Preview is slow / choppy if I use Color Effects or x4 Video Speed

NathanD

Newbie Joined: Aug 24, 2011 08:00 Messages: 7 Offline

Solved by

Jul 18, 2014 05:47

I edit the odd video now and then. I recently purchased PowerDirector 12 64 Bit Ultra for a small edit job but I have found PD12 very unreliable and performing poorly.

Editing is almost impossible at the moment due to the preview freezing, choppy and dropping 100's of frames in playback. The audio seems to play fine in playback.

I cannot post the machine specs at the moment as the machine is in another location (at work) but the machine is SSD based and fairly new so it should be okay for basic video editing. I moved to it as another machine would BSOD when editing in PD12.

I'm running the latest patch for PD12.

I have turned off Shadow Files which did improve things slightly.

The editor cannot handle playback of an imported 3 minute MTS file with multiple sections that are 4X speed playback with the preset Color Director Effect called 70's style or something named like that applied to all sections.

My apologies for not posting the machine information from DXDIAG.

There is screen capture software installed on the computer called TechSmith Snagit (still running) and anti-virus software (Sophos) which I disabled realtime scanning.

Any tips?

I've never used keyframes (should I be using them?)
I've used the previous version PD11 many times without any of these choppy/slow issues (an older computer)

My final result will be a 2 minute movie with section of x4 footage, color adjust, text titles and 4 transitions. Nothing fancy. But this version of PowerDirector feels awfully buggy.

Did I mention the controls sometimes disappear and need to be redrawn (by minimising and and restoring the program).

A little too buggy but hopefully someone out there can help me! All suggestions welcomed :

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Jul 18, 2014 08:17

You must post the machine specs for us to diagnose the problem.

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

You might check the build number of the PowerDirector 12 that is installed.

http://www.cyberlink.com/support/powerdirector-ultra/patches_en_US.html

The latest Patch is 2930, I think there may have been a beta patch also, not in the patch downloads right now.

Your description sounds like the machine has too much background tasks, and cannot keep up with the video and sound.

You should disable TechSmith SnagIt, until you solve the lagging problem.
SnagIt is a screen capture program that is using resources to capture the screen and audio, Depending on settings, it could be capturing the screen 15-30 times per second.

You may have other background tasks running that is sapping the computer resources.

Video Drivers should be up to date from the Video card Manufacturers web site.

Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

NathanD

Newbie Joined: Aug 24, 2011 08:00 Messages: 7 Offline

Jul 18, 2014 23:31

Hi Carl312,

Thank you for the suggestion. That beta patch sounds interesting but it's obviously not available!

In the meantime, when I get back to the office on Monday I'm going to try killing all background processes. It's a long shot but I'll try anything to improve the playback as it's usable at the moment. At the moment, to play the project, I'm needing to remove the Color Effect and produce the movie in order to find editing issues due to the poor playback performance. Yes, it's very frustrating.

NathanD

Newbie Joined: Aug 24, 2011 08:00 Messages: 7 Offline

Jul 21, 2014 01:30

DXDiag attached

Filename	DxDiag.txt	Download
Description	DxDiag
Filesize	48 Kbytes
Downloaded:	558 time(s)

NathanD

Newbie Joined: Aug 24, 2011 08:00 Messages: 7 Offline

Jul 21, 2014 01:31

I'm running version 12.0.2930.0
PowerDirector 12 64-bit

NathanD

Newbie Joined: Aug 24, 2011 08:00 Messages: 7 Offline

Jul 21, 2014 01:42

Today I turned off antivirus, SnagIt but no change.

I ended up taking the original MTS file at 1920 x 1080 and exporting as MP4 640 x 480 which was going to be the final output size. I performed all the edits at this size and left off the Color Effect (70s Flick). I was useable in this state. Not happy having to do this!

Worth noting: I constantly experienced slowness using white text on black background titles (the normal titles of a movie). If the text box is more than a few lines long like the scrolling end credits of a movie then the performance of PD12 was terrible. Slow, sluggish and unresponsive. This is not what you would expect when editing basic text credits. This is not 4K movie editing!

The application PowerDirector 12 doesn't seem ready for public use to me!

Any suggestions to allow me to edit at 1920 x 1080 would be appreciated.

Dafydd B

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

Jul 21, 2014 04:44

Hi NathanD,
A few things to do;
In PDR12, set the Preview display to High and not HD.
Your GPU drivers are dated 2013 - check for a more recent release and update.
Please provide some additional information on the mts file, using MediaInfo Part J in the guide.
Dafydd

betanc1496

Newbie Joined: Jul 26, 2014 20:59 Messages: 18 Offline

Jul 26, 2014 21:19

I'm using Magic Movie Maker in PD12 that I just bought. Trying the quick movie maker,I imported videos and photos for a total movie length of 47 minutes but want a 10 minute movie, after 30 minutes to analyze, the movie is not ready for preview. Why so long? My old Roxio Creator program took 3 minutes to produce a short movie. What is wrong?

Dafydd B

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

Jul 28, 2014 03:46

Quote: I'm using Magic Movie Maker in PD12 that I just bought. Trying the quick movie maker,I imported videos and photos for a total movie length of 47 minutes but want a 10 minute movie, after 30 minutes to analyze, the movie is not ready for preview. Why so long? My old Roxio Creator program took 3 minutes to produce a short movie. What is wrong?

Hi betanc1496,
The way the forum works is by an editor posting a question/problem on their own thread. Members can then focus on answering your problem. Please start your own new topic.
Dafydd

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Jul 28. 2014 03:48

moisesmcardona

Senior Member Joined: Oct 23, 2012 11:48 Messages: 167 Offline

Jul 28, 2014 17:35

Just wanted to add that previewing is also slow when editing 4K footage from the Galaxy Note 3. All other HD footage plays fine in my system, also, when playing back a video from the media source window, the 4K videos plays fine, but not when it is in the timeline, even without editing being done.

My PC specs are:
Intel i7-4700MQ
Intel HD Graphics 4600
nVidia Geforce 750M
500GB SSHD <- software is installed here
128GB SSD <- PowerDirector folder is located here Main Machine: Jetway NF9G-QM77, Intel i7-3610QM, Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 3GB, 128gb SSD, Windows 10 Pro
Secondary Machine: Lenovo Y510p, Intel i7-4700MQ 2.4Ghz, 2x nVidia GT750M, 500GB SSHD, Windows 10 Education
visit http://moisescardona.video

rcohen

Member Location: Smokey mountains, TN Joined: Oct 10, 2013 21:44 Messages: 58 Offline

Jul 29, 2014 19:13

Might I ask what the last stable version of PD was. I have decided to downgrade.

Thanks

rcohen RCMedia Services dot net
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