Being slower than you want isn't the same thing as being broken, and maybe it would help to have some apples-to-apples comparisons.

Take a look at the two projects and sample clips in this OneDrive folder. Once the folder is downloaded to your computer, double click on either of the .CDS files to launch CD with the settings I used.

You should also create a 4K custom profile using the same settings I used to match the 4K source clip:



For the AVC 4K 60p MTS clip produced to 4K 60p with the Red Planet Artistic Preset, it doesnt matter whether I produce to AVC MP4 or M2TS, or to HEVC MP4. My system took 3:08 to produce the 13 second clip. That's a rate of 14 seconds of processing for every second of content, or about 4 frames per second.

If I instead produce to 1080/60p, it takes exactly 60 seconds. That's 4.6 seconds for every second of content or 13 frames/sec, which is about 3x faster than the 4K producing time.

For the HD 60p clip test, producing to 1080/60p with the 80s Fab Preset, it only takes 16 seconds to produce the 11.5 second clip. That's 1.4x the duration of the clip or 43 frames/sec, which is about 10x faster than processing a 4K clip to 4K.

How long do these clips take to produce on your system?

For fun, I just tried round-tripping from PD's timeline and with the same settings applied in CD and producing to similar profiles in PD. It took 4:21 for the 4K clip and 0:23 for the HD clip, which is about 40% slower than when producing directly in CD.

If these results are typical, it would seem to imply that CD's producing algorthim is better suited for color grading than PD's is.

In that case I'd say you'd want to produce the clips in CD and then import them into PD for the quickest workflow, even if producing with CD takes longer than you think it should.

Quote After a day of testing I have concluded Color Director, either by preset or by even limited fix selections, overwhelms my machine at anything more than 1080P input. And at that it takes 6X the length of the clip to process. With no corrections a 36sec 4k60 clip produces to 1080P/30 in 11 sec. Its 30% done in 5minutes if any corrections are done in CD. If I reduce the input file to 1080p and then apply the corrections it's done in 206 seconds. If I do the corrections in PD the produce time for the 4k file increases to around 29 sec vs 12 min or more if corrections are made in Color Director - My conclusion: BROKEN

I agree it's time consuming. Your results are a little hard to decipher as it's a bunch of mixed bag comparisons. Maybe this simplistic table will show some of the challenges.

In each case, the source video was the same properties of the produced video. I don't want to confound resolution, frame rate or bitrate reduction times with application of the LUT. When resolution down scaling with CD, from a time perspective, it is better to do the resolution reduction first to simplify the LUT application computational requirements.

Basically, from what I see, although maybe slower than desired, the time roughly scales with expected complexity so I don't see any big BROKEN conclusion.

Jeff

Quote Being slower than you want isn't the same thing as being broken, and maybe it would help to have some apples-to-apples comparisons.

Take a look at the two projects and sample clips in this OneDrive folder. Once the folder is downloaded to your computer, double click on either of the .CDS files to launch CD with the settings I used.

You should also create a 4K custom profile using the same settings I used to match the 4K source clip:



For the AVC 4K 60p MTS clip produced to 4K 60p with the Red Planet Artistic Preset, it doesnt matter whether I produce to AVC MP4 or M2TS, or to HEVC MP4. My system took 3:08 to produce the 13 second clip. That's a rate of 14 seconds of processing for every second of content, or about 4 frames per second.

If I instead produce to 1080/60p, it takes exactly 60 seconds. That's 4.6 seconds for every second of content or 13 frames/sec, which is about 3x faster than the 4K producing time.

For the HD 60p clip test, producing to 1080/60p with the 80s Fab Preset, it only takes 16 seconds to produce the 11.5 second clip. That's 1.4x the duration of the clip or 43 frames/sec, which is about 10x faster than processing a 4K clip to 4K.

How long do these clips take to produce on your system?

4K to 4K 3min 39sec
4K to 1920 60fps 67 sec
HD60 18 sec

Quote For fun, I just tried round-tripping from PD's timeline and with the same settings applied in CD and producing to similar profiles in PD. It took 4:21 for the 4K clip and 0:23 for the HD clip, which is about 40% slower than when producing directly in CD.

If these results are typical, it would seem to imply that CD's producing algorthim is better suited for color grading than PD's is.

In that case I'd say you'd want to produce the clips in CD and then import them into PD for the quickest workflow, even if producing with CD takes longer than you think it should.

I tried the same. to go to 1080p 60 took 75 sec or 6.25 x clip length

to go to 1080p 30 (which is mostly what I do) 42 sec

So,,,,it is slow using these canned presets, but it does work - IF....you want to stick with canned presets
I used the same setup that took 42 sec and instead of using the canned preset I chose the adjustments tab. I unchecked everything but Tone. I went into tone and made minor adj to exposure, brightness, etc. then I went back into PD and processed to 1080P30 as before..................................................7 Min 19sec later it completed Thats 36.6 X clip length. My videos run about 12 min with maybe 8 min of color corrected material so ~5 HOURS to produce a 12 minute clip. I tried the same thing with the preset I had made from the manual adj. screen with similar results.

So, for Fun I went back to the 4k CD project you sent me and went to the Manual tab. I unchecked everything but tone and made similar adjustments. I produced it to 1080p60fps........ 133 seconds or 11X clip length

I was on a call with creators from around the world yesterday. Justin Brown hosted the call - (Primal Video). When I presented my dilemma and the fact my video took 5 hours, they all just shook their heads and said I needed software geared for this work. They assured me buying new hardware would not cure this, nor was it normal in Davinci, Filmora, Premiere, or Final cut.

So, if it ain't broken, then I guess I need a new editor. I really like a lot about PD. But the color correction internal to pd doesn't hold a candle to what Color Director can do. But I really need a workflow that allows me to bring in large 4k clips and precut several small pieces from each. I could preprocess the clips but even at these speeds that adds a day or more.

Frankly, the fact that even simple manual adjustments take much longer than a canned preset suggests genuine doom if more of the available choices are selected or one adds special effects.

Quote 4K to 4K 3min 39sec
4K to 1920 60fps 67 sec
HD60 18 sec

Looks like we're in the same ballpark then, and it looks like those are the timeframes you'll need to build your expectations around.

CD doesn't have a Batch Produce feature, but PD does. Even though it takes longer to produce using PD, you'd be able to create and save a bunch of color grading projects (each with individual clips) and run them overnight.

Quote

I agree it's time consuming. Your results are a little hard to decipher as it's a bunch of mixed bag comparisons. Maybe this simplistic table will show some of the challenges.

In each case, the source video was the same properties of the produced video. I don't want to confound resolution, frame rate or bitrate reduction times with application of the LUT. When resolution down scaling with CD, from a time perspective, it is better to do the resolution reduction first to simplify the LUT application computational requirements.

Basically, from what I see, although maybe slower than desired, the time roughly scales with expected complexity so I don't see any big BROKEN conclusion.

Jeff

I gave some thought to reducing everything to 1080p/30 ahead of time but I use 4k so I can zoom and frame a bit in places. I use 60p so I can slow selected sections as needed. Both very nice features of Power Director. I create 10 - 12 min videos that are visual documentary of communities and homes in communities. A typical clip used is 6-10 sec long cut from a 10 min video. Sometimes several from the same parent clip. So really my other option is to color grade the 60 - 90 GB of raw video before I start editing. Since they are in many locations under various lighting conditions and from 2-4 different cameras I would have to do each clip individually. A huge add to the workflow at these speeds. Our 4k to 4k test above suggests 18X original clip length using factory presets. That's roughly 108 hours of processing for the typical 6 hrs of video. If you are not using factory presets double that or more. This makes my original 5 hour produce time look like the best choice. But that's a horrible choice. Any mistake seen in the produced version requires another 5 hours to fix. As opposed to 20 min or so if I don't use Color Director. So if it's just that slow and they ain't callin' that broke than I can't use it.

Quote


I gave some thought to reducing everything to 1080p/30 ahead of time but I use 4k so I can zoom and frame a bit in places. I use 60p so I can slow selected sections as needed. Both very nice features of Power Director. I create 10 - 12 min videos that are visual documentary of communities and homes in communities. A typical clip used is 6-10 sec long cut from a 10 min video. Sometimes several from the same parent clip. So really my other option is to color grade the 60 - 90 GB of raw video before I start editing. Since they are in many locations under various lighting conditions and from 2-4 different cameras I would have to do each clip individually. A huge add to the workflow at these speeds. Our 4k to 4k test above suggests 18X original clip length using factory presets. That's roughly 108 hours of processing for the typical 6 hrs of video. If you are not using factory presets double that or more. This makes my original 5 hour produce time look like the best choice. But that's a horrible choice. Any mistake seen in the produced version requires another 5 hours to fix. As opposed to 20 min or so if I don't use Color Director. So if it's just that slow and they ain't callin' that broke than I can't use it.

Quote ...This makes my original 5 hour produce time look like the best choice. But that's a horrible choice. Any mistake seen in the produced version requires another 5 hours to fix. As opposed to 20 min or so if I don't use Color Director. So if it's just that slow and they ain't callin' that broke than I can't use it.

I'd suggest producing without the color grading to make sure everything else looks correct, then use the round-trip method from PD's timeline to apply the presets and produce overnight.

If you think something's defective with CD, you should report the issue to Cyberlink tech support from their contact page. Include a link to this discussion so they can see what's been discussed so far and see what they have to say.

Another option would be to record using LUTs which would save you a tremendous amount of time. The FilmicPro app for phones can do this and there are hardware monitors like the AtomOS Ninja V that record via HDMI or SDI.

Quote

I'd suggest producing without the color grading to make sure everything else looks correct, then use the round-trip method from PD's timeline to apply the presets and produce overnight.

If you think something's defective with CD, you should report the issue to Cyberlink tech support from their contact page. Include a link to this discussion so they can see what's been discussed so far and see what they have to say.

Thanks, I have over a day into this already and I've never had much luck reporting things like this. It is what it is and I'll just move forward. Thanks for your help. You were able to confirm it wasn't just me. The program is a nice 1080p movie maker and I'm clearly asking too much of it.

Took the same 36 sec 4k60 clip into Davinci Resolve and processed with no corrections = 29 seconds. Applied a full set of color corrections - absolutely lovely - processed with corrections = 29 sec. GAME OVER

Glad that worked for you. Again I think you should report this to CL tech support and see what they have to say.

Quote Glad that worked for you. Again I think you should report this to CL tech support and see what they have to say.

OK, I reported it & cited this set of comments in the forum. It's such a major bottleneck. I can't imagine they are not fully aware of it and released it anyway, thinking most users are working in 1080p or less.

Quote I can't imagine they are not fully aware of it and released it anyway, thinking most users are working in 1080p or less.

I doubt that's what's actually happened, but since there's such a big performance gap it would be interesting to see how they respond. Please post back when you hear back from them!

Quote

I doubt that's what's actually happened, but since there's such a big performance gap it would be interesting to see how they respond. Please post back when you hear back from them!

I will. Another interesting aspect is the observed CPU performance. In Resolve my CPU goes to 100% and stays there when rendering. In PD, with no corrections or only internal to PD corrections, I saw it go to 80 and occasionally 100%. BUT, using either CD or CD corrections ported back to PD it ran around 50% and almost never got higher. At a minimum, that's counterintuitive, as it should be working at full capacity.

That's not how it works, unfortunately. In a simplistic view, then yes you'd want all CPU resources devoted to the task at hand, but in reality there are often other processes going on that the CPU has to wait for, which means it won't be running solidly at full capacity.

It looks like the Resolve code is doing that, so maybe they've got their color grading code fully optimized. Take a look at all the forum posts here on bottleneck for some background of that kind of issue.

Quote That's not how it works, unfortunately. In a simplistic view, then yes you'd want all CPU resources devoted to the task at hand, but in reality there are often other processes going on that the CPU has to wait for, which means it won't be running solidly at full capacity.

It looks like the Resolve code is doing that, so maybe they've got their color grading code fully optimized. Take a look at all the forum posts here on bottleneck for some background of that kind of issue.

As it happens, I was running a produce cycle in resolve and watching CPU at 100% when I noticed a backup in progress doing a verify operation. I thought cancelling it would have some effect, but it did not - as far as I could tell. I'm running about 10% cpu when Resolve is not producing with a few other programs open. From a very layman POV it looks to me like once CD or PD with CD correctors hits 100%CPU it goes through some repetitive cycle that gains 3 and loses 1-2 frames. I see the time remaining go down a little, go up a little, then go down a little more over and over. Its like it throttles up - gains a frame or two - hit's overload and dumps the last frame as corrupt, throttles back, gains a couple more, and repeats the cycle.

Color corrections edits have never been fast, that's posted all over the forum so it's not like you found something new. Round tripping, PD-CD-PD has been some of the slowest options for color corrections. Even here, https://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/48352.page , nearly 6 yrs ago, you see the issue discussed and more than 4X the time to do round tripping vs CD produce. Versions since then have some ups and downs but I've never seen anything in PD/CD that can do major color corrections in a encode timely fashion. The trending often understood as I showed prior, BUT, the base bottleneck of encoding with color corrections have been too time consuming in the product.

I really doubt your ticket with support will resolve anything in a timely fashion, 6+ yrs have not.

If you've found a product that suites your needs, I'd head there.

If you want to understand CPU and GPU loading, one really needs a defined case to dig in so everyone's talking the same. Too many options, GPU decode, CPU decode, GPU encode, CPU encode, combos of the prior, CPU applying color corrections, down sampling the resolution,.... all big players on load and comparisons need to reflect choice.

Jeff