36 Hours of Testing MEP Pre Settings For Playback and Export. Part II

CubeAce wrote on 6/4/2020, 9:41 AM

Part one for those interested can be found here if you either need a refresher or are interested in how many ways MEP can be configured and the outcome for export times.

For now I'm opening this new thread as the last one got very long and there will be less to plough through here. (I hope)

The reason for re-opening this topic is I eventually got around to upgrading my nvidia graphics card to an nvidia Gigabyte 1650 super 4GB card from my previous Asus nvidia GT 1030 and to see if it has resulted in any improvements, if any, performance wise on my machine. So for now I will be going through all my notes and will publish my results at some point today as I wade through them and form them into some semblance of order.

Hopefully back shortly.

Ray.

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Comments

CubeAce wrote on 6/8/2020, 10:38 AM

@terrypin

Hi Terry.

Ha! I left it overnight and let the pc go to sleep mode after. However, even to render the file for preview in MEP takes just as long and then doesn't play back smoothly so the only option is to export the finished result as a video clip to re-import. I was looking at the scaling of text problem that the Borris Titler can seemingly overcome easily but at the cost of the render time. As it seems to work as a stand-alone app (I think) I will try to see if that is faster later. But I'm still learning and trying to find the best layout within the programs to be able to work out what I'm doing. I need to watch more tutorials 😉.

Ray.

Scenestealer wrote on 6/8/2020, 11:18 AM

Hi All

I am on the same Nvidia Studio driver and on Windows 10 1909 build 18363.778 from April 14.

@johnebaker - Will a rollback achieve what you want especially with the DCH driver model? I thought you needed to uninstall to be sure?

More investigation needed later and this may also be related to a couple of issues other users have with MEP.

I wondered the same as you as there have been some issues of black screens and starting errors just recently.

@CubeAce - Didn't you have an issue with New Blue where you had to disable GPU acceleration in the NB settings?

Is this a potentially serious problem then?

Could be I guess for those that don't know the implications of that setting in Windows graphic settings in regard to VPX / MEP. As far as I am concerned it does not seem to have a downside as I consider VPX / MEP perform their best with the Power Saving GPU slected. Would be good to know what is going on though.

Peter

CubeAce wrote on 6/8/2020, 11:39 AM

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter.

Yes I Did. Again better memory than myself, Thanks. I have not done that with the Borris program though. I will go back and see if I can undo that in New Blue. See if it makes a difference.

It could just be I'm using very intensive graphical processes. I have no idea how these are generated nor the implications. There doesn't appear to be any help coming from the nvidia card in either case though. Nor does the Intel GPU seem stressed in any way but the amount of ram usage is the highest I've encountered to date getting close to 22GB during playback or rendering on relatively short clips. I'm beginning to understand a bit more though but not sure what I'm understanding if that makes sense.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/8/2020, 12:57 PM

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter

. . . . Will a rollback achieve what you want especially with the DCH driver model? I thought you needed to uninstall to be sure? . . . .

Rolling back the NVidia drivers is an uninstall through Device Manager, with Uninstall drivers checked, then restart Windows, NV detected as Microsoft Basic Graphics (or something similar), then did a clean install - option is in the installer, of previous Studio driver that was installed before updating a few days ago.

Restarted Windows and tested no change, then did the micro code uninstall and tested again - no change.

Have set both VPX and MEP to Power Saving GPU - no issues.

John EB.

browj2 wrote on 6/8/2020, 12:58 PM

Not sure if the new Infusion Engine 2 will be out soon for MEP or if it will increase export speed, but it should improve on-screen playback. Here is what Magix says:

INFUSION Engine 2

Intel, AMD, NVIDIA support | Up to 8.6x faster*

The new INFUSION Engine 2 enables smooth playback even for complex multi-track projects in up to 8K resolution. Experience this noticeable improvement in speed right away on virtually all computers – graphics cards by leading manufacturers Intel, AMD and NVIDIA are now supported.

* Benchmark test for INFUSION Engine compared with the previous engine (used until May 2019 in Video Pro X)

INFUSION Engine 2 supports video acceleration for AVC and HEVC* on Intel, NVIDIA or AMD GPUs with 1GB VRAM or higher

Example: Intel Graphics HD 630, NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050, AMD Radeon RX470

You may want to wait for an update before spending more time trying to find an optimal setting.

John CB

CubeAce wrote on 6/8/2020, 1:22 PM

@browj2

Hi John.

Where did you see that?

Ray.

CubeAce wrote on 6/8/2020, 1:34 PM

@browj2 @Scenestealer @johnebaker

Never mind. I found it. I also found plans for August 2020 All be it only mentioning Vegas products.

pmikep wrote on 6/8/2020, 2:31 PM

I'm on Win 1909 18363.418.

I purposely do not install cumulative updates, so mine is vanilla since I updated to 1909 from an iso.

Scenestealer wrote on 6/8/2020, 10:29 PM

@pmikep

I'm on Win 1909 18363.418.

Maybe that is the difference seeing as how you are not seeing the problem we are seeing? I suppose one can uninstall some of the cumulative updates?

@johnebaker

Thanks John, I guess that should do it.

@browj2

I got the VPX12 email today - looks interesting with Infusion Engine support for AMD cards now included, and the Mercalli V5 Real time Stabilisation Suite with a full perpetual license.

I imagine it will only improve preview smoothness as opposed to export but you never know.

I wonder how many bugs they have fixed......😁!

Peter

johnebaker wrote on 6/9/2020, 9:05 AM

@browj2, @Scenestealer, @CubeAce, @pmikep

In order to prevent drifting off topic, can we keep comments regarding VPX 12 new features etc out of this topic to prevent splitting conversations between different issues/comments.

Thank you

John EB

Scenestealer wrote on 6/9/2020, 10:34 AM

Sure thing JohnEB.

I had not seen the Topic about VPX12 when I wrote my last comment.

Peter

CubeAce wrote on 6/9/2020, 10:44 AM

@Scenestealer @browj2 @johnebaker @pmikep

Hi Guys.

I don't know if this is relevant or not but the New Blue Titler 6 effects pack is no longer working on my copy of MEP Premium. It was working before I got the new MEP updater. I have been and checked at the NewBlue site to see if it is still registered and active and seems to be.

What I get now is it loads within MEP then freezes. with this screen.

Note the 'Not Responding'.

Then eventually when I get tired of waiting (30 minutes so far) and close the program. I get this.

I have tried restarting the pc. Same result.

Titler 6 also fails to open as a stand-alone program.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/9/2020, 1:34 PM

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

Try setting Titler to use the Power saving GPU in Windows Graphics, it is very slow or fails when trying to use the NV card.

John EB

CubeAce wrote on 6/9/2020, 2:08 PM

@johnebaker

Hi John.

Thank you for the suggestion. I tried with same result except now I get the Splash Screen for the program stick and when I try to use the program it disappears from the screen or freezes within MEP. Have tried restarting windows and trying again. Same results. I'm not overly bothered as I can't use the timeline within the editor anyway. Apparently not available to the Magix MEP version so of limited use anyway. Borris effects Titler is working fine though.

Ray.

CubeAce wrote on 7/11/2020, 12:57 PM

A week ago I put up a topic where I said I had altered the priority settings in MEP for the Bundled effect packages and that I thought I had seen an improvement during Graphic heavy handling situations.

I altered these and set them all to 'High Performance'.

So today I re-ran my '36 hours of testing project' with the new configuration in Windows.

The results were on the average over five exports, a decrease of export time by between 25 to 30 seconds. My best time now being 13:01 and worst 13:07.

The odd thing was what I saw in the Task Manager window.

On average, both GPUs were doing far less work as the frame rate of the export sped up.

The graphic sections of the export were quite a bit faster than before and I think where the export time difference was made up but also when there was less graphics processing to be done the Intel GPU really picked up it's workload.

The CPU where there was most graphic content was when there was most CPU activity and the activity was spread around the cores more evenly than before.

The disk file transfer activity also seemed to pick up more.

So there you have it.

For me, changing the priority of the third party plug-ins seems to have helped with my export times and made playback smoother under heavier load. Importing files into MEP has also sped up slightly.

While a 5% decrease in export time may not be much it shows that settings make a difference.

Ticking the 'Calculate Video Effects on GPU' now also slows down the export more by a considerable amount.

Resources seem to be split up differently.

Using the slower method about an extra 2GB of data was also loaded into ram.

Ray.