@browj2

I bought Spicemaster Pro 3 for Vegas, and it works in Resolve just fine. I am surprised their products aren't as popular as they should be.

With Ignite Pro 5, the plugins I've used so far, seem to work. I know with Vegas, after VP16, the older plugins and Ignite 4, no longer worked. You needed Ignite Pro 4.1, which included everything.

Every setting in BorisFX can be keyframed. Every freakin single setting. Then if you really like to burn your brain cells, you can mask/track or whatever with Mocha, which is a part of the plugin (almost all of Boris), mask with Pixel Chooser and keyframe everything. Way too much for me to consider using. Most every plugin in Vegas has the ability to keyframe every setting in the Pan/Crop window.

But for the price of FilmTouch Pro, it's toolset and control are pretty amazing. Again, I don't know how Pixelan has stayed under the radar of many. Especially considering the price of the plugins.

@Reyfox

But for the price of FilmTouch Pro, it's toolset and control are pretty amazing. Again, I don't know how Pixelan has stayed under the radar of many. Especially considering the price of the plugins.

Possibly a lack of online presence. I have only recently had it come up on my internet searches.

Coming back to the point about crashes. It happens to me once the project gets more complex and my system starts to struggle. Especially if I then without thinking try to alter an effect while the timeline is in play mode. That seems to tip it over the edge.

My projects are now virtually all in 4K and can produce loads similar to this one at various points of the project.

I know I'm pushing it and have to be careful.

Ray.

@CubeAce what the heck is pushing your computer to use almost 62GB of RAM? I edit a lot of 4K 10bit 422 and don't see RAM usage like that. My projects are under 15minutes though. I'll do a lot of color correcting/grading because all the videos are shot in Cinelink-D.

As for Pixelan, I bought Spicemaster close to 15 or so years ago. Spicemaster 2.0 for Premiere Pro 6.

@Reyfox

SpiceMaster 3 is a whole lot better than 3. The interface is much larger and there are hundreds of presets in addition to the hundreds of masks.

@CubeAce

I have done a few tutorials on SpiceMaster and mentioned it many times on the forum. Unfortunately, my tutorials were with version 2.5. The difference from version 2.5 to 3 is huge.

John CB

@browj2 for the price, it does an awful lot. Again, Pixelan should get noticed more. The prices are reasonable, especially for those not looking to spend a lot of money. And there is great value in their software.

@Reyfox

Did you notice the committed value beneath that? Mainly compiling graphics. Once you get away from the presets, especially changing sizes, moving around, and textures and it soon uses up motherboard memory. Thankfully it doesn't use that much vram. If it gets too bad I will export short sections and reimport them as complete video files for final rendering.

My main worry is if graphics cards keep getting more powerful along with CPUs, soon we will be back to rigs costing £3,000 +. While some may be able to afford to upgrade every few years the majority of the world will not be able to. Even if the software is relatively cheap, if the hardware to run it becomes too expensive then sales will suffer.

Ray.

@CubeAce, ouch! That much RAM being used working with graphics. What specific plugin are you using?

I know Boris Title Studio can use up a lot of system RAM. But still....

As for the price of graphics cards. They are still insane. But that is what the market will bare. Days of the $500 top card are gone. That is now the new midrange pricing. CPU's are more powerful, but they also require a more "powerful" power supply too.

But I think that certain plugin software is geared for the professional, where updating hardware is fairly common since it's a business expense that can be deducted (at least in the States) from your gross income for the business. I deducted everything business related, including software.

Now, it's out of my pocket. So I consider the cost. While I can upgrade the GPU and increase RAM to 64GB, I'll sit for a bit and work within what I have. I remember letting the computer render a project all night. Now we want it "instantly".

I can be a generation or two behind the "state of the art" hardware. I'm in no rush. And yes, prices for rigs that I would use are in the price range you are now quoting. But building them myself, picking parts when on sale, helps a lot. And I can wait for a Stateside trip where the cost of computer hardware is way less than here in the land of VAT.

Right now, you can get an Intel i7 13700k, Asus Z690 A Prime motherboard and 32GB DDR5 6000 G.Skill Ripjaw for $600. Or... Ryzen 9 7950X, Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite motherboard, 32GB G.Skill DDR5 6000 for $830. Or replace the 7950X with the 7900X and Asus Prime of ROG Strix motherboard for $600 Add case and power supply and you are well under 3000 pounds. But that's in the States. Got to love Microcenter!

@Reyfox

Hi.

It doesn't have to be an individual graphics plugin that will cause that amount of ram usage but a combination of smaller ones running parallel. I am currently running a two minute twenty two second 4K export that will take me a while to render.

I had that project reduced on my desktop so when I reopened it to get an estimated time for the export it lost the graphics for the timeline.

I have run the project once already but I got a Mercalli Pro watermark in one spot and had to reactivate the plugin.

I have it currently running again with an estimated export time of 23 hours but my system according to the metered mains glugs in my room is only using 48watts of power.

If or when I upgrade I would be sticking with Intel but the current 13th gen processors are too power hungry (electricity here is also way more expensive than the States at present) and need a lot of cooling. DDR5 is not any faster at present than DDR4 and from what I've read, more expensive than fast DDR4 and less stable so far. So I might go for an 11th or 12th gen processor with DDR4.

I have a large modular power supply already but some newer motherboard boards supply power in a different way. I would have to look at that more closely. I would also be considering an Intel 780 or higher in the future. I don't game and is not a priority for me. The cards are also currently bundled with a lot of good software including the latest version of VPX and PowerDirector.

Such fun 🤣

Ray.

@CubeAce GPU's bundled with VPX? I haven't seen that one yet.

As for current CPU/GPU's needing a power station to run, that's the future. I do like in Poland though, and while energy costs (and fuel prices) are up, it's just me and the wife. Everything else is off except for the frig, which isn't opened much and has a Class A rating. Computer's, video editing and light gaming are my only vices, so I don't mind spending a little in energy to get faster rendering times.

DDR5 is the future. So are those additional power hungry hardware. That's the cost of performance upgrading. I am at the end of line for AM4. Next would be AM5, but not this generation. I'll let them stumble along until everything is sorted out by the preceding next gen. I've stayed with AMD because of lower power requirements, equal or better performance for less or same money, and longevity of the motherboard for future CPU upgrades. And my CPU cooler will work on the AM5 socket not requiring me to buy anything else.

But still, which plugins are you using?

@Reyfox

Ha! No, the other way around like the good old days🤣

I have never suffered a motherboard failure. Always used ASUS boards. The only component failures I've ever had since 1999 are, two HHDs, (Seagate and Hitachi Deckstar) one monitor, (Hitachi) and a power button on my PC case (has lasted me three upgrades so far and has tons of room) which at the time I mistook for a power supply problem. I'm never sure about what the future is as it has a habit of changing😉. The only tech I've ever pre-ordered prior to release dates are Nikon D500, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED VR AF-S Nikkor lens, DJI Osmo Pocket.

Current project after two hours, thirty seven minutes, reporting 20 hours 56 minutes to go but once past the first 20 seconds may reduce dramatically due to what should be less processor intensive rendering. Currently at 16:02 movie time, 403 frames. I'm expecting around three and a half hours. I could be wrong.

Ray.

@CubeAce so you go out for a bit and do other things that you should be doing around the home. I worry when I start editing, not being aware of the time. Especially when I am in the "zone".

I've had hardware failures myself in the 30+ years of building computers. Power supply capacitors popping, a motherboard death (under warranty), and a mechanical hard drive or two. That's it. Right now, my computer is where I want it to be. Mild overclock (5Ghz), great cooling and air flow and it looks nice.

I bought initially Ryzen 7 1700X and Gigabyte B350 Gaming motherboard 6 years ago. That same motherboard can take the last AM4 CPU, the 5950X 16 core 32 thread beast. 6 years out of one motherboard with only a BIOS update along the way. That's 4 generations of CPU's. But I passed that on to wife and did the X570 motherboard with the 3900X (12 core 23 thread) and now the 5950X. They keep pushing newer and newer hardware making your old hardware look slow. And it is, but I've lived with slow.

So while everything shiny and new is out, I wait a generation or two before considering anything. I've never been an early adopter except with software, and I know what I am getting into with that.. paying to be a beta tester.

So before upgrading, I do some tests to see where the "old" hardware stands compared to the upgraded hardware. 20% increase in rendering speed is pretty good.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . I have it currently running again with an estimated export time of 23 hours but my system according to the metered mains glugs in my room is only using 48watts of power. . . . .If or when I upgrade I would be sticking with Intel but the current 13th gen processors are too power hungry . . .

I would disagree with this - quick theoretical calculations given the worst case load scenario ie both CPU and GPU are at 100% max load and ignoring motherboard and drive power consumption:-

i9-9900K has a max requirement of 205W when at full load and Turbo speed, GTX 1650 has a capped (throttled) maximum power of 100W - total power for this combo = 305W

i13-13900K has a max requirement of 253W when at full load and Turbo speed pair this with:

- an Intel Arc 770 which has top power requirement of 225W - total power for this combo = 475W

- a RTX 4060 with a top power requirement of 200W - total power of this combo = 453W

A reduction of render time by ~ 35% will use about the same amount of power.

In the real world these figures may vary.

John EB

@Reyfox

Hi.

Most of what needs doing inside the house has been done, outside I'm waiting for the weather to improve a bit 😉.

We both do a bit of volunteer work now retirement has come along. I was at the the Historic Dockyard doing my thing there for most of yesterday.

I don't overclock my systems. I do sometimes wonder if the various versions of windows has any effect on some programs performance.

@johnebaker

Hi John.

I don't disagree with the theoretical performances or power consumptions of any of the quoted specs but it's not what I am seeing running the export as nothing is actually maxing out. Far from it.

As for the Intel graphics cards. They have only just started really trying to update their drivers but seem to be doing well with each newer release. The drivers also seem to be benefiting content creators more than gamers at present. At overclockers UK the current price for a 770 is £300. An Nvidia 4060 price is yet to be announced but estimated to be between £400-£500. Again it is difficult to determine how MMS or VPX will play with these items.

I think the project rendered in my estimated time as I had to go out for forty minutes and had completed by the time I got back. Unfortunately, one of the plugin parameter settings was 'lost' and ended up with a short section with what I can only describe as radical cross hatched coloured interference lines across that section so I'm having to run it a third time. The section in question rendered while I was out so didn't see happen it to cancel the export.

So starting again and just monitoring what I can on screen, the CPU is staying roughly 10% in use, Intel HD630 0% nvidia currently between 0 to 1% usage but registering using around 3GB of vram. Motherboard memory in use around 29%. Asus AI suite is reporting a CPU power consumption ranging from 26 to 32 w. That will change a lot once past the first 20 seconds of video being rendered and I expect to see the power usage increase quite a bit once the rendering speeds up.

Certainly just playing back the file is using more power per second than when creating the file.

The program with Windows seem to decide how something is going to be done within the editor but at least I can browse the internet or do other things only using the HD630 without it impacting on the export time which never seems to change if I keep everything else I am doing on the Intel powered monitor.

Ray.

@Reyfox @johnebaker

I found I made two mistakes I wasn't ware of being mistakes that had slowed down my latest project export.

All I did was add one additional video track but I used the third party Chroma Key Pro with a custom setting that seems to have caused one problem but the other was when using the cookie cutter.

I added a boarder and changed the colour of the boarder but I changed the colour half way through the clip I then saved and duplicated that to two other clips running parallel to the first clip. Unbeknown to me changing the colour in the middle of the clip made the plugin go from the default setting of using a black boarder at the beginning and slowly transforming into a lighter blue half way through. That times three seems to have produced a massive processing load. So I deleted the first key frames on each clip and moved the colour change to the beginning of each clip. I wasn't aware that would happen. Normally if I set up a custom setting and don't alter it at another point of the timeline the plugin doesn't add additional key frames.

It still didn't make a difference to the load for memory but the processing of both the nvidia GPU and CPU both increased a lot.

Ray.

@CubeAce I am curious at the RAM usage. Is it because of the effects you are using?

@Reyfox @johnebaker

Here is the entire project content with effects given.

Make up your own mind how this effects ram usage 😅

and here is the cookie cutter problem I had, now rectified.

Finished result.

Ray.

Watched the video. Thanks for posting it on Youtube. I like the subject too.

Were you using proxies or native footage?

@Reyfox

No proxies but one pre-render. It didn't help. What helps more is reducing the preview monitors size for a smoother playback when needed.

@CubeAce curiosity question. What was your timeline resolution, and what would happen if you chose a lower resolution, and then render out at full resolution?

@Reyfox, @CubeAce

Hi

. . . . What was your timeline resolution, and what would happen if you chose a lower resolution, and then render out at full resolution . . . .

There should be no difference, when playing the timeline the original video (or proxies) is/are loaded and processed ie all effects etc applied in real-time, as required - the video cache for previewing is quite small holding ~ 1 sec of processed video.

The software is non-destructive and does not load the video objects into memory until they are needed, what you see on the timeline is a reference to the original video files, or, if used, the proxy files, when exporting the original files are used.

Preview rendering creates a 'proxy file' of the section of timeline selected - this is located in the Perfbounce folder and you should see the mxv file once the preview render is done, the video has a resolution of 960 x 540 for 16:9, this is also the same resolution for proxy files.

HTH

John EB

@Reyfox

All of my projects so far have consisted of files taken at the same venue at the same resolutions frame rates so I tend to set the project to the same parameters. Because this was an indoor venue this was shot at 24fps because the camera used is similar to an action cam with fixed aperture of f2.8 and fixed focal length. Not so good for close-up shots on the Z axis.

Exceptions would be for slow-mo where I tend to shoot at 60 fps but set the project to 30fps or If I wanted to use pan and zoom I would set the project to 1080 x 1920. Exports are normally done at a higher bit rate so the export has a similar bit rate to the original footage. Normally I don't add so many correcting effects for tonal depth or sharpness but blending the images from those layers was the only way I found to get the look I wanted at the start and the layers had to be in that order to get the effect I wanted. This is probably the most I've pushed the boundaries of my system so far.

Ray.

@Reyfox @johnebaker

Creating proxies used to work just fine for me in VPX 11, not so good in VPX 12 and now in VPX 14, well.

I tried just now, to see if it was worth it.

Ray.