How to improve performance

[zaphodikus]

I machine is idling, almost no traffic on the SSD, all 16 cores are hardly moving, but when I tap on a clip in the timeline it takes 3 seconds to "select" the clip. Moving it takes 5 times longer, the app is clearly locking on something and no idea where to look.
1. I disabled the preview and filter animations
2. I'm on AMD , so... hardware acceleration boxes are ticked, but will make zero difference I assume
3. enabled smart proxy
4. changed the template to 29.9fps and 1920x1080

My machine is now about 10x faster than my old PC, but Videostudio hates me. I'm missing something obvious. Actually missing a lot.

[tletter]

My machine is now about 10x faster than my old PC, but Videostudio hates me. I'm missing something obvious.

The last post in https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=67590 might be of interest.

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

[lata]

Hi
View my profile to the right, I have AMD yet do not experience the delays you mention
I assume the delay affects clips without filters etc. being used.
As for acceleration I deselect as the program does not appear to benefit from having that selected.
The delays, are they the same using images as using video, what type of files are you using.
Do you have any problems when using the library samples.
Smart Proxy
If you are using this option you may be best to allow the process to complete before editing, i do find whilst creating Smart Proxy files does impact on editing performance

[gewb]

No issues with VS2020 (I don't run 2019) on my AMD Ryzen 7 or my AMD FX boxes.

[Canvas-saur]

I am new to the forum so forgive my first post transgressions. With that disclaimer, I have been a Video Studio user since X7 on XP and 7 windows machines. I have generally been satisfied, and migrated over from Premiere Elements. I ran nicely on an i5 and 8 GB with a modest setup. I upgraded last year to 10 on another machine and it is an i7 with 16 GB and a 500 MB SSD and and 1TB HDD and just stuck 2020 on it.

First of all I love the rendering time. with a modest NVIDIA 640 Cuda card it takes 1/4 what the old machine took, which was close to 1:1.

Question: do I need to run the program on the same drive as the content source to gain stability?

I am getting delays when I get much beyond a 15 minute complex content with JPEGS mixed with video and transitions and a few effects. It is taking way too much time to search or catch up. It freezes and then recovers after a few seconds. As we all do I save often of course because one or two crashes per vid, were a normal part of my X7 and X9 experience.

The crashes on 2020 are sudden. Boom it's gone. And you are left staring at a blank screen. A little more dramatic than X9. But these are not new issues to me; However they seem more extreme than with X9.

[zaphodikus]

I think, as Lata pointed out. The program had not yet generated smart proxy files.
I'm going to check out https://forum.corel.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=67590 for more tips. BUT.
Turning on acceleration had no effect for me (although I don't have a CUDA nvidia card anyway) and do need to buy a new gfx card soon. Should I get an NVidia?
Rendering is still pretty performant, it's the 3-5 second delay when clicking on anything in the timeline only that is slowing me down. Snapshot bitmaps, video with or without any effects on them, makes no difference. CPU and disk traffic is idle.

What slightly improved editing speed:
- Was to turn on the in memory cache (I have 64GB)
- I went into the proxy files list , deleted all the project clips in the proxy cache list, but it never filled up.
- deleting the main track clip, and adding it back , editing and trimming it again. (Sometimes I find that redoing a series of cuts in my project has always improved performance in VS.)

[lata]

Many years ago I upgraded my ram from 4 to 8 Gb the only improvement I noticed using Video Studio was the reaction or refresh rate when selecting clips.
Navigating the timelines and switching tabs Edit to Share was faster.

With that in mind I would use the Windows Memory Diagnostic option, part of Windows 10, just do a search, lower left.

I have not used this myself, as yet, but found details here
https://www.tomshardware.com/how-to/how-to-test-ram

Maybe worth a run just to rule out the ram as being the problem.

[zaphodikus]

...

Question: do I need to run the program on the same drive as the content source to gain stability?

I am getting delays when I get much beyond a 15 minute complex content with JPEGS mixed with video and transitions and a few effects. It is taking way too much time to search or catch up. It freezes and then recovers after a few seconds. As we all do I save often of course because one or two crashes per vid, were a normal part of my X7 and X9 experience.

The crashes on 2020 are sudden. Boom it's gone. And you are left staring at a blank screen. A little more dramatic than X9. But these are not new issues to me; However they seem more extreme than with X9.

Just on my "experiences" of VS2019 : Stability is much better if I use ffmpeg to resize and re-encode all my sources to 1920x1080 . I often forget to save (I have saves set at every 10 minutes now, since I rarely get crashes) But I almost always get crashes on rendering if I have unusual size sources.
I've not noticed issues with sources on different drives. I have a bigger SSD now so I tend not to use my NAS at all.
Longest videos I have made are around 5 minutes, not made anything longer on my new machine yet. Although I lie, I did 12 simple Christmas2019 clips recently, most of them were just over 5 minutes. I'm not a regular enough user to upgrade to 2020. I have been upgrading only every 2 years, and stability has always been a slight niggle.

[MJones70]

I'd say your RAM is faulty or maybe simply reinstalling the program could help. Maybe have a look at the task manager and the priority usage of CPU for this. Probably it's at the lowest level?

[Canvas-saur]

Thanks for the quick response guys. Most of my videos are longer; 15 minutes to 40 minutes is about what I do for You Tube content. Yes it does get slower with longer videos and more transitions. But it is the freezing and lagging on selections that bothers me, especially if you happen to come down on an energetic transition or effect.

[Davidk]

Hi Z,
Some reminders about how proxy files work . . .
1. the proxy is only automatically generated the first time a clip is introduced to the timeline. You will find it in the proxy folder/list: settings/smart proxy file manager. You could use the same folder for all proxies created by every version of VS, or a separate folder for each version.
However, once the proxy is generated automatically, the vsp has flags inserted it that a proxy exists, where it is, and to use it during editing. If the proxy cannot be found (eg, it's on a usb drive which is not plugged in) it will not re-create the proxy file automatically, and instead will use the original clip in editing: gets that slow jerky look about it, a sure sign that the links to the proxy have gone missing.
2. If you have the proxy files in a common folder on the main memory, but the project those proxies relate to is on a removable drive and that drive is not plugged in, when VS next starts in that condition it checks the proxy state, and if the vsp the proxy file/s relate is not found those proxy files are deleted.
3. If you have a case where a vsp has clips needing proxy files that are not found (see 1 and 2 above) you will have to manually re-create the/each proxy file by selecting the clip, rt-click and choose create proxy file from the drop-down list.
4. proxy files can quickly use up drive space. Ordinarily, since they are SD versions of HD clips, the proxy file will be smaller than the clip it relates to, but not always: sometimes they can be up to 20% larger. And you don't want memory being used up by proxy files for projects that are completed, so It's a good idea to regularly review the proxy files you do have, and remove those not longer required.
5. Take some care with 4 if you use a clip or several clips in several projects: a common proxy file does not exist, even tho it may be logical. Just as the vsp has markers for the proxy file and where it is, the proxy file has markers for the project clip it relates to, so there may be several proxies of the same clip used in different projects. Be careful of which one you remove or a manual re-creation effort may be necessary.
6. proxy files don't smart package. So if you use a smart package to move a project to another PC, the vsp in it will have the proxy flags, but the proxy file itself won't be found - see 3 above. Manual recreation necessary.

[Pepi]

zaphodikus,
Like always, does this happens for the sample files came with VS? Select different length, and try with picture samples as well.

Have you tested if there are differences in case your clip locates on different hard disk (if you do have more than one)?

When you click your clip, can you see any activities on the task manager during those seconds when VS is selecting it:

VS-Forum-taskmanager.gif (5.12 KiB) Viewed 1562 times

Does this happening also if you start your VS, add a sample clip to video track?

I have not used the the smart proxy, and have no issues so far even my own videos locate on non-SSDs. VS I do have on SSD like Windows

[zaphodikus]

I did not know about the right-click to create smart-proxy, I deleted them all now, in future will definitely go in and clean them out whenever I notice old ones in the cache are getting a bit on the big side.

Turning off all the acceleration boost options has helped tremendously. I think having a GFX card with only 2GB memory was not helping any of those options either.