Rendering Issues with PD14 if I use any Fix/Enhance Features

kmanauto

Newbie Location: Greendale, Wi Joined: Oct 31, 2014 00:44 Messages: 15 Offline

Solved by

Dec 04, 2015 13:00

So heres the problem. Have been a customer with Power Director 12 and 13, and upgraded recently to 14 for the added features. I have had no problems with either 12 or 13 with this.

Problem. I recently edited a road trip video for my YouTube viewers. The video contains both 4k UltraHD content recorded at 100mbit (All non Driving shots), and 1080p Content at 25mbit (All Dash video while driving).

I use the Fix/Enhance features all the time, adjust color, stablize, "enhance", and others, and I used it on this video for ALL clips as I usually do, tweak each just a bit to make it look better. The 1080p processes and renders crystal clear no problem, however, the 4k, if I use ANY of the Fix/Enhance features, the 4k renders blocky, and over-compressed, and just plain bad. The 1080p looks considerably better!

I tried opening the project in PD13, but since I created and saved in 14, it would not let me, so I did a test, I put both 4k and 1080 clips from this project in PD13, rendered, and then did the same clips in PD14, and rendered. Settings, and enhancements were exactly the same on both. Both 13 and 14, have the exact same program settings as well.

Result, PD13 rendered it crystal clear and normal, and looked great. PD14, once again, Blocky, over compressed and looking like crap. And once again, I will repeat, both settings, options, Fix/Enhance, EVERYTHING, was exactly the same.

Output rendering, is H.264 AVC as MP4, Output Resolution is 3840x2160, 30FPS, Progressive, High Profile, CABAC, Bitrate 100mbit, Speed/Quality Indicator in Quality Mode, Use Deblocking. Same output settings on both 13 and 14.

Now, if I do not use any Fix/Enhance features, the output is perfect (Of course, without then any color correction, or enhance etc...) and I am not using SVART, besides the fact svart doesn't work once the video has been edited.

So, I have two links for you. Link one, good quality version of the Road Trip video, without using Fix/Enhance features, and thats the video I put live, video #2, is using Fix/Enhance features. Compair the non-driving sequences. First one is of me talking, and I have other standstill or walking shots too. Make sure you change the resolution settings to 4k, even if you don't have a 4k monitor. Though, difference can be seen at other playback resolutions as well.

Output/Render settings were the same for both as well.

<h1>1 Good Quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0lwMnREuxA</h1>
2 Bad Quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b6x2JlPewU

System Specs:

I7 2.8ghz Overclocked to 3.5ghz 4core with hyperthread

512meg video card, 400mhz

16 gigs ram

30TB Storage

Windows 7

Thanks for the Help! http://YouTube.com/KmanAuto

Neil.F.1955

Senior Contributor Joined: Mar 07, 2012 09:15 Messages: 1303 Offline

Dec 05, 2015 01:52

Hello, kmanauto!

Question: If you're shooting in digital video, why on earth would you even need to "touch up" your work with the Fix/Enhance facility? Especially if you're using a camera with in-built hard-drive and SD-card storage capacity. Digital video just doesn't need any "touching up"! However, Analogue-camera content can, at times, and depending on the quality of the camera, appear a bit dull. Fix/Enhance comes in handy here, a bit of sharpening up with the contrast setting, a slight tweak of the lighting and add video denoising and hey presto! A near-digital-quality image!

Cheers!

Neil.

optodata

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

Dec 05, 2015 17:41

Hi kmanauto

Thanks very much for all the details. The YT links show the blocking on the PD14 very clearly and I'd like to have you run the DxDiag test as described in Part B the *Welcome* sticky to get a better sense for how your machine is configured. Also please post the details requested in Part A.

Also, can you narrow down which corrections might give you the worst blockiness? What about producing with or without hardware encoding (try whichever is the opposite of what you just did). Any info here should help us focus on the areas to delve deeper into.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

optodata

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

Dec 05, 2015 18:36

Quote: Hello, kmanauto!

Question: If you're shooting in digital video, why on earth would you even need to "touch up" your work with the Fix/Enhance facility? Especially if you're using a camera with in-built hard-drive and SD-card storage capacity. Digital video just doesn't need any "touching up"! However, Analogue-camera content can, at times, and depending on the quality of the camera, appear a bit dull. Fix/Enhance comes in handy here, a bit of sharpening up with the contrast setting, a slight tweak of the lighting and add video denoising and hey presto! A near-digital-quality image!

Cheers!

Neil.

This is 2015, not 1990. You keep posting things about "digital video just doesn't need any touching up" and comparing digital to analogue, but that is simply not true (in the former case) or relevant (in the latter).

I'm glad that you're willing and able to participate in these forum discussions, but honestly if you aren't able to assist the poster with the issues they've specifically asked for help with, I don't understand why you reply.

I find it interesting that you actually started with a question - which implies that you might genuinely wonder and want to understand why someone would do this - but you finish with a lecturing statement about how completely unnecessary this is and go on about old analogue clips which have exactly nothing to do with OP's situation.

It's fine if you think you'd never apply corrections to digital media, but it's something different all together to tell someone who has a clear understanding of their video goals that there's no need to do any such thing. Did you even read what's happening here? Have you seen the difference in the two clips? Are you able to assist in diagnosing why PD13 works as expected but PD14 doesn't?

If not, what does your post accomplish?

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Neil.F.1955

Senior Contributor Joined: Mar 07, 2012 09:15 Messages: 1303 Offline

Dec 06, 2015 07:51

Quote:

Quote: Hello, kmanauto!

Question: If you're shooting in digital video, why on earth would you even need to "touch up" your work with the Fix/Enhance facility? Especially if you're using a camera with in-built hard-drive and SD-card storage capacity. Digital video just doesn't need any "touching up"! However, Analogue-camera content can, at times, and depending on the quality of the camera, appear a bit dull. Fix/Enhance comes in handy here, a bit of sharpening up with the contrast setting, a slight tweak of the lighting and add video denoising and hey presto! A near-digital-quality image!

Cheers!

Neil.

This is 2015, not 1990. You keep posting things about "digital video just doesn't need any touching up" and comparing digital to analogue, but that is simply not true (in the former case) or relevant (in the latter).

I'm glad that you're willing and able to participate in these forum discussions, but honestly if you aren't able to assist the poster with the issues they've specifically asked for help with, I don't understand why you reply.

I find it interesting that you actually started with a question - which implies that you might genuinely wonder and want to understand why someone would do this - but you finish with a lecturing statement about how completely unnecessary this is and go on about old analogue clips which have exactly nothing to do with OP's situation.

It's fine if you think you'd never apply corrections to digital media, but it's something different all together to tell someone who has a clear understanding of their video goals that there's no need to do any such thing. Did you even read what's happening here? Have you seen the difference in the two clips? Are you able to assist in diagnosing why PD13 works as expected but PD14 doesn't?

If not, what does your post accomplish?

Optodata!

I was making a comparison between old and new. Digital cameras are capable of such clarity of image that they truly don't need any "touching up", that has been my own experience. Analogue, on the other hand, can fall down in clarity terms so that a bit of "tweaking" helps lift the quality of the image. I just wanted to point this out. I'm aware kmanauto's problem is between PD13 and PD14 rendering, the best advice I can offer there to you, kmanauto is, if you still have PD13 sharing space with PD14, then the best option would be for any project started in PD13, to complete it in PD13, and any project started in PD14, likewise. I offer that advice only in light of your rendering problem. I seem to pick up a suggestion that you may have inadvertantly set "Fix/Enhance" adjustments in PD13, then rendered a final video out of that edit, then brought that clip(maybe) to PD14, repeated the "Fix/Enhance" settings and the image was severely degrade. Seems an unnecessary double application of the Fix/Enhnce might've been your problem. Also there might've been a conflict of video file types, but I've been able to mix MPEG2 with AVCHD items added as inlays(PiP objects) with no problems, but I suggested this only on the off-chance it might be the case. Another idea I might suggest is that the degree of fix/enhance in 14 might be greater than that in 13 for, say, contrast adjustment, perhaps. 75% setting in 14 might have more effect than the same value setting in 13. There are any number of possibilities why you got two differing results between PD13 and PD14, I can only guess at which possibility it may be. My own method is to use PD14 to do ititial editing and render, then author to disc with PD8. If I'm restoring old video I'll use either, but again, auther to disc in PD8. I hope Optodata might be happier with this that he was with my previous post.

Cheers!

Neil

optodata

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

Dec 07, 2015 00:15

Hi Neil. I want to keep the focus here on OP's issues, and I will just say that the adjustments he's looking to make, such as stabilization, color correction and exposure adjustments are very commonly done with HD clips. He also clearly stated that he bought PD14 specifically for these kinds of features and was unhappy with the results, so he recreated the project in PD13 and saw no problems.

There are no issues here with creating a project in one version and moving to another, nor are there any technical issues with having two PD versions installed on the same machine. I have PD12, 13 and 14 on mine (other members have even more) and there are no conflicts.

kmanauto, can you post the DxDiag results for your computer as described in Part B of the *Welcome* sticky? I'd like to see more detailed info on your system, specifically the video card and the drivers you have installed, and the DxDiag tool is much more thorough than trying to find and type all the answers by hand

kmanauto

Newbie Location: Greendale, Wi Joined: Oct 31, 2014 00:44 Messages: 15 Offline

Dec 07, 2015 11:01

Sorry for the late reply, I was out of town this weekend filming the Canadian Pacific Christmas Train as I do every year. Non profit historical railroad I volunteer at does safety and security when the CP train pulls in and the stage folds out, so I always record it for the railway.

Thanks for the responses. I have attached the Diagnostics screens.

I just want to clairify, both versions of the video I posted are done in PD14. The "Good" version is without exhancments, the bad is with enhancements. When I re-created in PD13, both came out good with no blockiness, but the overall video editing was much better in my original PD14 version, so I exported without video enhancements for color correction, and stabilization, and other features.

As for what features caused the blockiness, any feature that modified the look of the video. Weather it be Stabilization, "Enhance", Color adjustment, sharpness adjustment, lighting, any of them. Result was the same.

As for the non-adjusted version, it exported and looked good no matter if I did SVART so no processing was needed, or had the whole thing re-rendered. It was just once Enhancements were used. This is completly mind boggleing.

Now, I know I am suffering from a old video card, but since everyting processes through CPU, it's never been a issue so far.

Filename	dxdiag.zip	Download
Description	DirectX Diagnostics
Filesize	17 Kbytes
Downloaded:	330 time(s)

http://YouTube.com/KmanAuto

optodata

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

Dec 07, 2015 13:49

Thanks for posting the results. Sounds like you had an interesting weekend!

I don't see anything significant in your DxDiag results, so I'm wondering if you could upload a sample 4k clip for testing. Even a short clip would probably exceed the 100MB attachment limit on the forum, so please upload a sample to OneDrive, DropBox etc. and post the link here. You might as well include one of the HD clips too, in case it's the combination that causes the problems.

Please also post which version of PD14 you're running as requested in Part A

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

kmanauto

Newbie Location: Greendale, Wi Joined: Oct 31, 2014 00:44 Messages: 15 Offline

Dec 07, 2015 14:20

Quote: Thanks for posting the results. Sounds like you had an interesting weekend!

I don't see anything significant in your DxDiag results, so I'm wondering if you could upload a sample 4k clip for testing. Even a short clip would probably exceed the 100MB attachment limit on the forum, so please upload a sample to OneDrive, DropBox etc. and post the link here. You might as well include one of the HD clips too, in case it's the combination that causes the problems.

Please also post which version of PD14 you're running as requested in Part A

Ack, sorry, 14.0.2302.0 is the verison. It states no updates available either. The latest update end of november made no difference.

I'm rendering short clips now..... But this is driving me batty.... These short clips are processing normally and the enhancements are turning out fine....... Arg, I'm going to try rendering the original project/road trip video again and see if something was buggered with my system potentially?????? I'll see what happened, if it renders fine, then i guess a crazy hair pulling fluke? http://YouTube.com/KmanAuto

optodata

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

Dec 07, 2015 14:28

That's an interesting development, and it may lead you to some new insight.

To be clear, I'd need to have a short ORIGINAL clip to test. Anything that comes out of PD will be different and would probably not show the same issues. I'd actually prefer to have the shortest original clip that you used in the project, even if it's GB in size.

YouTube/optodata

DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Neil.F.1955

Senior Contributor Joined: Mar 07, 2012 09:15 Messages: 1303 Offline

Dec 07, 2015 17:56

Hello, Optodata and Kmanauto!

Sorry if anything I said may have caused confusion. Sorry also for writing standard(keyboard gremlins!) I'll back away and leave the rest to you, Optodata!

Cheers!

Neil.

kmanauto

Newbie Location: Greendale, Wi Joined: Oct 31, 2014 00:44 Messages: 15 Offline

Dec 10, 2015 20:36

Thanks again for the help everyone. Sorry for the response delay.

I started uploading original samples, but I believe I have nailed down the bug.

And the odd thing is, with the same settings, PD13 did not have a issue, but PD14 does. I only have a moment now, but I have a new video going up, and I have 2 versions of it.

My upload speeds at home are nasty, so every couple days, I drive to my parents house where they ahve 5mbit upload as compared to my 512kbps, and when uploading a 50 or 120 gig video, that makes a big difference (I HATE compression. I upload in the same quality filmed in, since youtube is going to re-compress it all over again. Give them the highest quality copy and end up with the highest quality re-compress).

Anyways, once I get the two versions of the same video up (good version is uploading now, will be done in the morning) I will have the links to both to show the difference.

Will update in the morning! http://YouTube.com/KmanAuto

All vodi

Senior Contributor Location: Canada Joined: Aug 21, 2009 11:24 Messages: 1431 Offline

Dec 11, 2015 21:09

You might find this link useful when using YouTube :

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en Win 10, i7

kmanauto

Newbie Location: Greendale, Wi Joined: Oct 31, 2014 00:44 Messages: 15 Offline

Dec 12, 2015 00:52

So heres the deal:

Settings/Hardware Acceleration/
I had both Enable AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing technology to speed up video effect preview/render,
and I also had enable hardware decoding.

Now, going back and fourth, I confirm, all three versions I have, PD12/PD13/PD14, ALL, and I mean ALL settings were exactly the same across each version.
I had "Enable hardware decoding" enabled on all three.
However, on PD14, when I have this setting on, on some videos, I get the blocky and grainy picture that you see in the "bad version".

I disable it on PD14, and problem solved. I also found, it seems the longer the video, the worse the grain.

So what really threw me, was that the settings were the same across the versions.

Now, a whole stranger problem. The most recent, of which is in the link below, the "BAD" copy, once uploaded to YouTube, processed much clearer then what VLC was reproducing in playback on my computer. Weirdness....

Either way, turning off "Enable Hardware Decoding" seems to have solved the issue @_@

Good Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsBUVGYmA5k

"Bad" Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk77MWZvf7o http://YouTube.com/KmanAuto

kmanauto

Newbie Location: Greendale, Wi Joined: Oct 31, 2014 00:44 Messages: 15 Offline

Dec 12, 2015 01:01

Quote: You might find this link useful when using YouTube :

[url=https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

]https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

[/url]

Yes, I've read that before. But YouTube lets me upload at 100mbit/second, so I will keep doing so. Even YouTube employees I talk with say just go as high of a bit rate you can afford to do with your upload speed. My speed at home is bad, so I have two hard drives I rotate to a 4watt netbook setup to basically just upload to YouTube at my parents house. I drop one off, and take the other home. Just keep rotating. Works nice. I can do about 60 gigs/day on my parents connection (60down/5Up)(mines 2down/512up to 1mbit up if I am having a lucky day). I can do about 2.5-5 gigs/day at home.

So anyways, since youtube recompresses everything to it's pre-determined bitrates, if you give YouTube a higher quality file to being with, the end result will be better.

Think of a copy machine. Copy the original, pretty decent copy. Copy the copy, starts getting fuzzy.

Anyways, thanks for the link! It's always good to brush up on things. It's a bit out-dated though. I'd like to try H.265 a bit, that would really reduce the amount of storage requirements for me, but processing times are just so dang long. 20+ hours/video instead of ~3

Anyone know of a good videocard or some way besides just raw CPU processing pwoer to improve H.265 render times? Or to keep PD14 from crashing when rendering long videos in H.265? http://YouTube.com/KmanAuto