VideoStudio 2020 became much less responsive

[cybernick]

....Also recently, every now and then I need to restart the app since the interface inside the app starts to have an increasing lag.

For the the comments like your, I always have my common questions: Are you able to reproduce the issue every time? Does it start happening in a same way? Are you able to re-produce the issues using the sample picture/videos coming with VS? And would you like to share the steps you are taking when you start facing the issues?

I'm not seeing the issues so often at the moment with VS. Only these two:
- The mask editor, that have a memory leak issue.
- NewBlue's Title Editor is crashing if I have not granted access to one file on it. (this is something what regular user should not do).

About the lagging on moving window, let see how support response to that, I open the case for them.

Unfortunatelly nowadays I face the lack of responsiveness very frequently. And I need to restart the app in order to gain 20-30 more minutes of more responsiveness.
To be honest I do not test it with the samples files. But I generally work with MP4's and MTS files and I have at least 3 overlays.
In any case a reliable software should not be that fragile.

I also tried to disconnect my secondary screen.

Any suggestion please? Really I started thinking to move to Adobe if it had a one time payment option. I do not prefer subscription model. On the other hand I keep buying every new version of Corel VS hoping that it is much stable. (Hahhh is it a hidden subscription model ) I am really confused.

[Davidk]

There are other editors broadly in the same class as VS that have perpetual purchase models, and do not have that lagging issue. I use one of them. In the same vein, VS users of recent versions haven't reported this sort of issue - potential leaks. So what you are seeing might not be even, or just, VS. Just seen when you are using that program.

But even if you feel really motivated to jump ship, you should try to identify just what is that's causing you an increasing lag issue. that issue being fixed - as you say - by re-starting. As pepi indicated, that's indicative of memory slowly fading away, causing windows to work harder supporting the app with memory to work with - a memory leak. Re-starts begin with a new memory pool. So, do you understand what a memory leak is?

Broadly, computers have a memory pool, and some of it is temporarily assigned to a task when an app requests it. When that request is completed, the temporary memory should be returned/re- assigned to the pool for the next such use. But with poor programming or mis-matched interfaces, sometimes that doesn't happen; that temporary memory stays assigned even tho the task it was assigned for is completed and that memory is not now used. So the memory pool gets smaller and smaller, and tasks needing temporary memory have to wait for enough to become available . . . . and it's called a memory leak because it's similar to a full watering bucket with a hole in it - the amount of water gradually leaks away. Early versions of windows were renowned for memory leaks under certain conditions, and some of those conditions were driver related.

pepi identified 2 cases within VS - both ulimate plug-in options - that he has leak issues with. If you don't use those items in a project file, you should not have a leak.

Identifying where the cause is: a good place to start would be ensuring that your system drivers - especially for any graphics cards you use - are all up to date.
You haven't indicated in your system details how much RAM you have installed, and the memory pool comes out of RAM.

[tletter]

Unfortunatelly nowadays I face the lack of responsiveness very frequently. And I need to restart the app in order to gain 20-30 more minutes of more responsiveness.

Having to frequently restart the app sounds like your VSP is using a filter and/or feature that has a memory leak. You can easily check this by comparing the CPU and memory utilization in Task Manager before and then after the restart.

There are several filters and features that have memory leaks in VS (search this forum). If these filters and features are not used, then users will not see this issue with VS.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[cybernick]

Thank you both for detailed explanation.Actually I have almost continuously open the task manager open in my secondary screen but I will check and provide screenshots.
Coming to my system. It is not bad:

Intel i5
16 GB memory
Working disk 1 TB NVMe
Secondary disk 480 GB SATA ssd
GTX 1060 3GB using to screens Primary 1440p and secondary 1080p.
Windows 10 Pro
My version is Video Studio 2020 Ultimate

[Pepi]

Unfortunatelly nowadays I face the lack of responsiveness very frequently. And I need to restart the app in order to gain 20-30 more minutes of more responsiveness.

Could you describe the lack of responsiveness a bit more deeper? And do you see that always in a same way?

I also tried to disconnect my secondary screen.

Are you having laptop or desktop? If laptop, how do you connect the secondary screen?

[cybernick]

Unfortunatelly nowadays I face the lack of responsiveness very frequently. And I need to restart the app in order to gain 20-30 more minutes of more responsiveness.

Could you describe the lack of responsiveness a bit more deeper? And do you see that always in a same way?

I also tried to disconnect my secondary screen.

Are you having laptop or desktop? If laptop, how do you connect the secondary screen?

I mean that the edit interface became slow. For example when I select an overlay and then select the blending tab normally it is snappy. But when I face the issue when I click something in the inteface I started waiting 1-2 secs.

I use a desktop PC. Primary screen is connected via display port, and the secondary via HDMI.

Meanwhile I observe the task manager for a while.
Normally the memory usage is around 300 MB, during preview playback it goes up to 600-700 MB.
CPU is 5-10% and it goes up to %20-30 during preview playback.

I have realized that when I add a video media in timeline the CPU goes to about %50 for a while. I checked the smartproxy status and realized that the CPU is used to create the proxy of the file. So it is kind of normal. And during this process the responsiveness is degraded. This is also understandable. The strange thing is that the responsiveness remains degraded after the smartproxy process is finished. Even the CPU goes to %3-4 percent the interface became laggy.

So to observe for a while I disabled the smartproxy feature.

[cybernick]

Bump. Did not help. I am sending two files.
lag.zip shows the lag in the interface
No lag after restart the app.zip shows the performance after restart the app.

[tletter]

Bump. Did not help. I am sending two files.
lag.zip shows the lag in the interface
No lag after restart the app.zip shows the performance after restart the app.

The video clip in "lag.zip" shows Task Manager, whilst the clip "No lag after restart the app.zip" doesn't. Hence it's unclear if the hardware is an issue, although, it doesn't appear to be.

The lagging is probably caused by one of features that you're using, e.g. blend modes, masking. You could try disabling these features one by one a see if the lag disappears.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[Pepi]

One proposal is to make the task manager visible all the time:

VS-Forum-TaskManager.gif (4.84 KiB) Viewed 213 times

Check "Always on top"

Then sort order the list on processes by name (avoiding jumping) and the scroll it so that VS is on top.

Then move the task manager to bottom, so that only VS process is seen and its metrics:

VS-Forum-VS and Task Manager.gif (8.66 KiB) Viewed 213 times

Then show again how does it work.

The issue could be the disk. VS seems to be using a cache under user's profile:
"%appdata%\ulead systems\Corel VideoStudio Pro (x64)\23.0\ukMgrCache"
When ever you are working on UI, that folder is heavily active.

[cybernick]

Bump. Did not help. I am sending two files.
lag.zip shows the lag in the interface
No lag after restart the app.zip shows the performance after restart the app.

The video clip in "lag.zip" shows Task Manager, whilst the clip "No lag after restart the app.zip" doesn't. Hence it's unclear if the hardware is an issue, although, it doesn't appear to be.

The lagging is probably caused by one of features that you're using, e.g. blend modes, masking. You could try disabling these features one by one a see if the lag disappears.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

In the no lag version there is no problem at task manager. Therefore I do not show it. Actually in lag one also there is no problem.
There is no logical explanation can be observed in task manager for the issue. No CPU overutilization or Memory over use. Even the disk always %1 in use. NVMe has about 2GB read and write capacity.
I do not understand really. And what happened after I restart the app and fix the issue?!?!

[cybernick]

One proposal is to make the task manager visible all the time:
VS-Forum-TaskManager.gif
Check "Always on top"

Then sort order the list on processes by name (avoiding jumping) and the scroll it so that VS is on top.

Then move the task manager to bottom, so that only VS process is seen and its metrics:
VS-Forum-VS and Task Manager.gif

Then show again how does it work.

The issue could be the disk. VS seems to be using a cache under user's profile:
"%appdata%\ulead systems\Corel VideoStudio Pro (x64)\23.0\ukMgrCache"
When ever you are working on UI, that folder is heavily active.

As I mentioned nothing abnormal in task manager during lag. That's why I did not show it again.
Also the disk is NVMe and it is fast, really fast. About 2GB/s read/write. Half of the disk is empty. No other SW shows such an attitude.
I am really disappointed.

[cybernick]

One proposal is to make the task manager visible all the time:
VS-Forum-TaskManager.gif
Check "Always on top"

Then sort order the list on processes by name (avoiding jumping) and the scroll it so that VS is on top.

Then move the task manager to bottom, so that only VS process is seen and its metrics:
VS-Forum-VS and Task Manager.gif

Then show again how does it work.

The issue could be the disk. VS seems to be using a cache under user's profile:
"%appdata%\ulead systems\Corel VideoStudio Pro (x64)\23.0\ukMgrCache"
When ever you are working on UI, that folder is heavily active.

As I mentioned nothing abnormal in task manager during lag. That's why I did not show it again.
Also the disk is NVMe and it is fast, really fast. About 2GB/s read/write. Half of the disk is empty. No other SW shows such an attitude.
I am really disappointed.

I have recorded new videos. Again with lag and without lag after restarting the app. If you check you can see when I open preferences in during lag the app goes to "not responding" for a while. Really nothing helped.

[tletter]

If you check you can see when I open preferences in during lag the app goes to "not responding" for a while. Really nothing helped.

As previously mentioned your issue doesn't appear to be a hardware issue. Instead what you seem to be encountering is the issue that VS has lots of inefficient coding.

The following image shows VS not responding when simply trying to zoom out. Moving around the timeline also causes VS to stop responding. This non-responsiveness is obvious in large VSPs.

VS also stops responding when using certain filters. So the non-responsiveness may be caused by one of features that you're using, e.g. blend modes, masking. Hence as previously mentioned, you could try disabling these features one by one a see if the lag disappears.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

[cybernick]

If you check you can see when I open preferences in during lag the app goes to "not responding" for a while. Really nothing helped.

As previously mentioned your issue doesn't appear to be a hardware issue. Instead what you seem to be encountering is the issue that VS has lots of inefficient coding.

The following image shows VS not responding when simply trying to zoom out. Moving around the timeline also causes VS to stop responding. This non-responsiveness is obvious in large VSPs.
erase.jpg
VS also stops responding when using certain filters. So the non-responsiveness may be caused by one of features that you're using, e.g. blend modes, masking. Hence as previously mentioned, you could try disabling these features one by one a see if the lag disappears.

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter

To be honest I do not use any sophisticated feature. Regular overlays, transitions, VMW, WAV and MP4 files. For sure it is not and HW issue.
But since it is a feature I use, why it is fixed after app restart. !?!?!?
I have initiated a support ticket but I do not have any hope. Maybe it is time jump to another ship

[tletter]

But since it is a feature I use, why it is fixed after app restart. !?!?!?

Programmers determine the responsiveness of software by the design decisions that they make, e.g. bloated code, poorly constructed responsive design, use of plugins, etc. Restarting a program reinitializes resource allocation and the program starts out being responsive, however over time resources can become exhausted and so the responsiveness of software degrades if the software is poorly designed.

As previously mentioned, you could try disabling the features that you use one by one a see if the lag disappears.

Maybe it is time jump to another ship

Maybe, but if you can wait, undoubtedly VS2021 will fix all issues whilst adding more features

tletter
https://www.youtube.com/user/tletter