Video Studio X8 working much slower than expected

[ldor]

Hi all,

Recently I've upgraded Video Studio from X5 to X8. I expected X8 to work much faster as it is a 64-bit program. The same was promised on the Corel web site. However, my tests show just the opposite. Converting an HD file to a 720x576 MP4 file takes 2 times longer with X8 than with X5 regardless of the format of the initial video file (at least for those file type that I tried). I have also noticed that the CPU load during the file conversion is about just 15%. I have a fast CPU (a 6-core i7-5820K) but X8 does not utilize the power of this CPU. On another computer I tried, a much older one with a slower CPU, the CPU utilization is better, about 70% but still X5 does conversion faster than X8.

Before installing X8, I played with the trial version of X7. I did not do the same speed tests for it but at least I noticed that the CPU utilization was about 65%-70%. So, most probably X7 does work fast, as one would expect from a 64-bit program. Unfortunately, I could not purchase it because it was discontinued when X8 came up.

If there is anybody who upgraded to X8 recently, maybe they could do similar speed tests to see if this problem is common for all computers. If it's really something common then there must be a bug in X8. Then we should request Corel to fix it. I've already contacted tech support regarding this issue. They were not helpful but they said they would convey it to the developers team. I hope they will really do so.

In case anybody would like to reproduce the situation, here is the information on the video files I played with. I converted the following two type of files:
MOV file: 1920x1280, 30 fps, audio 48 kHz, 16 bit stereo
MTS file: 1920x1080, 30 fps, audio 48 kHz, 256 kbps
I converted those files to MP4 720x576, 25 fps, 1024 kbps, audio 44 kHz, 16 bit, 128 kbps
As I have already said, for both file types for X8 the conversion took two times longer than for X5. I also tried to convert the same files to a standard MPEG2 file with PAL DVD settings. In that case X5 and X8 did the job in approximately the same time.

Regards to everyone,

Leo

[dtvp]

I'd be interested in more hardware details - CPU model, does it have Intel HD graphics, what GPU you have. I would also ask if the hardware acceleration settings are to same for both programs. I only have x8 so I can't do any comparisons.

I''ve seen the same sort of issues with other programs going 64-bit. People expect an automatic performance increase, but for some things that isn't the case - rendering out 32-bit data, for example. The main benefit of 64-bit is that you can address far more RAM. However, there shouldn't be a decrease in performance unless poor programing decisions have been made. That was indeed the case with Pinnacle Studio when it when 64-bit - the mpeg-2 rendering actually got slower in the first few builds. And I believe that the same people are responsible for VideoStudio.

[ldor]

The CPU model is i7-5820K. I don't know if it has HD graphics but, according to my understanding, that has no importance because there is no graphics being displayed while video is converted from one format to another. Besides, as I have mentioned, I did the same comparison on a much older computer (a 6-years old laptop with a dual-core Intel Pentium CPU). On that laptop X5 was also faster, although the difference was not as large.

Also, as I said, I had one month to play with X7 trial, which is the first 64-bit release of Video Studio. I did not do the same comparison test on X7 but I noticed that CPU utilization was around 65%-70% compared to only 15% in X8. So it looks like X7 did perform as promised.

I was not aware of hardware acceleration settings. I will check that when I am back to my computer. The only thing I can say that those settings (if there are any) where kept at the default values in all three versions (X5, X7 and X8) as I did not make any changes to them.

[dtvp]

The CPU model is i7-5820K. I don't know if it has HD graphics but, according to my understanding, that has no importance because there is no graphics being displayed while video is converted from one format to another.

During rendering, most video programs can use the graphics hardware to accelerate the process. This is particularly true if the program uses the Intel encoder and you have HD graphics and you are creating h.264 video - which mp4 is normally nowadays.

So enabling or disabling hardware acceleration can make a huge different in performance, and the type of graphics card is crucial to this performance. If you didn't have HD graphics but a seperate GPU, you would need to have Cuda or Open GL hardware acceleration enabled in order to get the benefit. I have no idea if x8 can use Cuda or Open GL but I suspect the long standing member of this forum can answer that.

I'll run a couple of tests as I've just notice that hardware acceleration for encoding is off by default here.

[dtvp]

OK, I just ran a quick test. I rendered a 2 minute mpeg-2 file to an HD mp4 file. With the default settings - which for x8 seems to be for switching hardware off for file creation - it took 70 seconds. When I enabled all the hardware acceleration settings the render only took 24 seconds.

I suggest you check out how your copy of X8 is configured, because if you haven't got hardware acceleration completely enabled this might account for the performance differences you are seeing here.

Hang on though - that i7 is one of the types that don't have onboard graphics. So what GPU do you have?

[ldor]

Thank you for this useful information. This is something I didn't know. I'll play with the settings tonight and will let you know the result. But unfortunately I don't have any GPU. As I didn't know what you have written here, I selected a simple cheap graphics adapter thinking that I don't need one with GPU. So most probably those settings will not help me.

But in that case my question still remains valid - neither X5 nor X8 can make use of GPU on my computer but why is X8 slower then? So I still suspect that there is some bug in it.

[dtvp]

I don't know when VS started using the Intel encoder, but I suspect it is in x5 as well. If there is no suitable hardware present it will default to a software mode. Be interesting to here if enabling "acceleration" makes any difference.

Seems odd to me that the acceleration is turned off by default (if that is indeed the case) in X8.

Let me know your results

[dtvp]

I though I better add something I've just discovered. VS may well not use the Intel encoder. It may be included at a low level, but the h. 264 settings are described as Ulead.

[ldor]

I've just tried hardware acceleration in X8 and it did not have any effect at all. So the issue still remains unsolved.
Would be interesting to know the results of a similar comparison from others

[dtvp]

I've just tried hardware acceleration in X8 and it did not have any effect at all. So the issue still remains unsolved.
Would be interesting to know the results of a similar comparison from others

So would I

[SoNic67]

I've just tried hardware acceleration in X8 and it did not have any effect at all. So the issue still remains unsolved.
Would be interesting to know the results of a similar comparison from others

You have NVIDIA GeForce GT 730. When you installed any nVidia driver newer than the 337.88 version, you just lost the hardware acceleration in VideoStudio.
This is because nVidia switched from the older (CUDA-based) encoder to a newer hardware encoder (NVENC) in their drivers but Corel didn't bother to update their software to match this situation.

Alternately you could just add manually, inside Windows/system32 folder, the three older encoding files that are missing from newer nVidia drivers. For a 64 bit system, those files are: nvcuvenc.dll , nvcuvenc32.dll and nvcuvenc64.dll .

On the other hand, any intel CPU that is 4th or 5th generation (you have a i7-5820K - 5th gen) has also a hardware encoder included. That could be used also to accelerate the encoding process. Too bad that Corel doesn't seem to be able to use that feature either.

PS: To monitor the GPU usage during encoding I recommend GPU-Z.

[ldor]

Thank you. Could you please tell me where I can get those dll files. I suppose, after updating the driver they were deleted from my computer.
But in any case my initial question still remains - without hardware acceleration X8 is slower than X5. is there anybody out there who could run similar comparison tests so that we could see if that is true for every computer. not just for mine?

[dtvp]

Thank you. Could you please tell me where I can get those dll files. I suppose, after updating the driver they were deleted from my computer.
But in any case my initial question still remains - without hardware acceleration X8 is slower than X5. is there anybody out there who could run similar comparison tests so that we could see if that is true for every computer. not just for mine?

But is X5 using hardware acceleration?

[ldor]

I didn't check that in X5. I just see that on my computer X8 works with the same speed regardless of hardware acceleration. Actually, as far as I know, my video adapter does not have any GPU. At least that's what I told to the computer shop guy when selecting the configuration for my computer. Nor does my CPU have any hardware acceleration for video. So, in fact, I don't expect any effect of hardware acceleration on my computer

[trailryder42]

Thank you. Could you please tell me where I can get those dll files. I suppose, after updating the driver they were deleted from my computer.

I got them from here:
http://www24.zippyshare.com/v/17386182/file.html