Video Studio 9 definitely better on Dual-core systems

Charlie Howard · Post by **Charlie Howard** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 10:32 pm

VS9 really benefits from a "Dual-core" CPU: I just switched from an Athlon-1400 IDE system to a Pentium-D 3.2 GHz with SATA RAID-0. Rendering is about five times faster than on the Athlon, so I only have time for a leisurly lunch, not for dinner and a double-feature.

Rendering 57 minutes of AVI took about 5 hours on the A1400, but "only" 1 hour and 4 minutes on the Pentium-D.

H-P Pavilion D4100Y
Pentium-D 3.2 GHz
1GB RAM (533 MHz), dual channel
320GB RAID-0 (2x160GB SATA hard drives)
NVidia GeForce 6600

Post by **Ken Berry** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 10:42 pm

Hate to prick your balloon, but when rendering from DV/AVI to DVD-compatible mpeg-2, I always get render times of 'real time plus a handful of minutes', regardless of the size of the project, using a non-dual core P4 3.0 GHz CPU with HT, 2 GB RAM and an IDE HD. The 'handful of minutes' varies from between about 2 minutes for projects of 20 minutes length, to about 5 or 6 minutes for projects which are around 45 minutes -- though I confess I rarely do individual projects larger than that.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 11:13 pm

There are other things that will greatly affect render speed. Charlie's new system is bound to have much faster RAM (possibly DDR2) and a large on-chip CPU cache. Last but certainly not least, the new CPU supports the SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set extensions -- those will make a significant difference.

Project settings such as the Quality slider furthermore impact the amount of motion search performed by the MPEG encoder, and comparing transcoding times between two systems with settings of 70% vs. 100% is like comparing apples and oranges.

Anyway, congrats on the new system.

bobcwilson · Post by **bobcwilson** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 6:28 am

I have found that render times is more dependant on your hard drive speed than you CPU speed. On my P4 2.8GHZ machine with 512MB RAM and a 120GB hard drive with 2MB cache, it takes 9 1/2 minutes to render a 45 minute project (using SmartRender). I recently added another 120GB hard drive but instead with an 8MB cache instead of a 2MB cache. It now only takes 7 1/2 minutes (a 20% speed improvement) to render the same project using my new hard drive.

Where the fast CPU makes a difference is when you filter a project. Filtering using many mathematical calculations and a faster CPU is able process them faster.

bob

maddrummer3301 · Post by **maddrummer3301** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 3:13 am

Charlie,
Good luck with the new system. Nice computer. Great combination of hardware devices.

That HP system is a very nice setup and a very affordable price.
Uses DDR2 ram.

For me the real advantage of dual-core will be to run multiple apps at the sametime.
It's only going to get better (as long as computers don't need GAS to run on).

MD

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 5:43 am

The MPEG encoder in Videostudio 9 actually works fairly well with dual-core processors.

If you have a single-core Hyperthreading-enabled CPU, you'll see 100% CPU utilization while encoding. This is of course misleading -- you don't accomplish twice as much work as a non-Hyperthreading CPU, since only certain non-conflicting instructions can be executed in parallel.

If you have a dual-core CPU or a dual-processor (SMP) system, you should still see 100% CPU utilization (I haven't verified that with Videostudio 9, but did notice it with earlier versions when I had a Gigabyte 6BXD board with dual Pentium 3s). This would in fact accomplish roughly twice as much work as a single CPU.

Another configuration is one with a Hyperthreading-enabled dual-core processor. There is currently only one such processor, the Pentium 4 D 840 EE. I have one in my Gigabyte 8I955 Royal. It does not achieve 100% CPU utilization. The load usually hovers between 60 and 70%, meaning two physical processors are probably busy with encoding chores, and one or possibly both of the logical processors is/are handling disk I/O and the Preview window.

I'd be much happier if the MPEG encoder could keep the CPU 100% busy, which would mean that the system is never idle and encoding as fast as possible. However, I don't see that happening until multicore processors become standard, and applications are optimized to take advantage of them. Still, even today, a dual-core processor will certainly give you the best bang for the buck if encoding performance is critical.

DiscCoasterPro · Post by **DiscCoasterPro** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 12:45 pm

Hello. I would like to ask a questions or two about memory. It seems you folks may have some practical experience with my dilema.

I have been reading completely contradictory statements regarding memory requirements and memory upgrades. Very frustrating. I actually phoned Ulead and asked about installing extra memory. They told me that beyond 512 to 1gig of memory would not net any realistic performance gains, even during rendering.

I read in Smart Computing magazine that the more memory the better. I have a video editing book that says video editing is very memory intensive, and the more you have installed the faster the system will run. That would be my guess. <sigh> So …I called Sonic, they said beyond a gig of memory would not be noticeable. Now that’s two companies that make editing software. In yet another article on building a PC suitable for video editing, it said, quote, "and load your system with memory, as much as you can afford".

I mean we can speculate based on some pretty solid computer understanding, but I wonder if anyone has specific hands on knowledge of noticeable system performance gains by increasing memory from 1gig to 2 or 4 gigs. I’m sure the more memory the less reliant the computer will be on the swap file, but I ‘m wondering if after such an upgrade there would be a real speed improvement. Ya know, one where ya lean back in your seat and say wow .. Now that’s much better!

I have one gig now and was considering an addtional two gigs. I don't mind spending the money and Iwould really like to have a little more performance. I just hate to go through all that with high expectations and end up with no improvement.

I have about 200 bucks to burn on this and perhaps a faster CPU would be a better choice. Any info would be appreciated.

I currently have a puter I put togeter, it is an Albatron MB with 865PE chipset. P4 2.8 HT. 1gig of PC3200 memory in dual channel. 2-160g SATA HDs that I have running in a mirror raid. (I know I know but its cause I'm lazy) and I use an external firewire/USB2 Western Digital 250gig HD for storing and working with files. Its a 7200rpm drive. An ATI 9600XT 128m video card.

thanks,

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 4:56 pm

If you look at the memory footprint of Videostudio 9 during rendering, you'll be surprised how little memory it uses during transcoding. It often uses less than 100MB on my system.

There are other video editing scenarios where extra memory is useful, like when using multiple overlays and effects, but this is the domain of high-end NLE software. With Videostudio, you won't see as much of a return on your investment by getting alot of memory, 512MB seems quite adequate.

DiscCoasterPro · Post by **DiscCoasterPro** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:18 pm

thanks for the reply, I also recently purchased DVD Workshop 2. Do you feel the same holds true with that program? I am still scratching my head with this one ... lol .. but I'm getting there

thanks,

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:23 am

I have no first-hand experience with DVD Workshop, but I'm certain it uses the same MPEG2 encoding engine as the other Ulead products, so it will behave similarly.

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