OT: Video rendering speed in Sony Movie Studio - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 09:18:10 am
content: There might be someone on here who knows about this:I'm using Sony Movie Studio Platinum 12 and rendering using the Sony AVC encoder.I have an HP DV7 notebook Win 7 64bit i7 processor 2630QM (8 core) with 16Gb or memory and render to a 2nd 7200rpm hard drive, and a Radeon GPU for some speedup.I'm getting just over real time rendering speed, so a 1 hour video takes just under an hour to render. That's ok.However, my CPU usage graph shows only 4 of the 8 cores cores being used during rendering at under 50% usage.The older machine at the lab I also do some rendering on that has 4 cores, maxes out all 4 cores at 100% during rendering.Q1) Why the discrepancy between the CPU usage on the two machine? Why does it not use 100% (yes I have set the app priority to max)Q2) How much rendering speed increase could I expect by moving to a higher spec machine? And what would be the specs of the most reasonable cost machine I could upgrade to improve my rendering speed by say double?

author: Skimask
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 09:56:41 am
content: The 2630QM isn't areal8 core proc. It's 4 cores with HyperThreading.Depends on how the software is written whether or not those other "4 cores" will be used or not.What CPU does the other machine have?EDIT: Checked around a bit...16GB is the max memory for the HP DV7 models. Maybe a BIOS update and some new chips could take you up to 32GB. I saw a couple of pages talking about a BIOS hack that allows it, but didn't look too trustworthy.HD is a bit limited at the SATA2 spec vs SATA3, but I don't think that'll affect rendering speeds, which in this case are likely going to be CPU limited.The motherboardshouldhandle an i7-3840QM, again with a BIOS update, if you can find one for cheap.That'll get you 2.8GHz vs 2.0GHz, with a bit more 'turbo', but since you're max'ing out the cores, the turbo speeds will be limited to heat generated, as well as 2MB more of L3 cache.I'm assuming the 2nd HD is on the USB3.0 port. That should be fast enough since the cores you are using are max'd out. If they were dropping off 100% often enough, I'd think the USB interface would be a limiting factor.All in all, 2.8GHz vs 2.0GHz, 32GB vs 16GB... I don't see twice the speed coming out of it. Maybe an extra 30% or so.Switching over to the latest/greatest/fastest/bestest desktop out there to get double speed?meh..maybe. If you got one with the latest i7-3770K, 32+GB of good, fast DDR, a few SSDs in a RAID config... Anything's possible...EDIT#2: I just saw your CPU graphs. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you're limiting by the writing over the USB port.EDIT#3: And I just saw your response about both drives being internal. And since they're both internal, they're sharing the bus, effectively halving the max read/write rates to each drive.

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:01:48 am
content: Also, i'm curious as to whether the both hard drives are internal, or is one of the hard drives a USB attached drive?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:15:53 am
content: Quote from: peter.mitchell on April 02, 2013, 10:01:48 amBoth internal.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:16:17 am
content: I don't know windows at all but I use mencoder or sometimes ffmpeg over on the Linux.With my i7, I found that setting cores to 6 yielded the best speed.For the answer to question two, it depends. An application has to tell the OS how much priority to give any process it is using. And depending on the OS, and it's permissions, the OS can allow or forbid levels of priority. From idle to near real-time time slices for processes it all depends on the application and the OS and their ability to work together. Add the multi core mojo on top of that and and the stinking dog turd Windows must be to code for, it's a wonder anything works at all.It the risk of getting all ranty, I would have thought if you paid money for both the windows OS and the sony software, you'd think that you'd get better management and utilisation of the cpu and perhaps a bit more intuitiveness so you could the best out of it.I just have my favourite command lines for config settings and really shudder at the thought of allowing a fly be night propriety program to touch created content. Even if just to re-encode it.For an answer on expected performance for a given hardware/software config, I'd suggest visitinghttp://forum.doom9.org/

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:17:59 am
content: Quote from: Skimask on April 02, 2013, 09:56:41 amI just upgraded to 16GB, made no difference, I'm only using a small part of it anyway.

author: Skimask
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:19:09 am
content: Do a speed test on the laptop HD and compare it to the desktop.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:21:49 am
content: Quote from: Skimask on April 02, 2013, 10:19:09 amThe desktop is an old machine, with an old cheap 500orpm drive I believe. My main notebook has a 7200 WB Black drive in it.

author: Skimask
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:25:45 am
content: Are you saying that the desktop machine is significantly faster than the laptop despite the differences?Gotta more specs on the desktop?

author: ddavidebor
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:32:27 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 02, 2013, 09:18:10 amIf you want to move to another computer, buy a mac with ssd diskFinal cut studio is a cheap and incredible program, and use gpu and cpu at maximun speed.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:34:05 am
content: Quote from: Skimask on April 02, 2013, 10:25:45 amSorry, no, the desktop machine is much slower than the notebook, but uses all 4 cores at 100% usage.The notebook is faster but uses only 30% of 4 cores, and I want to know why it's only 30%

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:35:06 am
content: Quote from: ddavidebor on April 02, 2013, 10:32:27 amI knew someone would say that.No, moving to a mac and Final Cut pro is not an option. I just want to know why Sony Vegas isn't using 100% of the CPU like on my desktop machine.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:36:37 am
content: hehehe

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:39:25 am
content: You don't say what type of Radeon - have you tried it with and without the GPU "acceleration"? It might even be that the bottleneck has become the GPUIs there a "maximum rendering threads" option in Movie Studio - what's it set at?You shouldn't really be I/O bound with typical video stream bitrates - even 36Mb/s blu-ray is only 4.5MB/s which you can achieve easily with a USB2 connected drive never mind SATA.I suspect you'd be better off with a desktop based around an Ivy Bridge i7 (the 3770 or 3770K is good).

author: Skimask
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 10:47:22 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 02, 2013, 10:34:05 amThat would suggest to me that there's a bottleneck in the laptop that the desktop doesn't have...e.g. the desktop can feed the cpu data better than the laptop, which again might point to the HD bus.Also, since it's a laptop, I'm wondering if the CPU is getting hot and throttling itself after a bit of transcoding. Doesn't make a lot of sense...but...something else to check.

author: krivx
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:00:29 am
content: Sorry if this is an obvious answer but have you checked the laptop's power management settings? Many manufacturers will use a default setting that throttles or limits CPU performance. It doesn't matter if you are running off a battery or the mains as thermal management can be issue with many models.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:00:33 am
content: Quote from: grumpydoc on April 02, 2013, 10:39:25 amDoh, yeah, that might explain it. The notebook is using GPU acceleration, the desktop is not, hence must use 100% CPU.Will check further...

author: ecat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:10:55 am
content: If the cpu is not at or near 100% (4 cores, forget about the other 4 for now) then it is waiting for something else to finish.Hard drive is easy to rule out. Look at the HD activity light(s), if it's on all the time then the HD is probably the bottleneck, if the light is flashing more often off than on the HD is probably not the bottleneck. Avoid USB drives for now.I just ran a gpu assisted test render here on my i5 (4 core) using Movie Studio 12.0 . 12:30 1080p source to 720p out, took 9:30, cpu at about 90% throughout, HD light more off than on. I use a single HD (well, a pair in RAID 1) for both source and output. My GPU is an 2GB ATi 6950.From this test I'd say a faster gpu would help me but only ever so slightly as my cpu utilisation is already so close to 100%In your case, if your disk's are not the bottleneck, and I suspect they are not, I'd say a faster gpu is the order of the day. The question is: faster with respect to what? Faster clock speed? More memory bandwidth? More processing cores and if so are we talking rops or mops (I may have made these names up) or texture units or... I'm reminded of BitCoin mining, iirc given an NVIDIA and an ATi card of equal graphical performance, the NVIDIA would always mine faster due to it having more of the processing units required by the BitCoin algorithm.A quick look on the 'net revealed very little information wrt best video cards for transcoding/rendering... surprisingly little. Rule out the disks and go buy a couple of faster gpu then make a video to tell the world

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:13:42 am
content: Dave, there's not much you can do about it, your processor is already too fast for the encoding preset you're using.If I remember correctly, you're saving the work in Vegas using some CRF preset... that means constant rate factor, as in the quality of the video is constant from frame to frame.The encoder doesn't spend a lot of time analyzing what happens between frames, what to remove or drop in quality in a way it won't be noticeable with movement, doesn't try to save bits by overcompressing some darker areas to have more bits for more lively scenes, this and that, psychovisual stuff, it just looks at each picture in the video, computes a quality factor for each small block in the image and then just goes down in quality if you set the CRF lower than the value of the factor computed for that area of the image.Basically, it has less work to do compared to a normal video encode, where more programming code get involved.On your old computer, the cores may be pegged to 100% simply due to the fact that the old processor doesn't have so many instructions like SSE3 to optimize the encoding, or simply put that old cpu can't do as many instructions per core as the new one can.As for your laptop cpu, it's a quad core processor, not an eight core processor.Hyperthreading makes the processor show 4 more virtual cores and the OS will assign threads to various cores. In your case, core 1 and core 5 are probably the same physical core, and you see those added up are close to 90% cpu usage ... same with core 3 and 7, they're at about 70% ... and core 2 is probably busing decoding the raw video (even though the video card decodes it, the video card driver still uses cpu feeding the card with the data and translating stuff between opencl/cuda and video card) ... so overall you have maybe 6-7 threads already working. It's just that if you're using CRF, simply put there's not much work to be done in the encoding stage.Hyperthreading isn't full proof, same with the allocation of threads on cores - you may want to experiment with disabling it on your laptop, maybe this way the OS can put the threads more evenly on the cores, making each core work a bit instead of having 2 cores worked up and 2 idle.I'd also argue that using the video card of your laptop to help in encoding may be a bad idea. Video cards in laptops generally are kinda slow, they don't have the bandwidth to transfer large chunks of data back and forth. Yes, the hardware video decoder of the video card may be able to decode video faster but the data still has to be copied to the video card then copied back and the video card driver gets involved... you should see if the overall encoding time decreases if you use software decoding.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:16:43 am
content: Quote from: ecat on April 02, 2013, 11:10:55 amUnfortunately you can't do that with a notebook.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:21:40 am
content: Quote from: mariush on April 02, 2013, 11:13:42 amCorrect. That's what the 2nd reencoding process using Handbrake is for. And that maxes out all 8 "cores" at near 100% each.QuoteThe GPU help. I get about a 20% speed improvement with it.

author: ecat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:27:18 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 02, 2013, 11:16:43 amYou can with some notebooks, besides...Quote from: EEVblog on April 02, 2013, 09:18:10 amWell, we are one our way to ruling out the need for faster disks or a much faster cpu (though faster cpu is always a plus). 8GB or 16GB looks acceptable, so the question is which gpu is the best match for whatever base system you decide on?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:55:29 am
content: Quote from: ecat on April 02, 2013, 11:27:18 amWell, I guess the best one I could afford, with the best CPU interconnect.It would have to be NVIDA, as that has CUDA support in Sony. My current one is ATI, and Sony does support that, but not as well AFAIK.

author: grumpydoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:57:39 am
content: QuoteAnd lower CPU utilisationAt the moment it looks like you need a faster processoranda faster GPUI don't think upgrading the CPU in your laptop will be worth it if the GPU is the bottleneck - you'll probably end up with a system which isn't much faster, just one which has lower CPU utilisation.If you go to something like a Ivy Bridge i7 3770 (or K) you will gain a 3.9GHz turbo (vs 2.9) so 35% improvement plus perhaps 10-20% improvement for the architecture so that move should be faster CPU alone than GPU acceleration on your laptop. However only by 10-20% so you might not consider that worthwhile. If you don't mind overclocking you could probably add another 25% performance and while I could understand why you might not want to overclock it is largely a risk free option with the 3770K and a decent motherboard (another 800MHz to 1GHz turbo should be trivial).The main benefit of moving to a desktop system is that you can also bring in a much faster GPU to go with the faster CPU - I don't have any suggestions as graphics cards aren't really my thing (not into gaming and GPU acceleration is still not really available for Linux based video work).

author: Noize
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 01:28:04 pm
content: This might help. Unparking your cpu.http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=229080

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 01:36:45 pm
content: In situations where the cores spend all their time computing and don't do a lot of I/O hyperthreading doesn't help a lot (in extreme cases it can even hinder overall performance). As long as the OS knows to schedule processes on the physical cores I wouldn't worry about it.

author: TerminalJack505
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 03:51:20 pm
content: It would be interesting to know which AMD/ATI GPU you have in your laptop.There's a huge difference in horsepower in the mobile GPUs. At the low end you're talking just80 GFLOPsof processing power whereas at the high end you're looking atover 2,000 GFLOPs.If you have one of the low end GPUs then that might be your bottleneck.

author: ecat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 04:16:59 pm
content: Quote from: TerminalJack505 on April 02, 2013, 03:51:20 pmBut what features of the gpu does Movie Studio, or any other transcoding sw, actually use?On a notebook utilising 4 cores of an i7 cpu @ 50%, Dave:QuoteOn my desktop with i5 clocked at 4.2GHz utilising 4 cores @ 90% and an ATi 6950 (rated 2253 GFLOPs according to wiki) I run at about 70% to 80% of real time, so a 1 hour video takes approx 48 minutes to render.These figures suggest it's about more than the raw gpu flops? Sure a low end gpu may be slower but how much faster would a 4000GFlops 8970 be?This may be a red herring, but my gpu monitoring software reports only 41% load when running a Movie Studio render.Edit:Of course, all these numbers are meaningless if there are significant differences between Dave's video render options and mine.

author: Lightages
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 04:52:52 pm
content: Notebooks are notorious for being slower than their desktop counterparts. This due to CPU throttling, GPUs not being the same even if their share a common name or number, inefficiencies in memory busses, hard drive busses, etc. All of these things are because of limited space for traces, for cooling, and to minimize power consumption. So it is probable that some or all of the above are combining to keep the CPU underutilized.The plain truth is if you want a fast machine you need a desktop with the best motherboard and RAM that works correctly with it.This company here has a good reputation for putting the right hardware together:http://www.videoguys.com/Guide/E/Videoguys+DIY9+Its+Time+for+Sandy+Bridge+E+DIY+95+Update/0xe9b142f408a2b03ab88144a434e88de7.aspxandhttp://www.videoguys.com/Guide/C/DIY+Systems/Videoguys+Recommended+Laptops+for+Video+Editing/0x838938d96d9a325815fbc603304f6aeb.aspxSome helpful information there...Other helpful hints Dave:Keep your project files and media on one hard drive that is separate from the OS, render to another HD separate from both even if it is an external USB drive. Keep everything defragmented of course. Try upping the priority of the rendering tasks from normal to high, but never real time as this can lock up your system. Turn off windows search indexing and turn off your antivirus while rendering. Keep the notebook as cool as you can, maybe one of those pads with fans in it.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 05:02:24 pm
content: The video card is mostly used to decode input video, ex if your source videos are mpeg-2 or h264 then the video card decodes and sends raw video frames back.This is sometimes done with a dedicated part of the gpu chip that's highly optimized for video playback and is basically independent of the gpu (it uses its own resources, not shaders and gpu part that's used for games usually). These hardware video decoders can do more than real time but not much more, usually 50-70 fps.What slows down things is transferring of the images from this dedicated area to the regular video card memory or to the computer ram.Less often, the video card is also used to do color conversion, resampling/resizing to different image size etc ... Now you have to convert the image to a texture format, upload it to video card, compile the shaders or cuda/open cl code, download the texture from the video card... again lots of time wastedEven less often the video card is used to do a part of the encoding with the rest of the encoding being done on processor.Unless you use a preset with high-extreme quality options, most often these parts are faster to be done in cpu than on video card.x264 for example - the open source video encoder in Handbrake - only now added an option to do some motion analysis and encoding on the gpu but a large part of the encoding is still done in CPU.. you can read a good explanation here:https://github.com/DarkShikari/x264-devel/commit/c902b90bbb6846471a6f22f7377782c89da3052fBasically, like he says, the little that's done in gpu, is done using a more stupid algorithm that has to do more work than the cpu version, but since it's extra free resources it helps sometimes, leaving the cpu free to do more work.In Sony Vegas, I suspect that the cpu simply waits after the video card to get the decoded frames or to finish whatever part of encoding it does on gpu, because the constant rate factor presets are just too easy to encode.It may be faster than using cpu alone because the gpu may still decode more frames per second compared to whatever the cpu would be able to decode in a second, when other threads also hammer it with the encoding part.Oh, and there may be other things in play...With cpu encoding alone, the cpu may be hotter constantly so the laptop may throttle itself down, thereby overall the encoding would be slower.With gpu decoding, the lower cpu usage may be just low enough not to throttle down the cpu frequency, and it may even give the cpu opportunity to go turbo and raise the frequency of 1-2 out of those 4 cores.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 07:55:06 pm
content: So you're encoding to h.264, then reencoding with Handbrake before uploading?Why not just frameserve from Vegas? You'll get better quality, only have to do a single encode, and should avoid this issue entirely. Seehttp://www.debugmode.com/frameserver/Haven't tried with Vegas (or Handbrake) but it should work.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 02, 2013, 11:14:29 pm
content: Quote from: ve7xen on April 02, 2013, 07:55:06 pmNever heard of that, will look into it.EDIT: Just tried it, and it doesn't appear on my Sony Output file list. Fail.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 12:12:11 am
content: you may want to invest in a hardware encoder. they are not that expensive ( 150 to 200$ ). Matrox makes a good one.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 12:21:06 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 02, 2013, 11:14:29 pmI don't understand why frameserving is not a totally standard output method for all NLEs, it is clearly the only sensible way to handle external coders.That said, you can probably make this method work, there are success reports with Vegas 12 on Win7 64 in the forums. Apparently the install tool isn't intelligent enough to guess the plugin directory for your version of Vegas and having to manually specify that is a stumbling block for some people like me who Next->Next->Next through any such dialogs.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 02:14:30 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on April 03, 2013, 12:12:11 amNot for Sony though, or even for video editors, just several enocders.Otherwise I'd love this.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 02:30:32 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 03, 2013, 02:14:30 amAh, it seems it does support Adobe Premiere (which I have tried, but did not like, but could try again for this)http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/compresshd/encoding/But it seems Constant Quality mode is only available on the Mac:http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/compresshd/telestream/

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 03:39:52 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on April 03, 2013, 12:12:11 amOr buy a nice GPU for the same price and get more uses. Or indeed, upgrade to a CPU with Quick Sync and it will beat anything else you can get for the price. (Too bad MythTV doesn't support that yet...) It might also be possible to get a bunch of Raspberry Pis and use those to transcode (since each Raspberry Pi has hardware video decode and encode), but I don't think they can quite compete for performance/$.If you're going to stick with a laptop, you probably won't be able to economically upgrade the GPU (Expresscard PCIe enclosure + video card might work, but is not cheap) and hardware transcoder cards would have the same problem. CPU upgrades are usually possible, but quite expensive.The Raspberry Pis would work just fine (provided you have Ethernet), but you'll need some scripts to cut up the videos to send to the Pis and then stitch them back together.One trick you can try is to put the laptop on a stand that has a powerful fan or two (mid range Delta or equivalent recommended, a high end Delta would easily blow a smaller laptop right off the stand) blowing a lot of air into the vents. But you'll most likely have to go for a desktop if you're looking for something that can handle constant load.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 03:43:15 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on April 03, 2013, 03:39:52 amI don't need more uses, and a faster GPU still means I"m stuck with the same two pass workflow.A Matrox card would mean I don't have to do a 2nd pass in Handbrake.Shame it doesn't work for Sony.

author: Razor512
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 04:20:14 am
content: some encoders will not use multiple cores effectively (also not all formats can encode using GPU acceleration.also most of the GPU acceleration seems to be centered around the AVCHD format, though they do not give many details as to if the main GPU acceleration is using open cl, or CUDA.If possible, try encoding to different formats to see if any others will cause more cores to be used.If all else fails, see if you can export using an uncompressed format (if it goes faster), then use a converter such as winavi, or if you have a system with a CUDA enabled videocard, then use a program like badaboom to do the encode the video.PS, depending on which version of adobe premiere pro you used, adobe premiere pro cs6 will be very different (they have significantly improved the UI and rendering engine). I use it and render directly to h.264 and then upload to youtube (generally try to keep the size to around 1GB for a 20 minute video)here are my export settings

author: Lightages
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 04:31:18 am
content: I don't understand the need to do a second pass at rendering. What settings are you rendering to in handbrake?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 04:35:47 am
content: Quote from: Lightages on April 03, 2013, 04:31:18 amSony Movie Studio (and others) do not offer a Constant Quality H.264 encoder. That means either BIG files sizes, or a compromise on compression with changing content. Either is not acceptable.

author: Lightages
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 05:11:22 am
content: I do not have that version but rather Vegas 12 Pro so I am not sure what you have or don't. I can only assume you have poked around quite a bit looking for solutions. Here is one you might have missed. In the SONY AVC settings there is an option for render to "Memory Stick" with different options. Select one of the highest and then adjust to something like this but select your own preferences. This will give you a H264 render with constant bitrate although with limited rate selection. If you don't have this option then there might be others that do the same thing in your version:

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 05:17:31 am
content: Quote from: Razor512 on April 03, 2013, 04:20:14 amAnd that's the problem with variable/average bitrate system, you have to guess what the optimal value is for quality vs detailed contentfor every video.That's why I switched to using Constant Quality and Handbrake a long time ago. You don't have to worry about that, you get consistent quality every time, and the file is what it has to be, no more, no less.Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 is $1333 - WTF?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 05:18:54 am
content: Quote from: Lightages on April 03, 2013, 05:11:22 amYes ,I have looked at and tried all variations. That's not constant quality mode, so the same problems exist.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 05:52:14 am
content: Dave,Some random thoughts, if I may..If you are shooting all the video in the same res, why not consider editing in Vdub or (what I prefer) avi_demux?You can use a mode called 'copy' which trims videos to the nearest video keyframe to your selection. And you can append extra bits accordingly. The output is a file generates as fast as the hardrives will go as it is essentially a part-file copy.No where near as polished an editing environment as the tools you use, but wonder if it is worth considering. It's quick and dirty but useful for me with my GoPro that squirts gigs of data and a God-awful Atom-based PC when I'm overseas and just want to send a video back home.The long way round to my question, why cant you edit that way and just upload what you shot, only trimmed without all that damn re-encoding?

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 05:57:32 am
content: And btw,I feel your pain with that rotten stream nonsense format on the sdcard from your camcorder. Someone gave me one of those cams last month to figure out and come up with a strategy for managing mega video data on a epic US holiday filming bonanza.That file format. Why?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 06:01:37 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on April 03, 2013, 05:52:14 amBecause I shoot in 12Mbps fixed bitrate. A typical 30min video would be 2.7GB in file size. At my upload speed, that would take at least 5 hours to upload as well.I'd still need to produce the small podcast version as well.Also, if I used something like Vdub (think I tried it once), I don't get the ability to add any text overlays or other effects as required (minimal as they may be).

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 06:02:54 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 03, 2013, 06:01:37 amAh. Oki Dokie. Got it.Thanks.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 06:03:23 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on April 03, 2013, 05:57:32 amIt's standard-ish AVCHD, like used on most similar camcorders.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 06:06:31 am
content: Quote from: Ed.Kloonk on April 03, 2013, 06:02:54 amThat's what most people don't understand. I do things the way I do because I produce HD content and I do not have unlimited upload bandwidth, and I do it daily. File size, and extracting the best possible image quality for that given file size is everything. Hence my obsession with Constant Quality format encoders like x264 in Handbrake.

author: Ed.Kloonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 06:16:43 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 03, 2013, 06:03:23 amPile of crap is what it is. The camcoder I was working on had nasty forced interlacing issues. Because the cam could output straight to the composite video cable, I presume. Isn't encoding in interlaced format a bit old fashioned now? Even my GoPro can output a tv and not having to save the file in interlaced.Sorry for hijack.Quote from: EEVblog on April 03, 2013, 06:06:31 amI understand using GoPro video shot in HD for posterity and bringing it all home to edit but trying to send just a few minutes of something while on the go and fit it in Gmail's 25meg file limit. All on the aforementioned clunker computer. The newer cam firmware can shoot two modes simultaneous but the low res is hopeless, and buggy.I dunno Dave. There's a market there for a tiny hardware simple solution. Invent it and you'll be farting though silk mate.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 07:49:05 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 03, 2013, 06:06:31 amYou should really find a workflow that lets you skip the intermediate encoding step, I think. It's definitely possible, if (for some unknown reason) unpopular among video types. One option that's a bit less efficient would be to go from Vegas to a very fast intermdiate codec (like MJPEG, to choose a free and well supported example) at high bitrate, then transcode that back down to h.264 with x264 as the final step. You'll probably be limited by disk I/O on the encode, so your CPU and GPU don't really matter until the x264 stage; it should be much faster than realtime on a modern machine. Problem is you need a relative shitton of hard disk space and it's still an unnecessary intermediate step.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 09:50:00 am
content: Quote from: ve7xen on April 03, 2013, 07:49:05 amI've tried all the encoders in Sony and the Sony AVC one is the quickest.Yes, ideally I'd like to encode directly from Sony to constant quality x264.The FinalCut/Mac solution with the Matrox board sound really good, but is a complete unknown and expensive solution.I'd probably have to get a 2nd hand mac pro for that.

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 10:34:44 am
content: Do you know if the lab desktop pc has a PCI-E slot and how good the power supply is? I can send you a Ati HD 5870 (very high computer performance for their age) I have sitting around and you can give that a whirl if you wish, so you can try some stuff, i guess?

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 12:18:34 pm
content: Just having a play around - I got frameserver to work with Vegas first time, no problem at all - saw some comments online that there are issues if you install FS while vegas is still running.Couldn't get Handbrake to work with it, but seems a common problem and many people prefer MeGUI.Did a quick test with an existing vid and seems to work OK - not done a comparative timing but speed feels similar to vegas normal AVC rendering.There are gazillions of tweakable options in MeGui so probably all sorts of scope for optimising.Definitely worth persuing!

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 02:36:51 pm
content: You may want to look at this too :http://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Turbo264HD/product1.en.htmlWorks on mac. One guy sent the same source through HandBrake and the Turb264.... Handbrake 4 hours. Turbo264. 37 minutes...99$....Takes 1.3 minutes to encode a 12 minute video... Thats waaaaay faster than realtime.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2013, 03:02:49 pm
content: But the quality goes through the floor.It probably uses the same kind of hardware encoder used on hd webcams and tv tuners.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 02:32:24 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on April 03, 2013, 12:18:34 pmWell, I'm using Sony MovieStudio, not Sony Vegas, maybe that's the issue?Still can't get ti to work on my lab machine either.Have installed in the FileIO plugin directory and still no joy.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 02:40:09 am
content: Quote from: peter.mitchell on April 03, 2013, 10:34:44 amI have PCI-e x1, x8, and x16 slots in a Dell XPS 420Currently running a 256MB Nvideo GeForce 8600 GTS card in the x16 slot. It's pretty piss-poor, no GPU support in Sony.So yeah, if you aren't using it, I'll take that card, thanks.

author: peter.mitchell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 12:45:49 pm
content: I'll wrap it up and send it on it's way.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 12:52:38 pm
content: Quote from: peter.mitchell on April 04, 2013, 12:45:49 pmCool, thanks!BTW, I got Debugmode Frame Server installed finally and showing up as render option under Movie Studio, but it just sits there, does nothing

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 03:44:20 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 04, 2013, 12:52:38 pmYou do understand the concept, right?. It will sit there and do nothing until you open the signpost file in your encoding program and it starts requesting frames.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 11:29:46 pm
content: Just used frameserver to render a 25 min vid to H.264- took about 2x real time, which is definitely faster than Sony AVC.File came out a bit big, but I just used the default settings in MeGUI so will need to do some playing with quality settings.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 11:54:04 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on April 04, 2013, 11:29:46 pmHow did you output H.264? I presume you shoot in H.264? as the job of FrameServer is to simply output the same format as your source files, right?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 04, 2013, 11:58:16 pm
content: Quote from: ve7xen on April 04, 2013, 03:44:20 pmWell, in Sony I select FrameServer as the codec and I hit the "Render" button. Sony starts to render and the FrameServeer window just sits there and does nothing. I can't do or open anything in Sony until that ends!perhaps I am doing something stupid?

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 12:02:32 am
content: You have to open that avi file that's listed in the frameserver window with another application with support for x264, like MeGUI:http://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/MeGUI will see the avi file as basically an uncompressed HD video, and will compress that to mp4 (using x264) with the quality settings you choose.Maybe handbrake will also open that fake avi video file, but I haven't tested it yet so I couldn't tell you.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 12:13:25 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 04, 2013, 11:58:16 pmyes..... AFAIUI, the idea is that Vegas thinks it's talking to a filesystem to write an uncompressed AVI file, and the video encoder thinks it's reading from a real file, but the file is a dummy, and frameserver just passes data directly from one task to the other.I don't quite understand how it handles seeks within the file, but it does - I can open the dummy AVI in VirtualDub and scroll around it.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 12:16:38 am
content: Right, obvious once you know...Handbrake doesn't work, does not open the .avi fileTried MeGui and it opens the .avi file and displays a screen grab (wrong aspect ratio), but I get an error when I go to render

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 12:18:29 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on April 05, 2013, 12:13:25 amThat's what I thought it did, just wrote to an uncompressed avi file!I don't see why it can't simply do that instead of having to feed it into a program

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 12:22:24 am
content: If I play the preview window in MeGui then Frameserver starts to work on Sony, but only at 40% real time which is very slow.

author: mariush
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 12:37:06 am
content: The preview window is not representative of how that software works. The renderer is slow.Once you start the encoding, all the work is done in the background by x264 and the audio encoder.Don't know what to say, maybe you didn't install MeGUI properly? Did you install AviSynth as it said during installation, did you accept to install those presets during autoupdate? etc etc...The whole installation is not that user-friendly, I'll admit.Also, it's not really relevant that the image is distorted in the preview window. You should be able to give the application a "hint' as to what aspect ratio is the correct one in that preview window, but basically the encoder will encode 1440x1080 and the proper aspect ratio is generally saved in the container used (mp4 or mkv), not in the video stream, so it can be corrected later on even if it's incorrectly set by MeGUI.later edit: and don't put down the application if it's slow on the first tests, you really have to go and check the x264 settings/profile and tweak it to get to where you were in handbrake.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 03:07:05 am
content: Quote from: mariush on April 05, 2013, 12:37:06 amIt was a ZIP file. I unzipped it and ran itI had no idea about AVIsynth...QuoteYes, Handbrake and the x264 options is something I know well.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 03:28:52 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 05, 2013, 12:18:29 amYou can do this, but then the I/O bandwidth requirement is huge. Uncompressed video is truly gargantuan, for 720p30 you're talking about more than 100MB/s. A decent hard drive these days is about that fast, so you're capped at realtime by that alone, and when it's done you still have to encode it, which is again limited to realtime by the I/O performance. There are lossless encoders you can use to mitigate this some, but they only compress by 2-5x, so you're still probably I/O bound and get huge files. Of course you could use a RAID or whatnot to speed it up, but why bother when you can just shuffle the data as needed between programs, it'll always be faster.If you didn't install AviSynth with MeGUI, you definitely need that, it handles all the behind-the-scenes video processing that MeGUI does and needs a system install to work, which obviously can't be in a zip file.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 09:19:46 am
content: Installed AVIsynth, and still the same error.There does not appear to be anything to run with AVIsynth?How many hoops do I have to jump through?

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2013, 05:56:11 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on April 05, 2013, 09:19:46 amAviSynth is sort of like a library. It installs media handlers and some other stuff into the OS's codec stack. You can write an AviSynth script and should be able to open it in any media player / editor that uses the Windows video stack. There's no program.I'm not sure what's gone wrong. It's not a trivial install, there's a bunch of dependencies and nobody has packaged it all up easily, but it should all work if you get everything installed.One thing you could try is to set up the AviSynth script in MeGUI, then just save the .avs file somewhere and try opening it with e.g. VirtualDub or Media Player Classic and see if it works. If that's okay, I think MeGUI should work even if the preview doesn't. Try rendering a short clip and see what happens.As far as hoops - ask Sony why this functionality isn't built-in.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 06, 2013, 07:21:45 am
content: I'm still at a loss trying to get this working, and now my regular sony AVC codec is broken for some reason

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2013, 05:03:08 am
content: So after you ventured all the way to trying a Mac (*shudder*) to improve this, I actually downloaded Movie Studio 12 and tried to get FrameServer working.It's not as easy as it should be, but I was successful. First of all, I had to followthese instructionsto manually install the Vegas plugin in Movie Studio (make sure you use the correct x64 or x86 .dll per your version of Movie Studio).That got Frameserver working fine, but of course Handbrake doesn't accept the signpost file for whatever reason. I've used MeGUI quite a lot so that was no problem for me, but it's not a trivial thing to work with. The nice thing is it's all templates, so once you get a setup that works well for you, you can bang videos through pretty quickly, and it has good batch and queueing features (though not sure if you can use them with Frameserver).Also download NeroAACEnc to gain AAC output in MeGUI. It's free here:http://www.nero.com/eng/company/about-nero/nero-aac-codec.phpThe basic workflow is like this:ENCODE:Render from Movie Studio to Frameserver - select 'YUY2' as output format, check 'write audio as PCM samples in signpost' and click nextTools -> AVS Script CreatorVideo Input -> Signpost .avi rendered via frameserverInput DAR -> 16:9Clever anamorphic checked -> 'encode non mod16'Filters Tab -> Source Type -> InterlacedFilters Tab -> Field Order -> TFFFilters Tab -> Deinterlace checked (yadif) [you can fiddle with the deinterlacer to find your favourite quality/performance tradeoff]Click save - the AR will look wrong, but that's okay, the correct DAR is saved in the file and the player will do the anamorphic resizeEncoder settings - click config and configure x264 as desiredAudio Input -> load signpost .aviEncoder settings -> Nero AAC: NDAAC-HE_Multichannel 128kbpsRUN/MUXClick AutoEncodeContainer -> MP4, no splittingName of output -> duh.Size and bitrate -> no target sizeClick QueueYou'll get a prompt about incorrect colourspace - choose yes to fixup your AVS scriptAnd the encode will run. This all worked fine for me. Yes, it's a lot of steps, but you can basically go into the AVS script creator and edit the AVIsynth profile, remove all the default stuff and just keep the <input> flag, and copy the rest from the script you saved the first time through. Once that's done, save your audio and video encoder settings to a profile instead of *scratchpad* and then you can use the One-Click button to set it all up in one dialog box and queue all the jobs in one place.One performance tip once you've got it all working - I get a couple FPS extra by sending RGB24 from Frameserver instead of YUY2, and putting ConverToYV12() right after the input in the AVS script. The built-in template for AVS script creator doesn't know to do this, and some of the plugins it uses don't work on RGB, so you'll get errors if you try to use it, but once you've got a profile set with a hardcoded script it's a bit faster than YUY2.I get ~14fps on my Q9550. Total encode and mux time, including audio, for your test clip was 5:02. With similar settings to what you use in Handbrake I'd expect a similar encode time. For reference, the Sony encoder on the same video / machine takes 3:42 for your 12mbit intermediate file.Hope you get it working

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 09, 2013, 05:14:01 am
content: Thanks, will have another bash at it.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2013, 09:12:35 am
content: I did a quick test with the sample file you put in the Mac thread using Vegas.Encoding AVC was 6.5 mins, Frameserver to MeGUI/Avisynth with Quality 22 was 5.5 mins. Obviously my PC isn't hugely fast but you can see it gets direct to H.264 a bit faster and avoids the extra conversion time.