Testing the video editing waters and like X9...BUT...

[JaekRock]

I've recently downloaded trials of VideoStudio X9, Adobe Premier Elements, and Sony Vegas Pro 13, testing them out to see which I'd like to get. While initially indifferent over X9, I've found it's my preferred out of those 3. It does everything I want to do (particularly for this project multi video overlays...like 9 screens going at once for a one man band thing). It's really a nice functional editor with some power behind it. But there are a few hangups that are slowing down my decision...

Mostly, speed. It's sooooo slow. I'm running a relatively new Win 10 machine with the program on an 256 GB SSD, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, i7-6700 processor. One weakness is my video card, a GTX745 I'm planning on upgrading to a GTX1070 in the next few months...not sure how much the program relies on the video card. It got hard to place video clips after about 4 overlays, since it was difficult to line up choppy video to the audio track (audio was playing fine, but video was previewed at maybe 1 (or less) fps. Often times when I try to render, I'll get a "This format is supported only in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10" error, with a prompt following telling me a certain frame was unreadable (when I'm bringing in a few overlay clips at a time). It's only a 3 minute song, but I'm going on about 35-40 minutes for a full render. Adobe or Vegas did not even hint at choppiness in the video running all overlays, but were not nearly as nice for layout (the settable grid and snapping in X9 is super nice) or doing the types of clip transitions I wanted.

So, is this just trial version handicap I'm experiencing here, or are others having similar issues? I noticed that the editing, creation, and hardware optimization in the preferences were off limits in my version. Will it get better in the paid version? I want to like it, but need to know if I'm going to have issues. I'd appreciate any experience from other users out there that might have done this type of thing before. Thanks!

[asik1]

I don't know, but does the trial allow you to use proxy files?
No way you can run 9 HD stream at full resolution.

[JaekRock]

So, it seems like proxy files are not available in the trial, at least from what I can tell. I tried enabling SmartProxy and messing around with some settings, but no proxy files were generated. Assuming that all works in the full version, I can see that helping my editing experience on a track like this (even though other software did not have trouble playing back the original high res clips fluidly in the edit environment). However, I still get the a "This format is supported only in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10" error with the frame error. This happens about 9/10 times right now when trying to render the video (usually at the area of the track where multiple things enter at once), and I'm killing just about every other process I can to try to keep the processing bandwidth for VideoStudio. Kind of frustrating.

[lata]

Hi

Smart Proxy files are created when using HD files having a frame size above 720 x ***
They are auto created when adding a clip to the timeline.
For clips already on the timeline, right click to choose create proxy files.

Takes a while to create, then a small icon can be seen on the clip/thumbnail.
View Settings Smart Proxy File and Queue Managers

The error message regarding windows versions, not seen that before, but only recently upgraded to W10.

What are the properties of your video files?
Right click a clip for properties, create an image of window to attach here.

[JaekRock]

Here's a sample of the 9 video clips properties. Some are a little longer and trimmed, but this is representative. After about 6 failed trys to render last night, the power went out at my house, and I fired it up again tonight...it rendered first try. Anyways, here's the properties...

Typical file prop

file prop.PNG (9.09 KiB) Viewed 6224 times

Thanks for the tip on the proxy there...I was following the user manual and don't recall it saying anything about having to manually queue clips already in place. The proxies didn't take that long to render...about 2 min a clip, and made a huge difference. Still a little shaky in fast motion frames (like the shakers) but just much much better.

If it helps (or if other users or trial users are having the same error issue), I would receive the error both on rendering, and on trying to edit the advanced motion (doing some transparency fade-outs on the overlay clips). Now that the proxies are in place, I'm probably fine in the editing realm, but still a little unsure about the rendering. Does 30 min sound about right for a video like this?

[lata]

Hi

The properties there look ok other than the frame rate being 29.967fps where compliant video would use 29.97fps, not a lot of difference.
There are a lot of varieties of MP4 video some video studio seems to like and others it struggles with. Some MP4 taken with iPhone and Tablets may use a variable frame rate to reduce file sizes, these can cause problems when editing.

Render times depends on the files we are using and what we are rendering / converting to.

Using Share – Same as first Clip should use original properties, quality should be retained with good render times.
Rendering from MP4 to say MTS may take longer to complete.
Then take into account the amount of edits being used also affects render times.
Using multiple overlay tracks will take longer.

You say 30 minutes to render, was that for a 30 minute project, that’s ok.
If its for a 1 minute project then that’s a long time?

Then the CPU speed also affects render times, but your i7 should be good enough.

Don’t know about the render errors, there may be a lot going on when using multiple timelines?
If you are using Customise Motion for fades then I would not use Crossfade Transitions.

There was a recent poster using Crossfades, Mercalli stabilisation and Timelapse. No way to prove a conflict.
If you continue to have problems, create a Smart Package of your project, Zip the folder and upload to a sharing site , DropBox etc. We can have a look to see if we can find any problems.

Last but not least, Video Studio seems to work better when using Project Properties that match the video files properties, the trial cannot do that as it only accepts Standard Definition sizes, although we can tweak the PP to use AVI with no compression to set 1920 x 1080. Anyway that’s the trial limitations.

[JaekRock]

Well, everything ended up working pretty much like I wanted it, so I'm probably going to jump in and get X9.5...demo version expires in 2 days.

Would I have been better somehow reducing the source file size/resolution for something like this? If I'm starting with a high res image, whats the best way to do that? It ultimately still took 30-35 minutes to render this 3 minute track, and continued to crash occasionally on render. I had the best luck rendering directly after firing up the computer.

Here's the end result. Probably a better view if you previously played Portal.

[lata]

Hi

I do not think changing the video resolutions will help but only reduce the overall quality.

You are using 9 tracks and it is gonna take some time to render.
The full version may do a better job as the project properties can be set same as video properties, that should allow the program to use Smart Render.
The trial version can only use standard definition properties.

If you were to create a Smart Package you could zip and upload to a sharing site for us to test.
BropBox, GoogleDrive, MicrosoftOneDrive etc.
But as your trial version has terminated maybe just purchase the full version.

Good job