Computer specs for Videostudio

[dans]

ok guys, my new machine is up and running and I'm now able to encode the reference video in 12 to 12.5 seconds.

the machine
CPU : Intel i7-6850K 3.6GHz (6-Core) : It overclocked to 4.08 GHz by the motherboards custom performance tuning hardware.
Motherboard - Asus X99-A II
RAM : 32GB DDR4-2400 : Kingston HyperX Savage Model HX424C12SB2K4/32
Boot Drive : SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 512GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4
storage Drive : Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM 64MB Cache
GPU : Asus GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Founders Edition

notes

• I've done a bunch of testing, and it appears that the gpu is being used, but not to a great extent, as it never got higher than 18% while rendering.
• VS must have some inefficiencies, as the cpu never got above 82%, and it wasn't waiting on the gpu, ram, or drive, because all showed low utilization. I'm assuming the code contains some waits or sleeps to deal with parallel processing. Individual cores would spike to 100%, but never more than 1 at a time.

[Phil]

That's why I'll be looking for new video editing software. VSP doesn't use the resources within the computer. As soon as I add an FX, I'm back to the lagging on video.

[dans]

I assume part of the reason for that, is that making the code work with CUDA open C.L etc, is not a small undertaking. Not to mention probably not worth it on an application with such low margins.

[ImNotDan]

Gonna try to keep it short, though this post is the end of a very long journey, and the only reason I'm taking the time to post this (need to create account etc...) is because of the pretty freaking amazing results I've found -- none thanks to Corel, let's make that clear -- and I'm hoping this may actually help someone out there.

I have a dual Xeon E5-2640 v4 system with 32 Gb of ram and Win 10 64-bit, with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 video card. I got the entire system pretty much to do HD/4K video editing, and got literally _no_ _help_ from Corel before purchasing my hardware, despite quite the effort to get it, which was quite disappointing. Forward to running it for the first time on the new machine and I'm frankly extremely disappointed to see through task manager that the software is using less than 10% - around 5 to 6% in fact - of all the available computing power - so many cores I'm not even sure how many. No wonder I got no reply from them. Anyway I spent a few good hours researching this on the web, with no answers. Tried messing around with the Windows Task Manager "cpu affinity" options amongst others, and saw that I can get a better cpu usage by selecting only a part of all the goddamn cores that are now available, instead of the default "all". Thing is, how to go through all the possible configurations and find the optimal set? Enter another bit of googling around and this great software pops up: Process Lasso https://bitsum.com/ which just freaking rocks. I started rendering a very big file, and playing around with Process Lasso and the vstudio.exe process... and it turns out that by selecting "avoid non-physical cores (e.g. HyperThreaded)" and then _inverting_ that selection (yeah I know right? Big file rendering, all the time in the world...) and I am now rendering with at around 40% PLUS cpu usage instead of the usual 6%! Screenshot attached. Good luck y'all. You heard it here first.

[asik1]

Thank you NotDan, I know Process Lasso , I had it on my old system that "~died " 5 weeks ago.
You were very optimistic that corel will help you with your Xeon's , they need special written code to utilize them to the fullest and this is way way beyond VS market.
How is you GTX is doing?

[ImNotDan]

Hi Asik1,

I had a fairly long, if futile, conversation with their customer support who initially didn't want to answer the question "what is the best hardware out there for your software" because their policy is that they can't "recommend particular hardware" (I paraphrase from memory), which is fair enough - it's a a very vague question and almost impossible to answer given all the hardware / combinations out there. To which I asked a few more pointed questions along the lines of "is a Dual CPU setup better than a single processor? What about multithreading support? Multiple core support?" and a couple others... to which he said he'd forward to the tech dept for an answer, which never came despite me re-sending the e-mail several times over the next few weeks.

Anyway I love VideoStudio, it's the best bang for the buck I've found out there, so I wasn't going to be stopped even by unhelpful Kevin from customer support. I went ahead with the dual CPU for budget reasons, and was kind of disappointed at my CPU utilisation until I tweaked it so well with Process Lasso. Getting from an average of 6% CPU utilisation to about 45% is a 750% increase, I definitely feel the bang for the buck now

Sorry bout the ramble. The GTX is awesome, Witcher 3 is my drug of choice right now. I don't have a lot of time for gaming these days but hey old gaming habits don't die, do they?

Cheers!

[asik1]

Well, I'm on a loan ~8 years old, core duo system now and I think it's running almost in par with my dead i5 one as I remember. you know that your GTX has no use in VS it's as good as 40$ gpu.

[ImNotDan]

Yes I suspected that very much, thanks for confirming it though. What kind of video card do you think (or know?) would contribute to vs performance? (This is the exact question vs customer support outright refused to answer...)

[asik1]

Yes I suspected that very much, thanks for confirming it though. What kind of video card do you think (or know?) would contribute to vs performance? (This is the exact question vs customer support outright refused to answer...)

I don't know what gpu is better, there was a discussion here on that few months ago, I'm not a gamer so I choose only low mid GPU. on my dead system I had 60$ GT430.
I'm not doing mp4's only wmv's as I think they are better. I just finished a project rendering few wmv's and the cpu load was 90-100% on this E7400 core duo system.

*** I just made my first steps towards new system by buying asus H170M-e board and I ordered I5-6400.

[56_kruiser]

I dont' know. I thought my Laptop I'm using was speced pretty good.

I7 2.20 Ghz
12GB memory
64bit Windows 10
Graphics: Intel SAndy Bridge 648mhz 2108 Mb memory

I suspectd the graphics card is the problem.

V9 works HORRIBLY. Well, when I first installed a comple months ago, it didn't seem that bad. But now it blows up, long pauses, and renders do not play.

I'm wondering if a recent Windows 10 update has caused a bunch of problems.

[JPW]

I've been struggling this as well. I've had a Core 2 Duo machine for probably 8 years. I just filmed some 1080p 120 fps video from my iPhone 7 and understandably the Core 2 Duo couldn't handle it. So I purchased a new i5 laptop with a dedicated video card and an SSD hdd. Lo' and behold even this new laptop chokes on the 1080p 120 fps video. Is anyone using a laptop they feel runs VS really well?

[asik1]

I'm about to build my new system, I just bought I5-6600 and asus H170 board.
I hope to do it next week.

[BerthLJ]

Haven't tried X10 yes just installed it but should be ok, but on my old i7ee 24 gig titan black gfx the render times was beyond extreme.
The new computer is a dual workstation with Xeon 2640-v4 10 core cpu's, paired with 128 gig ECC DDR4 memory and a pny p5000 16 gig quadro card, display is HP z27q 5k 27" monitor.

[asik1]

Haven't tried X10 yes just installed it but should be ok, but on my old i7ee 24 gig titan black gfx the render times was beyond extreme.
The new computer is a dual workstation with Xeon 2640-v4 10 core cpu's, paired with 128 gig ECC DDR4 memory and a pny p5000 16 gig quadro card, display is HP z27q 5k 27" monitor.

Good to know you give so much credit to VS that it will know what to do with all those resources
This setup is better to crunch the next astroid collision than to be used by VS.

[pogonips]

I recently installed X10 64 bit, and as far as I can tell, the editor still does not use any memory above 4 GB.