Wow, is preview mode really this bad?

Dryslot

Newbie Joined: Mar 20, 2014 02:59 Messages: 25 Offline

Solved by

Mar 20, 2014 03:49

I don't mean to get off on the wrong foot, but my first experience with Power Director 12 isn't good. Any help would be much appreciated.

See my setup in my sig. While I'm not running 3 GTX Titans in Tri-SLI, I can still confidently say I have a VERY fast computer. Prior to today I was not using a video card, only the Intel® HD Graphics 4600 on the cpu die.

In starting my first project, I am opening with some basic effects and some old SD (digitized) video. I have three layers, a particle layer background (Fairy Dust), the SD video clip on layer 2, and a PIP film projector on the third layer. I tweaked the video clip by adding slow motion, reflection an 'old movie' FX, soft border, a mask and I resized the clip to make it smaller.

So as I previewed this using 'High Preview Resolution' preview quality, I was a bit disappointed to see it wouldn't play smoothly. The two higher quality modes were of course pointless. So I dropped $250 on a GTX 760 Nvidia Card. Big mistake. It didn't make one iota difference in my preview playback. Yep, I've enabled both OpenCL and hardware decoding in the preferences menu. No improvement.

I reviewed the Passmark Software G3D benchmarks and for what it's worth, the resulting marks were:

Intel® HD Graphics 4600 - 636
Nvidia Geforce GTX 760 - 4,999

I think it's fair to say I added some substantial horsepower. So am I simply running into a software limitation of Power Director? I haven't even dropped an HD clip into my project yet, I'm really afraid to see how that goes!

Thanks for any of your thoughts, just very frustrated.

Eric Windows 10 64 Bit
ASUS Z87 Pro MB BIOS 2103
i7-4770K Haswell OC'd to 4.3Ghz
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR 1600Mhz
EVGA Geforce GTX 960 2GB GDDR5 v368.22
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256 GB (Rapid Mode)
Power Director 14 Ultimate 64 Bit

BarryTheCrab

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

Mar 20, 2014 06:14

Dryslot,
welcome to the volunteer forum.
At the top of the PD12 forum you'll see how to post a DXDIAG for us to look at.

http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/29701.page
Please provide Part A and Part B. 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

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Mar 20, 2014 07:00

Quote: I don't mean to get off on the wrong foot, but my first experience with Power Director 12 isn't good. Any help would be much appreciated.

See my setup in my sig. While I'm not running 3 GTX Titans in Tri-SLI, I can still confidently say I have a VERY fast computer. Prior to today I was not using a video card, only the Intel® HD Graphics 4600 on the cpu die.

In starting my first project, I am opening with some basic effects and some old SD (digitized) video. I have three layers, a particle layer background (Fairy Dust), the SD video clip on layer 2, and a PIP film projector on the third layer. I tweaked the video clip by adding slow motion, reflection an 'old movie' FX, soft border, a mask and I resized the clip to make it smaller.

So as I previewed this using 'High Preview Resolution' preview quality, I was a bit disappointed to see it wouldn't play smoothly. The two higher quality modes were of course pointless. So I dropped $250 on a GTX 760 Nvidia Card. Big mistake. It didn't make one iota difference in my preview playback. Yep, I've enabled both OpenCL and hardware decoding in the preferences menu. No improvement.

I reviewed the Passmark Software G3D benchmarks and for what it's worth, the resulting marks were:

Intel® HD Graphics 4600 - 636
Nvidia Geforce GTX 760 - 4,999

I think it's fair to say I added some substantial horsepower. So am I simply running into a software limitation of Power Director? I haven't even dropped an HD clip into my project yet, I'm really afraid to see how that goes!

Thanks for any of your thoughts, just very frustrated.

Eric

Hi Eric,
Looks like a 8.1 and PDR12 issue to me. Just guessing but there are play and display issues that editors are encountering with various set ups using 8.1 and PDR12. Your system does indeed look to be more than adequate. You're not alone, just read the latest posts here and you'll see quite a few frustrated editors not having a smooth editing experience with powerful computers. For example, the Modify pop up delaying video from 4 to 14 seconds for those with really good GPU and SSD/HDD Mobos etc. PDR12 is not performing well for some editors.
I suggest you report the matter to Online Support and complain - the more that complain the greater likelihood something will be done..
Just my opinion and observation.
Dafydd

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 20. 2014 07:03

BillyR

Senior Member Location: Southeast US Joined: Jun 19, 2013 14:33 Messages: 156 Offline

Mar 20, 2014 11:32

Quote: So as I previewed this using 'High Preview Resolution' preview quality, I was a bit disappointed to see it wouldn't play smoothly. The two higher quality modes were of course pointless. So I dropped $250 on a GTX 760 Nvidia Card. Big mistake. It didn't make one iota difference in my preview playback. Yep, I've enabled both OpenCL and hardware decoding in the preferences menu. No improvement.

As Dafydd says, you ain't the Lone Ranger here. Not sure it's limited to Win 8 and Nvidia 7xx cards, though. I experience the same behavior on my admittedly much less powerful machine with Win 7. I use low preview resolution, and it still slows down and gets out of audio/video sync very soon after starting the preview. The way I deal with it is with about a 20 sec. Render Preview using High Preview Resolution after I finish editing and close to the end of the clip. It's described somewhere in these threads and on You Tube.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Mar 20. 2014 12:05

Dell Precision 7510 Laptop
Windows 7 Pro 64-bit | Intel(R) XEON(R) CPU E3-1505M v5 @2.80 GHz
RAM: 32 GB
Windows Experience Index 7.5

CJC

Member Joined: Dec 12, 2013 12:32 Messages: 53 Offline

Mar 20, 2014 12:27

Quote:

Quote: So as I previewed this using 'High Preview Resolution' preview quality, I was a bit disappointed to see it wouldn't play smoothly. The two higher quality modes were of course pointless. So I dropped $250 on a GTX 760 Nvidia Card. Big mistake. It didn't make one iota difference in my preview playback. Yep, I've enabled both OpenCL and hardware decoding in the preferences menu. No improvement.

As Dafydd says, you ain't the Lone Ranger here. Not sure it's limited to Win 8 and Nvidia 7xx cards, though. I experience the same behavior on my admittedly much less powerful machine with Win 7. I use low preview resolution, and it still slows down and gets out of audio/video sync very soon after starting the preview. The way I deal with it is with about a 20 sec. Render Preview using High Preview Resolution after I finish editing and close to the end of the clip. It's described somewhere in these threads and on You Tube.

That's crazy that so many people are experiencing such different user experiences. Your hardware as well looks absolutely top notch, that makes no sense that you can't get through on low-preview resolution. I'm on a low-end video card, and 2 ten year old hard drives.. and now that I've added that second HDD, I get along fairly well even on Full HD playback. Though I can already tell my HDD is slowing down and I could really benefit from a good SDD.

But I've been there as I was troubleshooting for ages, it can certainly be frustrating especially when you put so much money into a more than capable setup.

Dryslot

Newbie Joined: Mar 20, 2014 02:59 Messages: 25 Offline

Mar 20, 2014 15:01

Hey guys, thanks for the comments and assists.

Barry, I attached my dxdiag.

Dafydd, thanks! Right after I posted, I saw that thread you are referring to. I will indeed take this matter to Online Support.

BillyR, wow! I had not discovered that. I just watched a youtube video on it, and this appears to be a decent workaround!

CJC, yes I was shocked the video card didn't help matters. I will contact customer support.

Eric

Filename	Dryslot DxDiag.txt	Download
Description
Filesize	68 Kbytes
Downloaded:	286 time(s)

Windows 10 64 Bit
ASUS Z87 Pro MB BIOS 2103
i7-4770K Haswell OC'd to 4.3Ghz
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR 1600Mhz
EVGA Geforce GTX 960 2GB GDDR5 v368.22
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256 GB (Rapid Mode)
Power Director 14 Ultimate 64 Bit

Dafydd B

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 26, 2006 08:20 Messages: 11973 Offline

Apr 02, 2014 07:46

Follow up/Update.
I sent in a video screen capture to show the slowness of the modify preview display It seems to have worked and the issue has been replicated. R&D are checking up.

Dafydd

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Apr 03. 2014 04:35

Dryslot

Newbie Joined: Mar 20, 2014 02:59 Messages: 25 Offline

Apr 03, 2014 00:29

It does seem better now, progress!! Windows 10 64 Bit
ASUS Z87 Pro MB BIOS 2103
i7-4770K Haswell OC'd to 4.3Ghz
16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR 1600Mhz
EVGA Geforce GTX 960 2GB GDDR5 v368.22
Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256 GB (Rapid Mode)
Power Director 14 Ultimate 64 Bit