VS Ultimate 20 very slow with large number of overlay tracks

[fingerbreaker]

Maybe this is expected and I don't know if earlier versions would be this slow because they didn't have 49 overlay tracks available, but here is my experience: as part of a fancy photo collage, I am spelling my son's name with a bunch of individual dots that are each an overlay track. They are .bmp files and they move around via motion paths edited with "customize motion". This sequence takes like 10 seconds out of the whole video. I ended up using all 49 overlay tracks (because they were there). Now I'm playing around with the paths, adjusting the lengths of the clips, etc. but it's veeerrrrrryyyyy sssslllllooooowwwww. It took me a half hour just to lengthen 46 clips because it takes literally 30 seconds just to select and lengthen one clip while you wait for VS to solve pi to 5,000,000 digits or whatever it's doing every time you try to select something.

It's not like these are big video files - they are simple images. Everything is on my pc - working folder, all the image files, etc. Is there anything I can do, or check, settings or what have you or other tricks to reduce unnecessary processing so things can move quicker? I've been reading some of the other issues with VS20 and I'll probably stop using it after I finish this little project and go back to the simple life of a mere 20 overlay tracks.

Thanks,
FB

[tletter]

I ended up using all 49 overlay tracks (because they were there). Now I'm playing around with the paths, adjusting the lengths of the clips, etc. but it's veeerrrrrryyyyy sssslllllooooowwwww.

Try disabling a number of the tracks and see if the responsiveness improves, i.e. test if you're asking too much of the program to expect a snappy response.

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

[fingerbreaker]

Yes, disabling all the tracks but a couple speeds it back up, but that in itself is a (smaller) burden as it took me 5-10 minutes just to turn them off (should be something that takes 20 seconds, right?). And the whole point of overlay tracks is that they are working in concert with each other, so I need to see how they interact as I make changes.

What exactly is happening under the covers when I make a change to a clip - is VS automatically regenerating every frame that is affected by the change and that's what delays the availability of the mouse to make a new selection? If so, that's not helpful: I don't need to have things regenerated (or whatever it's doing) UNTIL I click my mouse in the timeline and press play. I'm not a software engineer but if you're going to offer 49 overlay tracks, and using them in even the most basic way causes the program to grind to a near halt unless you disable them, then .... frustration and disappointment will occur, I guess.

[tletter]

it took me 5-10 minutes just to turn them off (should be something that takes 20 seconds, right?).

Disabling tracks has never been a pain but then I've never tried disabling 49 tracks.

And the whole point of overlay tracks is that they are working in concert with each other, so I need to see how they interact as I make changes.

Yes of course, but you've appeared to have exceeded VS's capability to handle the number of tracks that you're using given what each track is expected to do.

What exactly is happening under the covers when I make a change to a clip - is VS automatically regenerating every frame that is affected by the change and that's what delays the availability of the mouse to make a new selection?

For long and complex VSPs, I frequently see VS taking minutes to simply zoom in/out tracks.

if you're going to offer 49 overlay tracks, and using them in even the most basic way causes the program to grind to a near halt unless you disable them

I never suggested that you permanently disable your 49 tracks rather I suggested that you test to see if you exceeded VS's capability. You simply can't do anything that you want with VS and expect it to be snappy and responsive but you can learn its limitations. With experience, you'll find that VS offers many features are are poorly implemented/integrated, e.g. see search.php?st=0&sk=t&sd=d&sr=posts&keyw ... only&ch=-1

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

[fingerbreaker]

For long and complex VSPs, I frequently see VS taking minutes to simply zoom in/out tracks.

That's what I don't get. Why? I'm not a software engineer, but I'm an engineer. I use Cubase as well for music projects. Obviously it's not handling video files (it can, but I don't use it for video) but I have some fairly complex files with many many audio tracks. Never have any problem with basic maneuvering like zooming in/out, selecting tracks, elongating tracks, etc. If I'm rendering a huge file - I get it, come back in an hour. If I want to play back a project, yes - it must calculate many 1's and 0's so I may have to wait a little bit. But to zoom in/out, select a clip, elongate a clip, pick a menu item, etc. - no reason at all any of that should depend on how large a project you have. One would think.

Anyway, I'm just ranting in general, not at you of course. Thanks for the input - it's not a bad workaround considering the alternative, but it is a bit of a pain in the arse to only enable 2-4 (any more on this project and it's ssslllloooowwww) tracks at a time and once in a while enable them all to see how things look. No one else has replied so I take it this is just par for the course for VS. Again, 49 overlay tracks with....a couple pictures on them. Not videos, not a lot of effects other than motion paths. That doesn't seem like it should be pushing VS to it's limits.

[lata]

Hi
I have never used that many overlays, mind you for my holiday movies I only need a few
Can you provide the vsp, you will have to zip to attach to your reply
Yes I realise you have done all the ground work, but just interested how vs copes with multiple tracks.

I will be able to create my own bmp to re-link the project

[fingerbreaker]

VSP attached. Thanks! The part I'm speaking about is around the 2:00-2:20 zone. As a reference, I closed VS, opened the project and went to that section and started selecting and changing the lengths of clips. The first one wasn't too bad - took 5 seconds or so. By the third one, it was a 36 second cycle time from the moment I clicked on the clip to when I was able to click on the next clip. The 36 seconds was about 20 seconds to actually highlight the clip and present the arrow on the cursor indicating drag mode (at which I point I lengthened the clip) followed by 16 seconds of thinking until the mouse cursor became available to click again.

The .bmp files are about 6 MB.

Disabling tracks wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to disable all tracks at once somehow. But once VS gets bogged down, even disabling tracks is slow and can take at least a couple minutes.

[lata]

Thanks for the project file

It does however look a little different to the image you provided earlier
I had assumed that you were using one BMP multiple times but it appears you have several bmp’s in the project.
That leaves me re-linking one at a time
Sorry to ask but it would be best if you can provide the images then Smart Re-link will kick in
I found these within the project, I am sure there must be more.
VS200308A-001.BMP
VS200308A-011.BMP
vs200307-030.BMP
vs200307-036.BMP
vs200307-034.BMP
vs200306-007.BMP

[fingerbreaker]

Yes, I've been working on it so there have been changes. There's more than 50 different images of my son so I don't really want to share those publicly. If you make your own project and just put images onto 49 overlay tracks you'll basically simulate what I have. Each clip has a mask frame and motion.

[lata]

Hi
What is the size / resolution of the images

They are bmp, do they have a transparent background

Knowing the image details and i can create the images, name as your images and be able to re-link
If the mask is a standard one from VS then thats ok, but if you create your own mask then I am in trouble

[fingerbreaker]

Here are three files: the custom mask I am using, and representative bmp files.

[lata]

Hi
Thanks for the image samples
some thoughts...

I am struggling somewhat with re-linking to the images
I assume that most images are duplicates, just plain orbs with some having the babies face.
I would have thought that using one image multiple times would have worked as well, I may be wrong if each is different.
The Mask does not automatically apply to the images, so each has to be applied manually and the system applies the first mask as default rather than the png circle
A Smart Package would have retained the Mask details.
It may have been better to use PNG images instead of BMP as they would have a transparent background so no mask required and that would probably reduce the strain on the program, never mind the work to apply the masks.
And when I apply the mask the clip on the timeline it sometimes jumps out of position, seems the mouse has a mind of its own, sometimes changing to the Stretch tool, but a quick Undo fixes the errors.
Quite annoying trying to edit and re-link multiple tracks.
I did notice on one clip you had applied Brightness and Contrast filter just to create a fade in when Custom Motion would do that.

[lata]

Hi
The best option to improve the playback was to resize the images (vs200308a-001) from 1920 x 1080
I reduced the size to 480 x 720 to retain the 16/9 ratio.

I had also converted the bmp to png to avoid using the mask

Certainly using the smaller images had a big impact on video studio playback
So much I was able to play all overlay tracks, the last section appeared ok although I think I have messed up the order of some of the clips.

Original image was 6,076Kb
reduced size was 380kb
with a png being 70kb

[asik1]

Indeed the major error here was using the BMP's needlessly
The most demanding overlay track VSP I tested was this 18 tracks for animation and it run smoothly with png's (Over 500 clips )

[fingerbreaker]

Hi, sorry for the delay, thank you both for your help.

1. Can you help me understand why png doens't need a mask and how to get that to work? If I convert the .bmp globe pic to png, the black background is still there and must be masked away.
2. The png file size is smaller but the amount of "information" is the same right?, so if I simply convert the same resolution picture to PNG, does that speed up VS or is it the same because it's still processing the same number of pixels?
3. I'm unwilling to go lower than 1920x1080 because I want this to look good on a large screen HDTV. So, I'm trying to figure out if what Trevor did would actually help me. If I go png but keep 1920x1080, does that help because the file size is smaller or only because I eliminated the mask?

So, there are a couple areas where I apparently overburdened VS - using large bmp's and missing an opportunity to eliminate masks. I think I also made another realization which is that whether VS is processing images or videos doesn't much matter (my intuition was that videos would require more processing because video files are so much larger) because it's really just processing a series of frames whether those frames are part of an image or a video. It's more about how much processing is required for each frame. Is that true, more or less?

All that said, I am still curious to know from VS engineers whether it would be possible or advisable to be able to "turn off" the automatic processing that seems to take place so that if you do have a very intensive project, you can just tell VS to chill out while you do various operations and edits and then once you are ready to see what you have created, then turn it back on. For example I have another VSx9 project with all 20 overlay tracks using HD video that are all green screened with motion and probably some other effects too. I haven't worked on it in over a year but it was slow as molasses as well, and I don't think there is much opportunity to dumb things down on that one.

Thanks again for your input,
FB