Videostudio memory usage and performance using Vista x64

[scubamut]

I'm curious as to whether anyone has played around with X2 and Vista x64 to use memory most effectively to get the best performance. Seems there are a few ways of using system RAM (and probably some I haven't thought of):
1) let Vista decide
2) create a RAMDISK use it to store source and rendered videos
3) use the RAMDISK with Vista's ReadyBoost feature enabled

Also, when rendering a video, Vista Task Manager shows all 4 of my quad processors busy, one at about 30%, the other 3 at < 5%. This, even when the source/rendered videos are all in system RAM. I had thought that the CPU would be the performacnce bottleneck, but this doesn't appear to be so. Anyone have any thoughts or advice on this?

[Ken Berry]

Again with the caveat that I am not a 64 bit user, as I said in your other thread, X2 (and X3) were not written in a 64 bit version. Nor, unfortunately, were they apparently written to take advantage of multi-core processors.

On my own Quad running X2 originally under Vista, and now X3 under Windows 7, I got similar read-outs to you from Task Manager when rendering video. The only way I have found of boosting usage of all four cores is a little -- and cheap -- program called Ashampoo Core Tuner. I think it cost me about US$9.99, though that may have been a promotional offer at the time.

Some people pooh-pooh it. But I could actually sit there and watch all four cores go up to over 60% -- with two of them up to over 80% -- when using X2/X3 for rendering. This was also reflected in much improved rendering times, though these varied according to what format you were rendering in.

With HDV, I got nearly 4 times better rendering speed, but with AVCHD it was only a bit under 2x. But given that rendering times of high def video, if not using SmartRender (which I don't), are rather long, any improvement is both noticeable and appreciated.

[Accolades]

Hi,

A small test using my humble system.

Win 7 64 bit, VSX3 Registered and updated

Start file AVI




End file rendered to HDD



Average CPU/MEM usage



Some CPU and MEM usage - Not much else running..



Just to show it was actually rendering



More Stats...


(image shrunk by sjj1805 Admin - too wide for proper display on Web Board)

And More Stats..


(image shrunk by sjj1805 Admin - too wide for proper display on Web Board)

Rendering time ~1.5hrs tried to get the best quality using double sampling, but not impressed with output.

Maybe there are other options I should have chosen?

[sjj1805]

I'm curious as to whether anyone has played around with X2 and Vista x64 to use memory most effectively to get the best performance. Seems there are a few ways of using system RAM (and probably some I haven't thought of):
.......
3) use the RAMDISK with Vista's ReadyBoost feature enabled
.........

I only have a humble core 2 Duo on a 32 bit system.
I did plug in an 8GB USB flash drive

To be honest the concept is good but in reality it is a gimmick because the data still has to be written / read to and from the USB drive and they are slowww


While the extra "RAM" might allow you to install any software that insists you have "x" amount of RAM available and will refuse to let you install with less, that is where its usefulness ends. I found that by using this ready boost RAM it actually made my computer run slower.

[Accolades]

Downloaded 10 day trial of CORE TUNER

Tested with same file ro create IMAGE.

[Ken Berry]

So no significant difference or improvement for you... Hmmm...

[Accolades]

Was a little surprised that my web browser - Firefox used up as much CPU as Video Studio did rendering a video ?

I am now trying to force myself to use Internet Explorer 8 instead....

Win having Win 7 64bit Installed I also have the option of using a 64bit Internet Explorer. Unfortuanately the 64 bit version does not support any FLASH and Shockwave media.

As MOST websites have some sort of the above embedded it sort of makes it a little useless!!

Back to the 32bit version of IE which according to the process viewer uses 0% of CPU!!

[aljimenez]

Firefox should not be active, unless you have many tabs with webpages that are updating themselves and/or playing videos. Just make sure you click the stop icon for each web-page you have when rendering... Al

[Accolades]

Firefox should not be active, unless you have many tabs with webpages that are updating themselves and/or playing videos. Just make sure you click the stop icon for each web-page you have when rendering... Al

All fixed - think it has something to do with JAVA on start has 0% useage but after a while go to ~14% no biggie...

[scubamut]

Thks for the comments.

I did some tests using a source file from my Canon HF100 HD camera (MTS 1440x1080) of about 80MB, rendering the clip as:

1. AVCHD 1920
2. Blu-ray 1920
3. HDV 1080
4. WMV 1080
5. Zune h264 640x480
6. Mpeg Optimizer (which retains the source format)

I timed each (manually, so the times are probably +- a few secs) using these memory cofigurations:

1. Vista decides
2. 4 GB RAMDISK (VSuite Standard Edition))
3. Vista ReadyBoost

In summary, the results show:

1. Neither RAMDISK nor ReadyBoost have a meaningful effect on rendering speed => seems Vista uses available memory to cache data from disk anyway
2. What may be useful are the relative speeds: Mpeg Optimizer is at least 5x as fast as any other output format and the resulting file has the same format and size (approximately) of the source file. You may want to bear this in mind when editing.
3. All 4 processors in the Quad Phenom II x64 965 chip are active during processing without the help of any additional utilities - I would guess that this is probably the result of using 64 bit codecs, not necessarily VS itself.

You can find the details here, if interested.

[Accolades]

Assuming you turned Hyperthreading off in BIOS ?

[Accolades]

Thks for the comments.

I did some tests using a source file from my Canon HF100 HD camera (MTS 1440x1080) of about 80MB, rendering the clip as:

1. AVCHD 1920
2. Blu-ray 1920
3. HDV 1080
4. WMV 1080
5. Zune h264 640x480
6. Mpeg Optimizer (which retains the source format)

I timed each (manually, so the times are probably +- a few secs) using these memory cofigurations:

Couldnt see any times posted on the link?

[scubamut]

Couldnt see any times posted on the link?

I gave rough relative times (as I said, the timing was manual), "1" being about 20 secs.

[Accolades]

Did you manually disable Hyperthreading in Bios ?

Why ?

[scubamut]

Did you manually disable Hyperthreading in Bios ?

Why ?

Why do you say hyperthreading is disabled??