Much appreciated thanks Jeff.

@Steve-McClelland

Hi Steve.

Definitely the Intel Graphics is more important to MEP than an additional graphics card. The HD630 seems to be top of the list for now but I don't know if the offering on the newer Intel chips is a possibility or not. If not, I'm fairly sure the next update will incorporate that into the minimum specs page at some future point. Whether this has anything to do with MEP and VPX using both the Windows HEVC decoder and the Magix HEVC encoder or not I don't know or have privy to that information. Nor do I completely know if going above the minimum spec for an nvidia card has any benefit of not but would suspect it is one of diminishing returns unless one is also using one for gaming. Certainly my nvidia 1650 super does not seem to put my machine that much further behind Johns' 2080 in export times but may be slightly behind in smooth playback of the timeline when viewing 4K footage although that can be overcome slightly by not using a full screen view of the playback.

Whatever you have or use, it will not be fully utilised by the program as you can see in the graphs I gave earlier. Whether this is down to motherboard architecture and possible restrictions in bandwidth in other parts of the build I can't say.

I do know my earlier under-powered machine was going like the clappers all the time and parts were always close to overheating.

It is not so much your drone footage is 4K but using the HEVC codec which is much more processor intensive and does benefit from going through a GPU. Again I think it is the Intel one at work but the faster ram on the nvidia card will be pressed into service somehow as will the nvidia card possibly will do the bulk of the 3D real-time processing but not the encoding or decoding of the video as far as I can ascertain.

I'm sure if I'm wrong or has have some misunderstanding that either Jeff or John EB will step in and correct me.

John EBs setup and video footage is very different from mine and may account for some variation in performance. His 4K footage I think if I remember uses much less Mb/s than our cameras do and he does not use 60fps as much as far as I'm aware.

All of which could explain differences in performance experience.

I wish it were not so but video editing is possibly the most demanding thing you can get a computer to do short of doing CGI. Any weakness in the chain can cause frustration further down the line as we eventually all get more experimental with what an editor can do and we expect of it to be able to do increases over time.

Ray.

@Steve-McClelland, @CubeAce

. . . . John EBs setup and video footage is very different from mine and may account for some variation in performance. His 4K footage I think if I remember uses much less Mb/s than our cameras do and he does not use 60fps as much as far as I'm aware. . . . . .

Ray is correct that my 4K footage is either 60 or 100 Mb/s, however this is not a significant factor that affects re-rendering to FullHD 190 x 1080 speed/times.

The main factors which affect exporting are:

1. framerate change
2. changing codecs
3. non accelerated effects eg movement, and objects eg titles
4. complexity of the timeline eg collages, picture in picture

When I was setting up and testing my new laptop is used a project similar to that which you mentioned you were doing, and got the following results using your export settings

I tested with a project with 4K source video with an Intro and Outro and cut transitions only total run time 1m 10 secs long.

The laptop was within 1 sec of my PC at 1m 27s for default MP4 1920 x 1080 59.97 fps bitrate and 1m 30 sec at the UHD bitrate settings - note the project was on ext HD and rendering to the same ext HD for the laptop. When I rendered to the SSD there was only 3 - 16 seconds difference from the above.

The factors slowing down the export were items 1 and 3 - I was changing from 25 fps to 59.97 and the Intro and Outro had significant effect on the rendering speed

As a check to the above I exported the project without the intro and outro - the export rate was 62 fps compared to 48 fps with the intro/outro.

I prefer to express export speed comparisons as fps as the numbers are IMHO more meaningful for export speed comparisons.

John EB

@johnebaker @Steve-McClelland @emmrecs

Hi John.

I received and have exported your test project using the settings you describe above and choosing 'continue' in the last dialogue box.

I did notice John had a lower audio quality setting than I would normally use.

My result was 1 min 35 secs.

Whether this is because of the difference in CPU or graphics card is difficult for me to discern. Main difference between nvidia cards is quite large considering the difference in export times and John's CPU is faster in Blender tests than mine by about 30%.

However, turning off the Intel GPU gave an export time of 4 minutes dead and increased the CPU workload by 20%. (shown below).

Disabling (Taking out) the nvidia card and having the CPU only do the export resulted in an export time of 3 minutes 47 seconds while not seemingly increasing CPU load at all.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

I would put the difference in times down to the difference between the 1650 and 2060 speed when there is some rendering being done in the 3D render prior to being passed on to the UHD 630 for final encoding.

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John.

Difference in bus bit width or just overall performance differences? Rop and shader counts etc. I have looked at the i7-8700K 3.2 GHz which seems very similar to my i9 9900k with two less cores but tests seem to bear out a better overall performance with the i7 8700k at certain rendering tasks that are up to 30% faster. Then again maybe there is a difference in the performance of the motherboards PCIe lanes. My board has Gen 3.0 slots so would in theory be slower than current boards although I notice the 2060 is also gen 3.

So much to think about 😉😇.

[Edit] It would seem only Ryzen processors can take advantage of PCIe 4 at present. Who knew?

Ray.

Hi, so I have done the demo but what do you mean by base settings that come up under save as option. No idea on this. so just exported at settings that came up.

1. Settings 512 x 288= Time 38seconds

2. Settings 1920 x 1080 = Time 2.40

@Steve-McClelland

Hi Steve

When quoting your export times please include the framerate and if you use a preset which one and any changes you made to it - for comparisons it is preferable not change any of the settings and the standard preset as is.

For example I tested the Demo project, 1m 44secs long, using the MP4 FullHD 1920 x 1080 25 fps preset with no changes and it took 1m 05 secs ie at a frame rate of 40fps.

John EB

I have changed nothing, just selected export to mp4 and clicked export. In No 2 option did same but set to 1920 x 1080. FPS was 25 on both

@Steve-McClelland

Hi Steve.

The base settings would be the same as the project settings for resolution and frame speed. Found under File \ Movie settings within the program. I just tried it on my system. I was out in my prediction.

Settings used. (Base)

Time to export.23 seconds.

Ray.

Well this is exactly what I did when i made 1st comment time was 38 secs

So Ray if you getting 23 seconds and I am getting 38, then i would say I am not too bad considering my PC against your PC. Interesting to see johns figures

@Steve-McClelland @johnebaker @emmrecs

Hi Steve. John.

Trying John's second test on my system and exporting took 53secs at 1920 x 1080 @ 25fps. The same project settings but at 40fps took 1 minute 32 secs which was a surprise as John's system in the past has always narrowly beaten mine.

Then exporting to 3940 x 2160@ 25fps Took 2 mins 35 secs.

The more you push each system the larger the time gap gets between each system but the source files in this instance don't push the playback limits.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . the same project settings but at 40fps . . .

When I was referring to the export - ie how many frames per second the export/render was outputting - this to me is more meaningful indication of the true export speed rather than quoting a time which you must then qualify with how long the project is in mm:ss:ff or work out the ratio of time taken to project length.

I will redo the test when the computer has had a fresh boot - it has been on all day with no restart.

John EB

I only did what ray suggested initially and he also stated in initial post that it took him 54 seconds. Now Ray states it takes only 23 seconds. I don’t mind what i do in relation to testing but again bit confusing when asked to do a test and then different comments come back.

@Steve-McClelland

Hi Steve.

That is obviously my fault.

I was estimating the time it would take initially based on the file size and resolution. I hadn't actually tested it at that point. I should have before suggesting it.

Quite a while ago now I set up a test project for the people here to test various system speeds which was a quite bit tougher than the demo project and more relevant to my way of producing a project.The thread ended up as quite a long discussion (and a lot of testing) about MEP and what settings to use in MEP as well as Windows and bits of the PC. Johns and my PC at the time were very close in performance and my guess was based on that test as to how the various systems would do on the demo project everyone has access to.

That may not have been my best idea ever. Sorry.

If you are interested in the discussion that took part in that thread and our conclusions you can read it here.

Most of the users here including myself have been down this 'why is this PC setup necessary' discussion ourselves and trying to figure out why some components work better than others.

Basically that revolves around the use of Direct X and it's evolution over time. That video program developers took advantage of the gaming developments of it to enhance and speed up aspects of the 3D component of Direct X, and that now the Magix Infusion Engine is taking more advantage of Direct X 12 for this task over previous versions of MEP and VPX making use of Direct X11. That since Direct X11, has shared use of certain tasks between processors favouring the Intel one and no longer being backward compatible in earlier processor and GPU components due to changes in the older processors construction.

If you are interested in that side of things please read about the evolution of Direct X here and you could probably start by scrolling down to the Compatibility section onward.

Ray.

Yes Cheers Ray appreciated, I have noticed that program keeps freezing regular since that blimmin codec issue, however just changed in Program settings/Display options video mode to Alternate mode 2(Video Mixing render9) This seemed to stop it crashing. Very happy with that as we know when programs freeze or crash all you wanna do is smash the keyboard lmao:)

Thanks for coming back to me and will defo read the other feed you linked me too. Cheers.

@Steve-McClelland

Hi

In addition to @CubeAce comment regarding Direct X12 this is one half of the development story.

The other side is the integration of dedicated modules in the Intel processors with an iGPU and Nvidia graphics cards - for AMD graphics I have no idea whether they do the same - for handling the decoding and encoding of video these take some of the load of the processor and the feature, as you may have guessed, is called Hardware Acceleration.

In the case of Nvidia this is separate module from the CUDA parallel processing module which is a huge topic on its own.

Nvidia also recognised that gaming and animation/design/video work require two different approaches when it comes to drivers - there is a gaming driver and a Studio driver. Ray and I both use the Studio drivers as we do not game.

John EB

@Steve-McClelland @johnebaker @emmrecs

Hi Steve.

In short, as fellow users we are trying our best to give the best advice we can based on our personal experiences and by trying to sort out other peoples problems they present to us on the forum. It's a hobby if you like, but also increases our own knowledge of a product which is quite frankly huge in its scope of capability and complexity.

Trying to get to grips with what the developers had done and how, for me at least, was a steep learning curve at the beginning and I'm grateful to both Johns, Jeff, and Peters' early input on replying to my early queries. Now I'm just trying to give something back to the community here. You can look up my early posts here to see how clueless I was. Just click on my avatar and click on Forum posts.

Some other aspects that don't get discussed here as much are things such as Windows updates. Which I personally have to sometimes go back and change settings so all of my programs work afterwards. I have older copies of other programs that miraculously still work under Windows ten from starting off life in Windows 7 but updates often leave them disabled as sound settings get set back to default settings or graphics scheduling seems to get changed somehow and I have change the way Windows works with that program while taking care not to then cripple my video editing packages.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Well said there Ray. Keep up the good work!

Peter

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

Ditto what Peter said.

John EB

Rest assured all you guys assistance is greatly appreciated, no doubt. So, after some playing around with current 4k footage and exporting 1920x 1080, some of the clips just would not come out as good as hoped. Sooo...Went and filmed certain clips again in 1920x1080. This is final version and is mixture of 4k and 1920x1080 footage all exported in 1920x1080 at 60fps. Now moving on too next project which I will film al in 1920x1080 until Santa brings me new PC. :)