Even though you experience that during editing playback, it should produce fine. Give that a try first.

At times I've had PD hang during produce on these speedup sections, if that occurs, often a two step process will work. Produce the clip at 3X and bring that back into PD and produce again at another speedup factor to achieve desired end effect.

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I thought of producing as well to see the outcome, but it's a 3 hour affair, so hesitant. I guess I can let it run during the night and see. Will report back tomorrow. I7-4770, 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM, Asus Z87-Plus Z87chipset, Sapphire ATI Radeon HD7850 PCI Express-16 3.0 2GB, Samsung EVO 840 SSD 1TB

CV27... I think Jeff is saying to only produce the accelerated clips. Then put those new clips in place of the current ones. You can "Produce Range" by moving the yellow handles on the timeline marker. After selecting the range, the "Produce Range" button will appear. CyberPowerPC | Win7HP-64 | AMD FX-8320 3.5 Ghz | 8GB Mem | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB | WEI 5.9


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After letting the Produce run during the nigh, what I found this morning was "PD13 has stopped working", apparently running out of memory on an otherwise idling system with 16GB of RAM... I must admit doing a successful Produce of the same project, without the 2 clips not accelerated.

So I've started testing with only 2 clips. Here are the results:

1- both clips accelerated at 3x

a) on Edit, movie displays correctly beginning to end

b) After Produce, movie shows (within PD13) about first half of first clip, then apparently freezes (no visual changes) with the progression cursor jumping to about 80% of the movie length, then after a few seconds of 'silence', movie resumes at some mid point in second clip

c) Playing the resulting .m2ts in Windows Media Player goes fine beginning to end

2- both clips accelerated at 6x

a) on Edit, movie shows (within PD13) about first half of first clip, then apparently freezes (no visual changes) with the progression cursor jumping to about 80% of the movie length, then after a few seconds of 'silence', movie resumes at some mid point in second clip

b) After Produce, movie shows (within PD13) about first half of first clip, then apparently freezes (no visual changes) with the progression cursor jumping to about 80% of the movie length, then after a few seconds of 'silence', movie resumes at some mid point in second clip

c) Playing the resulting .m2ts in Windows Media Player goes fine beginning to end

Observations

So it appears that the jerking/skipping issue is within PD13 (2907.1) when it deals with accelerated clips. Not a deal breaker, assuming the resulting movie will always play correctly, but annoying when you want to see the results in Edit mode.

I've submitted to CL. I7-4770, 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM, Asus Z87-Plus Z87chipset, Sapphire ATI Radeon HD7850 PCI Express-16 3.0 2GB, Samsung EVO 840 SSD 1TB

Quote: After letting the Produce run during the nigh, what I found this morning was "PD13 has stopped working", apparently running out of memory on an otherwise idling system with 16GB of RAM... I must admit doing a successful Produce of the same project, without the 2 clips not accelerated.

So I've started testing with only 2 clips. Here are the results:

1- both clips accelerated at 3x

a) on Edit, movie displays correctly beginning to end

b) After Produce, movie shows (within PD13) about first half of first clip, then apparently freezes (no visual changes) with the progression cursor jumping to about 80% of the movie length, then after a few seconds of 'silence', movie resumes at some mid point in second clip

c) Playing the resulting .m2ts in Windows Media Player goes fine beginning to end

2- both clips accelerated at 6x

a) on Edit, movie shows (within PD13) about first half of first clip, then apparently freezes (no visual changes) with the progression cursor jumping to about 80% of the movie length, then after a few seconds of 'silence', movie resumes at some mid point in second clip

b) After Produce, movie shows (within PD13) about first half of first clip, then apparently freezes (no visual changes) with the progression cursor jumping to about 80% of the movie length, then after a few seconds of 'silence', movie resumes at some mid point in second clip

c) Playing the resulting .m2ts in Windows Media Player goes fine beginning to end

Observations

So it appears that the jerking/skipping issue is within PD13 (2907.1) when it deals with accelerated clips. Not a deal breaker, assuming the resulting movie will always play correctly, but annoying when you want to see the results in Edit mode.

I've submitted to CL.

Behavior pretty normal. Your step (b) for me is confusing. Sounds like you are simply playing the timeline again after the "Produce" operation. If so, yes that will have no effect. If you load the "Produced" video clip in the timeline that "Produced" clip should play fine.

That speedup behavior very difficult to playback smoothly in the editing timeline without "Producing". If I speed something up 100x, I essentially play frame 1, skip 100, play 1 frame, skip 100.... so on, very taxing. After "Producing" all these playback frames are now sequential so playback smooth.

Jeff

Quote: Behavior pretty normal. Your step (b) for me is confusing. Sounds like you are simply playing the timeline again after the "Produce" operation. If so, yes that will have no effect. If you load the "Produced" video clip in the timeline that "Produced" clip should play fine.

Agreed

Quote: That speedup behavior very difficult to playback smoothly in the editing timeline without "Producing". If I speed something up 100x, I essentially play frame 1, skip 100, play 1 frame, skip 100.... so on, very taxing. After "Producing" all these playback frames are now sequential so playback smooth.

Jeff

I may be off on this, but my thinking is that snapping a frame to produce out of every 100 should be less taxing than having to produce every single frame. I7-4770, 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM, Asus Z87-Plus Z87chipset, Sapphire ATI Radeon HD7850 PCI Express-16 3.0 2GB, Samsung EVO 840 SSD 1TB

Quote: I may be off on this, but my thinking is that snapping a frame to produce out of every 100 should be less taxing than having to produce every single frame.

I believe your off on that. For timeline playback your not producing anything just playing back.

Simplistically you can view the video frames as each a card in a multi deck of cards. If I tell you to flash every 100th card for my playback view that's a little tough. I need to scrub through the large card deck and do it fast so flashing every 100th card looks smooth, hence the choppy playback

However, if I "Produce" it for you by pulling every 100th card and putting them in a new much smaller deck to flash, that's pretty easy, I just show every card, normal video playback.

Jeff

I've encountered another issue where playback in Edit mode just quits.

I've added a stabilizer effect in a clip. When trying to play back in Edit, the video just freezes while the audio continues. I also tried to visualize in Create/Preview with the same results.

Jeff (JL_JL) suggested producing that clip and reinserting it into the timeline. I'm sure that will work and I'm greatful for the workaround, but, in theory, I don't feel I should have any extra work to do but to Edit playback. This is obviously a bug, so for the sake of CL let's focus on this as such.

Interestingly, while these freezes happen, I don't see any CPU peaks to explain the behavior.

I've seen Pinnacle (which I used for 10 years) announce dozens of new Studio features to spike sales, only to find very shoty implementation of these functions. So I've been using PD for the last 5 years. Where should I look now for stability? I7-4770, 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM, Asus Z87-Plus Z87chipset, Sapphire ATI Radeon HD7850 PCI Express-16 3.0 2GB, Samsung EVO 840 SSD 1TB

Quote: I've encountered another issue where playback in Edit mode just quits.

I've added a stabilizer effect in a clip. When trying to play back in Edit, the video just freezes while the audio continues. I also tried to visualize in Create/Preview with the same results.

Jeff (JL_JL) suggested producing that clip and reinserting it into the timeline. I'm sure that will work and I'm greatful for the workaround, but, in theory, I don't feel I should have any extra work to do but to Edit playback. This is obviously a bug, so for the sake of CL let's focus on this as such.

Interestingly, while these freezes happen, I don't see any CPU peaks to explain the behavior.

I've seen Pinnacle (which I used for 10 years) announce dozens of new Studio features to spike sales, only to find very shoty implementation of these functions. So I've been using PD for the last 5 years. Where should I look now for stability?

One could also use "Render Preview" by moving orange timeline markers around area of timeline playback difficulty and generating the Render Preview. Playback will be smooth for the given section then, speedup or stabilize features. Although this approach is work too so probably won't be of interest.

Jeff

Quote: One could also use "Render Preview" by moving orange timeline markers around area of timeline playback difficulty and generating the Render Preview. Playback will be smooth for the given section then, speedup or stabilize features. Although this approach is work too so probably won't be of interest.

Jeff

Jeff,

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate your suggestions, even if it requires more work. At the risk of repeating myself, the product should allow a user to make use of advertized functions as they are, not using work arounds.

In my opinion, there are 2 types of users:

1- the theoritecal one that will rebel when an malfunction of the product occurs and not move on until resolved.

2- the practical one that just forgets about the theoretical stuff and just moves on with the work arounds.

I'm a hybrid. With a new product or new release, I will explore and identify issues and try to get resolution. If not, then I quickly move on with the work arounds, because I need to get IT done.

I find these forums so supportive and that's great. On the other hand, many forums tend to mask product issues (by not acknowledging them).

PD is a steal from a price point of view (I didn't say that) given the powerful features it offers and I'm still discovering them after 5 years or so. One can do code review on a product guided by the most common path, that's the 20/80 approach. Or, as with some higher end products, one can go 100/100, but yes it's a drain on margins. When a user gets into more complex projects, he will fall in that last 20% of the 20/80 and it's frustrating. I7-4770, 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM, Asus Z87-Plus Z87chipset, Sapphire ATI Radeon HD7850 PCI Express-16 3.0 2GB, Samsung EVO 840 SSD 1TB

Quote:
Jeff,

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate your suggestions, even if it requires more work. At the risk of repeating myself, the product should allow a user to make use of advertized functions as they are, not using work arounds.

In my opinion, there are 2 types of users:

1- the theoritecal one that will rebel when an malfunction of the product occurs and not move on until resolved.

2- the practical one that just forgets about the theoretical stuff and just moves on with the work arounds.

I'm a hybrid. With a new product or new release, I will explore and identify issues and try to get resolution. If not, then I quickly move on with the work arounds, because I need to get IT done.

I find these forums so supportive and that's great. On the other hand, many forums tend to mask product issues (by not acknowledging them).

PD is a steal from a price point of view (I didn't say that) given the powerful features it offers and I'm still discovering them after 5 years or so. One can do code review on a product guided by the most common path, that's the 20/80 approach. Or, as with some higher end products, one can go 100/100, but yes it's a drain on margins. When a user gets into more complex projects, he will fall in that last 20% of the 20/80 and it's frustrating.

Render Preview is a standard editing tool, a advertised function, not a work around. CL added it at PD9 to give a better view of complex timelines.

Quote: Select a range of media on the timeline and then render an instant preview with Render Preview to get a better feel of a specific scene.

If a timeline specific scene was always playable as you suggest, one wouldn't need such a tool. As one creates complex timelines with various PIP's, enhancements, power tools, Fx's, high bitrate footage, ....., to name some, very few, if any, platforms can currently playback such timelines without hiccups. Hence the need for a "Render Preview" tool to assist.

Bug, call it that if you wish, it makes no difference to me, my opinion is that view will be decided by CL and not the forums or any acknowledgement of product issues in this user to user forum.

The playback issue has existed with these two particular features you noted and many other features as well depending on timeline complexity. PD10 and prior releases only had 10x speedup while PD11 introduced much larger speedups and all had playback issue at high speedups. PD9 introduced the new stabilize feature and had playback issues when released as well as very intensive encode times. If these effects are only applied to a small section of the overall timeline they all benefit from "Render Preview" by allowing the editor to visualize their scene creation a little easier.

Jeff

First off, you have been a great source of information for me, and the community at large I would bet, and this has been going on for many months bordering on years. What I like is that I accumulate more knowledge with each of your replies. So stay still as I try to add precision to my point.

Your mention of 'Render preview' was something I learned new. So I tried it on those 2 accelerated clips. CL visually showed (green bar on top of clips) shortly after that the sum of those 2 clips, 13 seconds, was apparently completed, but then there's a 'rendering' gauge that's been sitting at 0% for the last 15 minutes; Resource Mgr shows CPU usage (14%), no memoty usage variations, 0 disk activity for PD13.

How long can it take to render 13 seconds? Could it be more than (now) 20 minutes? Or could it be what I was referring to as code quality? Finally, I hit 'cancel' and the renderer green bar was still above those clips in Edit and, yes as you said, they now play correctly. Why did I have to hit cancel after (now) 30 minutes?

No, I'm not going to let it go. PD13 is function rich and will behave correctly if one follows a simple line. What I wish is that CL would sharpen up the more complex, non common, paths of its code.

It's not about functionality, it's about stability and quality of the implementation. I7-4770, 3.40Ghz, 16GB RAM, Asus Z87-Plus Z87chipset, Sapphire ATI Radeon HD7850 PCI Express-16 3.0 2GB, Samsung EVO 840 SSD 1TB

Quote:
How long can it take to render 13 seconds? Could it be more than (now) 20 minutes? Or could it be what I was referring to as code quality? Finally, I hit 'cancel' and the renderer green bar was still above those clips in Edit and, yes as you said, they now play correctly. Why did I have to hit cancel after (now) 30 minutes?

How long it can take is really a function of timeline complexity and your computer hardware. For instance, on my system:
15sec clip speed multiplier of 3x for 5sec of created timeline output: Z minutes
80sec clip speed multiplier of 16x for 5sec of created timeline output: 2Z minutes
80sec clip speed multiplier of 16x with stabilization applied for 5sec of created timeline output: 4Z minutes

All 3 of these sample timelines produce 5sec of output for my scene, however the time to create the "Render Preview" differs by 4 times. I know, you think they should all just play but these 3 timelines represent substantially different computations to achieve the scene being created. One of the many reasons why playback skips. If I do the same on a much older less capable computer, I get about a 5 times increase in times above to create the "Render Preview". Your 20-30 minutes does sound excessive though.

The "Rendering..." indicator that appears on the right side of the timeline is just a progress indicator. It will cycle back to zero several times, when your marked area has a full "Render Preview" for it, a green dashed bar will reside over the area in the timeline. You shouldn't have to cancel anything, that box would normally disappear upon completion. You can however cancel and then you just have the green dashed bar over the area that has the "Render Preview" created for it when the process was canceled.

Can timeline playback performance be improved, my view more than likely yes, but that's up to CL to develop and implement. I can only use the tool as it is and submit improvement desires to CL. Many of us have asked or suggested multiple improvements through the years, some occur to some extent others don't. A more stable code has been suggested by several over many releases. The "Render Preview" is just another tool in the editors box and can be handy for some limited areas of a timeline.

Jeff

It's 2022, me using Powerdirector 360 (20.7.310 and this problem is happening. I've reduced Previous quality and it didn't help. This is a nightmare For YouTubers like me who do vioce over for videos.
Funny enough, I've used Powerdirector mobile for 3 years before coming to PC and never had any issues speeding video up to 8x speeds (for lengthy clips up to 10 minutes) in my years of mobile PD editing. To encounter this is practically a bug - else, why will the 4x speed and above video clips play at higher for few seconds the way it should (in the mobile app) and then freeze?

How do I contact support for this? I can be doing produce range for the next 360 days. I choose Powerdirector because it is easier and faster in creating videos

Quote

How do I contact support for this? I can be doing produce range for the next 360 days. I choose Powerdirector because it is easier and faster in creating videos

Hi,

Support link in the signature below.

Cheers
PowerDirector Moderator

For customer support related issues, please contact:
- Customer service: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do
- Technical support: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do

Quote It's 2022, me using Powerdirector 360 (20.7.310 and this problem is happening. I've reduced Previous quality and it didn't help. This is a nightmare For YouTubers like me who do vioce over for videos.

As mentioned in the above posts, this is a very compute-intensive task and you're asking your computer to do more than it's capable of performing in real time. The solution is to use a better workflow

While the "Render Preview" tools was discussed, I personally prefer to produce the accelerated clips first (using the normal Produce tool, or selecting a section of the timeline and producing just that part) so that you get a smooth clip that can be previewed normally once you place it on the timeline.

Once that's done, go ahead and do the voiceover part

Quote

As mentioned in the above posts, this is a very compute-intensive task and you're asking your computer to do more than it's capable of performing in real time. The solution is to use a better workflow

While the "Render Preview" tools was discussed, I personally prefer to produce the accelerated clips first (using the normal Produce tool, or selecting a section of the timeline and producing just that part) so that you get a smooth clip that can be previewed normally once you place it on the timeline.

Once that's done, go ahead and do the voiceover part

Some of the answers in this thread makes me wonder if some of the mods and senior users here think that most PD users complaining here are stupid and it is annoying!
An issue highlighted here and is still persistent for over half a decade should be, at least, forwarded to the support team for fix.
"Render Preview" is used to render a select portion of the timeline for quick export. Importing it back for an action that can be done once in the timeline is reinventing the wheel. Even the mobile app does 8x speed without issues. I am a YouTuber, I put my videos in timeline and in sequence before I start cutting and speeding up some parts. Currently, I had to speed up FOUR different parts of the video to keep it shorter and exciting. I use Adobe premiere, and DaVinci Resolve and many others in my system without any issues of speed up video.

I use a laptop (Core i7 11 Gen upto 5GHz boost speed and Nvidia RTX 3050Ti 4GB DDR6) NVMe M.2 SSD, 16G DDR4 3200MHZ Please tell me this computer can run 8x speeds preview on my timeline. Most video editors buy high performance PCs so please, give me an option to put the heavy duty on the PC. There has to be an option for acceleration of these sorts albeit from Hardware.

I came from Powerdirector mobile app and if the technical support continue in this line of denial that this is not a valid issue, then I'll have no other choice than to cancel my subscription and stay on PD mobile which still gives me a faster work flow and glorious 4k 60FPS export.

NB: I tested this same issue on our top end gaming PC and the speed up videos also froze.

Quote

Some of the answers in this thread makes me wonder if some of the mods and senior users here think that most PD users complaining here are stupid and it is annoying!

Hi,

I read your initial post without judgement or assumption. You asked only one question "How do I contact support for this?" and I answered.
Given that is the only post from a moderator in the topic, I'm not sure I can agree with you that indicates " the mods ........ think that most PD users complaining here are stupid and it is annoying!"

I'm sure we can all sympathise when a member finds an issue frustrating, but this is a member to member forum, CL does not actively monitor it and, as mods, we form no part of the formal CS or technical support. Occaisionally, we do raise issues where necessary but, not being part of the formal process means that such issues may not become part of any tracking, monitoring and resolution processes.
For that reason, we also encourage members on the forum to at least raise a ticket and get their issue logged and in the system.

The other pathway to get directly to CL is to use File>Rate us and Provide Suggestions on the Main Menu bar.

PowerDirector Moderator

For customer support related issues, please contact:
- Customer service: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/customer-services.do
- Technical support: https://membership.cyberlink.com/support/service/technical-support.do