Without going into details on your mov files there are things that you can try. In the produce module choose h.264/mp4/ and a profile close to what your mov file properties are (resolution, fps, bit rate, etc) from the dropdown box. Click the Intelligent SVRT button.

The details for the MOV files are in my initial post. I am already using H264 HEVC, mp4, with identical specs to the original videos. If there's a reason I should try another format, I would like to know.

When I choose Intelligent SVRT, I get the message "No SVRT profiles available for the current project." Thus why I am asking if SVRT technology is unavailable for MOV files, or unavailable for MOV files of a certain size, or something else.

SVRT is available for mov files not as mov but as mp4 in PD14.

According to page 26 in your Zoom Q8 user manual 1080p30 16 and 24 Mbps are available. H.264/AVC/MP4/MPEG-4 1920 x 1080/30p (16 Mbps) is available in PD14 but not the 24 Mbps. You have to create a custom profile for it based on the displayed svrt information.

It is worth a try. SVRT is not available for all mov files.

Good call - as you noted on another thread, I was also trying to use H.265 HEVC when I should have been using H.264 AVC on this system. Doing that opens up the option for Hardware video acceleration", which does seem to make an improvement on speed (I assume this means my video card can support it).

But you also nailed it when you noted that my Mbps did not line up. So I've opened up a Custom Profile here a few items I could use advice on:

For Frame Rate, by default the setting is 29.97fps. Should that remain, or should I set it to 30fps? (the source seems to be 29.97)

Also, the default bitrate is 15,500 - which is what I assume is to be used for 16Mbps. What value should I use for 24Mbps? 23,250?

Use the Intelligent SVRT information displayed as your guide. If it say 29.97 fps then stay with 29.97 not 30. Look at the other parameters and choose it carefully. You can go say 10% over on bit rate but not under. There usually is both an average bit rate and a max bit rate setting.

I would think 24 Mbps with a max of 28 Mbps might work for that profile. Try it.

As mentioned before, no profiles come up under the Intelligent SVRT option. So we can't get a baseline there.

In the custom profile menu, under Rate Control, there is only Average Bitrate; there is no max. This might be different using other formats, though - presently I'm using H.264 AVC, because my older system apparently doesn't support H.265 HEVC (yet - I'd love to get feedback on a system upgrade that would be worthwhile).

So I ran a few tests on a segment that was 4m31s long. Using H.264 AVC, here were some results:
. (standard) 1920x1080/30p (16Mps) profile, w/ Hardware acceleration: ~7 min to produce a 460Mb file
. (standard) 1920x1080/30p (16Mps) profile, w/o Hardware acceleration: ~9 min to produce a 534Mb file
. (custom) 1920x1080/30p (average bitrate set to 22,250) profile, w/ Hardware acceleration: ~7 min to produce a 350Mb file
. (custom) 1920x1080/30p (average bitrate set to 28,000) profile, w/ Hardware acceleration: ~7 min to produce a 435Mb file


So a couple interesting pieces:
. Using the custom profile with an average bitrate did not substantially change the time it took to produce the file.
. Using hardware acceleration does substantially change the time it took to produce the file.
. Using hardware acceleration substantially reduces the size of the output file.
. Increasing the average bitrate does increade the filesize, but not to size of the provided 16Mbps profile.

And generates a couple questions: Why does using hardware acceleration reduce the filesize? Is this a "good thing"?

My untrained eye cannot "see" a difference between any of these files. Is there a quality difference that I should be looking for?

There's still no SVRT available. As a last ditch attempt, I set the camera to 16Mbps instead of 24, recorded a 5s clip, and imported it to PowerDirector. Intelligent SVRT would still not recommend any profile. So it can't be the length of the clips that I am using, or the fact that I was recording in 24 Mbps, or the title slides or anything else. SVRT simply doesn't seem to be available for my camera and/or hardware configuration.

So the questions that remain are: Hardware acceleration or no? Do I need to upgrade my system, and if so, to what?

Quote: So I ran a few tests on a segment that was 4m31s long. Using H.264 AVC, here were some results:
. (standard) 1920x1080/30p (16Mps) profile, w/ Hardware acceleration: ~7 min to produce a 460Mb file
. (standard) 1920x1080/30p (16Mps) profile, w/o Hardware acceleration: ~9 min to produce a 534Mb file
. (custom) 1920x1080/30p (average bitrate set to 22,250) profile, w/ Hardware acceleration: ~7 min to produce a 350Mb file
. (custom) 1920x1080/30p (average bitrate set to 28,000) profile, w/ Hardware acceleration: ~7 min to produce a 435Mb file


So a couple interesting pieces:
. Using the custom profile with an average bitrate did not substantially change the time it took to produce the file.
. Using hardware acceleration does substantially change the time it took to produce the file.
. Using hardware acceleration substantially reduces the size of the output file.
. Increasing the average bitrate does increade the filesize, but not to size of the provided 16Mbps profile.

There still are discrepancies in your three posts. In this post you claim to updated to the latest video card driver on 5/20 for your AMD Radeon HD 6800: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/48526.page . Doing that will disable all hardware acceleration (encoding) on that pc.

Quote: And generates a couple questions: Why does using hardware acceleration reduce the filesize? Is this a "good thing"?

The custom profile you create is for encoding with PD14 software encoder. The actual gpu hardware encoding bitrate is determined by the video driver used.

Quote: My untrained eye cannot "see" a difference between any of these files. Is there a quality difference that I should be looking for?

Yes, under fast motion cpu encoding works well, gpu (HA - HE hardware acceleration) encoding can produce motion artifacts that does not appear under cpu encoding. Most people see no difference so that is why they use HA.

The speed increase in HE is very minimal with that Radeon HD 6800 series video card you have as you have found. I don’t use HE.

Quote: There's still no SVRT available. As a last ditch attempt, I set the camera to 16Mbps instead of 24, recorded a 5s clip, and imported it to PowerDirector. Intelligent SVRT would still not recommend any profile. So it can't be the length of the clips that I am using, or the fact that I was recording in 24 Mbps, or the title slides or anything else. SVRT simply doesn't seem to be available for my camera and/or hardware configuration.

Look at it this way. Once you produced a file put that produced file back on the timeline. View svrt info and you will find svrt is available so you don’t render the same video twice.

Quote: So the questions that remain are: Hardware acceleration or no? Do I need to upgrade my system, and if so, to what?

That is up to you. Other users and contributors here can give you other opinions on this.

Quote: The custom profile you create is for encoding with PD14 software encoder. The actual gpu hardware encoding bitrate is determined by the video driver used.

Never heard of that, the same profile is valid for both GPU (when supported format) and software encoding with the pertinent information passed to the encoder. Attached pic validates custom profile and GPU encoding can work as defined.

Jeff

Quote: There still are discrepancies in your three posts. In this post you claim to updated to the latest video card driver on 5/20 for your AMD Radeon HD 6800: http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/48526.page . Doing that will disable all hardware acceleration (encoding) on that pc.

There's no discrepancy. This morning on 5/20, I updated to the latest Radeon HD 6800 driver, by the name of Crimson, and then proceded to use hardware acceleration. The website claimed it is their last update for this video card, since it has already moved to "legacy" support, and considered "beta."

Yes, under fast motion cpu encoding works well, gpu (HA - HE hardware acceleration) encoding can produce motion artifacts that does not appear under cpu encoding. Most people see no difference so that is why they use HA.
...
The speed increase in HE is very minimal with that Radeon HD 6800 series video card you have as you have found. I don’t use HE.

In this case I am assuming that the "motion artifacts" you refer to here are undesirable? Though the speed increase is minimal when dealing with a 3 min clip, when handling 30-75 min clips, it may be helpful.

Look at it this way. Once you produced a file put that produced file back on the timeline. View svrt info and you will find svrt is available so you don’t render the same video twice.

That could be very helpful in this discussion.

Quote: So the questions that remain are: Hardware acceleration or no? Do I need to upgrade my system, and if so, to what?

That is up to you. Other users and contributors here can give you other opinions on this.

Yes please.

Quote:

Quote: The custom profile you create is for encoding with PD14 software encoder. The actual gpu hardware encoding bitrate is determined by the video driver used.

Never heard of that, the same profile is valid for both GPU (when supported format) and software encoding with the pertinent information passed to the encoder. Attached pic validates custom profile and GPU encoding can work as defined.

Jeff

Jeff – Here is the result of what you posted in a different forum for h.264 encoding 4th thread down : http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/48519.page . The hardware encoding bitrate is much lower than expected. Can you please explain it.

I have seen other posts where hardware encoding has a lower bitrate. I see it on my own BD creation over the years where there is a small BD size difference between one encoded with and without hardware encoding enabled. HE is even necessary for those using nvidia cards to create a BD to work in some older BD players (menu bitrate).

I am on the latest amd driver but avoided the crimson beta driver because it’s beta. JohnathanS – It is good that you tried that driver and got hardware encoding back. This information will surely help those with legacy amd graphics cards that reverted back to the 14.xx drivers to get hardware encoding back on PD14.

@JonathanS - just ditch that ancient AMD card and get a nvidia GTX960 (not another number) - if your system is a desktop. That's the only way you will get correct and fast H265/HVEC encoding.

If is a laptop, that's the problem - every time I see here issues about poor performance is almost always relate to a laptop. I know that a laptop is convenient, but that's all it is. Don't expect to be a perfect workhorse.
Now, sure you can have a good laptop, but it won't be a cheap one. Also being labeled as a "gaming" laptop won't make it good for video editors.

Quote:
Jeff – Here is the result of what you posted in a different forum for h.264 encoding 4th thread down : http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/48519.page . The hardware encoding bitrate is much lower than expected. Can you please explain it.

tomasc, I’m not sure what you really want me to explain, that post is pretty self-explanatory, based on the OP response, even the Newbie poster understood I believe.

I simply cautioned the user to do a test and make sure he gets the profile specifics he asks for when doing hardware encoding with their own footage. I never implied or wrote anything about a custom profile only applying to PD14 cpu software encoding. Anytime one uses any form of GPU encoding or OpenCL GPU encoding assistance be it with Intel QS, AMD, or Nvidia, since it’s driver and API interface specific, one should always verify you get what you ask for. Various PD versions and patches and various GPU drivers often yield significantly differing results, which can be an obvious speed and/or quality issue to virtually any eye on a finished product.

Jeff

Quote: @JonathanS - just ditch that ancient AMD card and get a nvidia GTX960 (not another number) - if your system is a desktop. That's the only way you will get correct and fast H265/HVEC encoding.

Thanks for mentioning this card. Alas - the graphics card is actually an upgrade in my even older desktop system (with a PCI 2.0 slot instead of a 3.0). To upgrade the videocard further, I likely have to replace the whole thing or build anew from scratch (which is awefully tempting right now).



Testing another theory posted here, I took two MOV clips, the first 18 minutes long and the second 17, and produced a single mp4 (H.264 AVC) file. I them opened the file up for editing in PowerDirector as a new project. I dropped it onto the timeline and went straight to Produce, and hit Intelligent SVRT. For the first time, it had a response, a single line custom profile, and I chose Apply. Finally, the SVRT radio dial became available.



However, I applied some crops, zooms, color corrections, titles, and a new wav sound track, and now, thogugh Intelligent SVRT produces a profile, the profile is red. There is a red bar across the entire project.



For now, since it is available, I will continue with Hardware encoding, since I cannot tell the difference (and because the camera image is pretty terrible, anyway, even in its raw form), and it shaves a good few minutes off of the longer projects. Eventually, I will be upgrading the camera, the mics, and the desktop, but the initial investments have to pay themselves off first.

Why? GTX960 works in PCI 2.0 slots too.
Also, you are better off giving up to MOV files. QuickTime is not supported anymore by Apple and it has serious security flaws:
https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA16-105A

Quote:
However, I applied some crops, zooms, color corrections, titles, and a new wav sound track, and now, thogugh Intelligent SVRT produces a profile, the profile is red. There is a red bar across the entire project.

SVRT only applies to unaltered sections of the timeline. Basically which portions of the timeline were not changed and thus can be skipped over during the rendering process. Any section of timeline that has any modification needs to be rendered, hence your red line.

If it's a common workflow of yours to apply color corrections, especially if to the whole timeline, these are primarily a CPU task and a improved GPU will offer little benefit even if hardware encoding is used.

Jeff

I though that ColorDirector 4 uses the GPU?

Quote: Why? GTX960 works in PCI 2.0 slots too.Also, you are better off giving up to MOV files. QuickTime is not supported anymore by Apple and it has serious security flaws:https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA16-105A

Interesting. I did not know modern cards would fit into previous generations' slots. I figured there was a physical difference that would disallow it. And I cannot give up on MOV files, unfortunately. The Zoom Q8 camera will only record movies as MOV files. If it were not so, I would not have bothered purchasing PowerDirector in the first place, since most other files types can be handled by the wide variety of other (cheaper) software packages out there for Windows.

Quote: SVRT only applies to unaltered sections of the timeline. Basically which portions of the timeline were not changed and thus can be skipped over during the rendering process. Any section of timeline that has any modification needs to be rendered, hence your red line.

If it's a common workflow of yours to apply color corrections, especially if to the whole timeline, these are primarily a CPU task and a improved GPU will offer little benefit even if hardware encoding is used.

Yes, I was coming to that understanding of how SVRT works, and I think in most cases it is not going to help me. Color correction (from within PowerDirector) did seem to help in a couple videos that I shot thus far, especially when I do not have the right environment setting (ex. Auto, Concert, Night) when I originally recorded the event, or for when lighting is less than ideal.

PCIe 3.0 is backwards compatible with PCIe 2.0, like PCIe 2.0 was with 1.0 too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions