU than GPU.
BTW, there are a number of other results getting the same rendering time for 265 and 264.
Yes - I guess those boxes must also have other bottlenecks too. Still waiting for someone to show faster results than my new build on either H.264/265
So I am a happy camper, waiting for UHD BR, expecting to be able to use a sub format, UHD on a regular 25GB BR disk.
The UHD BR specs were just released earlier this year.
I think they call for 66 - 100GB optical discs. The few players available are far too expensive so far - $3000+, only available in Japan seemingly. Guess the UHD BR has missed the 2015 xmas season in any meaningful sense.
On the computer side, it will require new software for sure to play and produce. And maybe a new physical drive too, that part is less clear. Maybe BDXL computer drive would work, I don't know. I don't have a BDXL drive yet and will hold off buying one until that becomes clear.
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Eugen157,
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It sure proves that the 960 is an amazing GPU at only $200 and just as great that PD14 makes full use of it.
FYI, if you look at my latest results on the i7-5820k box, you will see that I got a better H.264 encode time than anybody else in the spreadsheet so far - 1:05. This suggests that perhaps GTX960 GPU may not be be fully utilized on the slower CPUs.
Also, on my system, H.265 encode time was 1:42, which is much longer than the 1:05 I got for H.264 . This is different than your findings where you are getting the same times for both H.264/H.265 . Your machine clearly has a botltleneck other than the GPU, not sure what it is.
Julien
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Tony,
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Although only a few bothered, for those and anyone else that have an interest I've added another set of performance readings at the following link.
Click here to see data.
The new readings result from a cpu change from i7-920 to Xeon W3690.
FYI, I just did a new build with new CPU & GTX960, and have added the new data as well.
This was the second of three component changes to my desktop. The final component change will be from HDD to SSD. Readings to follow in due course. I'm not looking forward to moving to SSD because of the amopunt of work entailed in reinstalling all my software and settings. Where I am currently on Win7 HE 64-bit I will install same on the SSD then do the free upgrade to Win10 (already done same on other machines), then do a clean install of Win10.
TonyL
Moving to SSD should not require you to reinstall the OS.
If your SSD is big enough, you can just clone the HDD to the SSD.
If it is not, you could move the large data files off your HDD, and keep only the OS & application programs.
Then, defrag and shrink the partition, until it is small enough to fit on the SSD.
Finally, clone it to the SSD.
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Jeff,
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Oddly, many have also found that it also depends on which app does the color corrections. For instance, on my PC an increase in 10 of contrast on a video in PD (Fix /Enhance > Color Adjustment) vs a 10 contrast increase applied in ColorDirector has a significant effect on encode times. Why this effect, I'm not sure, other than it might be two very different generations of code development.
Which contrast increase did you find to be faster ? The code in PowerDirector or in ColorDirector ?
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Thanks for the replies guys.
Julien: I tried removing the color grading and render times improved to 1-2x as you guessed.
Yes, which means that whether a new GPU helps will primarily depend on whether ColorDirector is taking advantage of GPU acceleration or not.
I would suggest you upload a 1 minute project including the color grading. Many other members have a faster GPU than you and can try it. Not everyone uses ColorDirector, but it's a free 30 day trial. I will test your project.
I only installed the trial of ColorDirector 3, but not ColorDirector 4. I think my CD3 trial is now expired. But I could try another system.
I also just did a new PC build with an i7-5820k and GTX 960, and I can try your project on that combo ... When my overclocking trials are over, that is.
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Hi
I am a DirectorSuite user and want to reduce my render times. I typically work with footage from my iPhone 6 (1080p), GoPro Hero 4 Black (2.7k) and occasionally a Canon PowerShot D20 (1080p). My output is usually 1080p H.264 AVC MP4, although in the future I might start targeting 2.7k and 4k.
Often I use ColorDirector with PowerDirector and the render times can be 50 minutes for a 3-4 minute video.
My hardware is:
- Intel i7-4790K
- 32GB RAM
- Nvidia GTS 450
- 3 x monitors
- 250GB SSD OS drive
- 3TB HDD storage drive
The GTS 450 is an old graphics card but faster than the integrated graphics.
Will getting a new GPU speed up rendering? If so, what would be a good one to get?
I'm not sure if ColorDirector takes advantage of the GPU or not.
You are seeing encode time of 50 minutes for 3-4 minute video, ie. 12x-16x as long rendering time as the project.
Try creating a simple project that has just a source clip on it, and render it to 1080p H.264 AVC MP4 as you usually do.
Do a CPU rendering (uncheck the "fast hardware rendering option" if available).
See how long that takes compared to the source material. My guess is that it will take somewhere around 1-2x the amount of time to render as the duration of the project with your CPU. The GPU will primarily help with the compression. It may help with some plug-ins too, but I'm not sure to which extent, and not necessarily with all plug-ins.
My guess is that you should not expect miracles from a GPU upgrade.
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Thanks Julien Pierre -
I'm yet to find an NLE or other video producing software that will render MP4 with LPCM audio - certainly nothing I have installed here.
I don't have it installed anymore, but I believe Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 allows this combination, and many others.
I had other issues with this editor, though. Rendering times were very slow. The UI was far more responsive than PowerDirector, however.
When PD13 added the ability to synchronize tracks based on audio, I gave up on the Sony editor. The manual audio synchronization was by far the longest task in my workflow. I don't believe Sony has caught up with Cyberlink in this one area yet, at least not in the consumer version of their software.
Yes - I have a Sony camera that shoots MP4 with LPCM audio. So does the Pana GH4. You had an AX33 & you let it go?
Cheers - Tony
Yes, I returned it because I found the indoor performance to be poor, and the picture quality was actually inferior to my 7 year old Canon HG21 HD camera for my use case on a tripod. PQ was much better on the AX33 when handholding outdoors, but it wasn't the primary reason I bought the AX33.
FYI, here is my Amazon review of the AX33 :
http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/ROU9K4UJCXICG/ref=cm_cr_pr_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00R5LH9G0
Julien
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