@johnebaker

Hi John.

Sorry, what I meant was there is no GPU activity at all from either GPU when the Windows setting is High Performance for MEP while export rendering. I forgot to check the playback for GPU usage during editing with that setting.

I am more concerned about my discs freezing after export. It's as if Explorer is not responding. I can open other apps but can't look at the contents of folders at all now unless I reboot the system.

Ray.

It appears that I am having lots of artifacts (glitchiness) in the video in both playback and after exporting with the new hardware acceleration. I am running an AMD Radeon RX 580. Anyone else having this issue? I had to disable hardware acceleration.

@CubeAce @pmikep @browj2

Hi Ray

Earlier, referring to the MPEG-4 export window you said:-

Notice the Calculate video effects on GPU is greyed out and it doesn't show the Hardware acceleration bit in the export box and yet above Windows Task Manager says different.

Your SS of your export template shows you were exporting to AVCHD transport stream .mts with AC-3 audio and with hardware encoding and "try Smart copy" showing to boot!

This is entirely different to your original Tech tip project's export template which was .MP4 with AAC sound.

1. This could be the reason you mention sound problems and may need to reactivate the Dolby digital codec.

2. This could affect export times of the new renders.

3. Who knows what having Smart Copy activated might do but probably nothing good with the nature of the timeline in that project. It could be why the Calculate VFX on GPU is grayed out also?

I suggest you modify the template to what you originally used and see what happens.

What have you been able to work out in terms of the possible Graphics driver issue in the 4th SS?

Peter

@browj2 @johnebaker @Scenestealer

Well,it seems it's true.

The Intel auto updater seems responsible for my all my prior hard drive troubles.

I uninstalled the app and everything is hunky dory. Talk about seemingly unrelated things interacting. Had I not looked at my logs I'd never have looked up the offending item. Will have to go back to looking for updates manually in future.

Hasn't sped up the exports though.

Ray.

@CubeAce Whew! The extra 4 minutes is what I'm seeing too. OT One Hand, glad to know it's not me. OTOH, sad to see that MEP 2021 slowed down. (At least for this benchmark.)

@browj2 @johnebaker @Scenestealer

Well,it seems it's true.

The Intel auto updater seems responsible for my all my prior hard drive troubles.

I uninstalled the app and everything is hunky dory. Talk about seemingly unrelated things interacting. Had I not looked at my logs I'd never have looked up the offending item. Will have to go back to looking for updates manually in future.

Hasn't sped up the exports though.

Ray.

@Scenestealer @browj2 @johnebaker @pmikep

I'm not sure what's going on with the repeat of my last post. That is not what I had written.

What I did write is.

Hi Peter.

You are correct and observant as usual. I will adjust the project accordingly.

Then I went off to do some more exporting.

I set the correct paraments and tried again with my best previous other settings and the result was slightly worse coming in at 18:10. Ticking, not ticking, made no difference.

Ray.

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

I don't think for me it will improve as most of my projects have a fair mixture of text and effects.

Playback in the editor is much better though so may save time at the editing stage. Scrolling is smoother audio wise for one, and view much sharper with no need so far for additional rendering for playback.

I think there are additional settings in the project setup I'm not sure of.

Ray.

Considering that the part of your test video that takes the longest to encode is titles (as opposed to video proper), it seems the slow down is in computational power for titles. (As opposed to video processing per se.) Or maybe MEP 2021 handles audio differently than 2020, since you had some intense audio in the beginning?

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

I did make some notes when I did the last test and it's the video section that has not been as fast. It has been slower at catching up between the beginning title sequence and the end sequence. They seem to be rendering slightly faster.

Exporting the project at 1080p is also slower.

Old best time was 5:33

New best time is 5:53

You could try muting the audio track of concern to see if it makes much difference but I think it's the video encoding which in places seems to be a trickle of what it once was on the GPU and more activity in those parts more evenly distributed across the cores of the CPU. Maybe that is the main change to help those using AMD CPUs.

Ray.

Huh. One would think that they would have tested for this. Right or wrong, the single biggest selling point for video editing software is "performance." (How fast does it encode?) MEP 2021 will drop to the back of the pack in PC Mag's Reviews.

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

That would depend on what they test it on Mike. It seems to me the distribution of work is more even across the threads and cores of my processor, working at up to 74 % at times on my test project export.

Now imagine running that on a 64 core Ryzen core processor. As Ryzen seem to dominate the market for performance at present it seems logical they would try for that market as well.

Ray.

Valid point. So does that mean that one no longer needs an Intel iGPU for MEP? 'Cause that was the sole reason that I bought this used Dell box. I would have been happy to build up a Ryzen based box at the time.

Do we know anyone here in the forum with a big Ryzen who could run your benchmark? (Probably not, given my Intel iGPU comment.)

@pmikep

I think Magix are future proofing their product.

The Adobe products have been able to use Ryzen processors for some time now and some large YouTubers spend upwards of $10,000 a year for the privilege. Large (or popular / semi pro material users) on You tube are now running the new RED 8K cameras and processing footage without using GPUs on custom video editing servers going out to work stations for central control of projects, similar to film companies. The MBps count in footage is insane but they love them because they can crop or reduce 8K footage to look even better in 4K. Those people and similar are the big spenders and possibly trend setters. Also Magix (according to their blog) has been working with Microsoft on some project or other for cloud editing. It could be an offshoot of their requirements.

Intel is getting behind and losing dominance and we are just caught up in the wake.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi

. . . Now imagine running that on a 64 core Ryzen core processor. . . . .

Just thinking about the bank balance is enough - those processors are very specialised and expensive not to mention the rest of the PC needed to support them - 256 GB of RAM for them to work efficiently, 64 lane PCIE-4 support and very fast drives to keep up with it.

. . . . Exporting the project at 1080p is also slower.

Old best time was 5:33

New best time is 5:53

Which project are you referring to - the 2 Tech tips 202 Audio Master test project?

John EB

@johnebaker

Hi John.

I was being deliberately a bit over the top but what about a 12 core 24 thread one for around the same price as a mid-price point i9? What if going for more cores was ultimately cheaper than using an expensive graphics card that only works within the editor? My first Windows machine ran an AMD chip and it worked OK. That cost as much as my current machine. Possibly more when I take inflation into account.

Bang for Buck as it were they are becoming better value for money for some people again. There are more laptops being kitted out with them and are attractive as cheaper alternatives. Top that with Intel's current production woes and it may be a while before they get their placement back.

Yes.

That project. Unless I release another one, that will be my benchmark for testing MEP and perhaps VPX although I may copy it first in case it can't then be reimported into MEP.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . Yes. That project. . . . .

That's what I thought - tested earlier with that project in MEP 2021 - no significant increase or decrease in export times ie within ±2% of those I last reported in your previous 36hrs testing. . . part 1 topic.

Just finished testing in VPX 12 - export times within ±2% of previous results, with a big surprise with MP4 and the RTX 2060/UHD630 Windows Graphics/VPX combo - again no HWA. I actually got an export in 34:32 using CPU only

John EB

Hmm... so now we have to figure out why John EB's results with MEP 2021 didn't change, but Ray's and mine are noticeably slower. Could it be John's RTX-2060? That MEP 2021 is looking for an instruction that our GTX-1050 Supers don't have? (John, how about if you send me your 2060 for testing purposes? (Altho I suppose it's cheaper to send it to Ray there in your country.))

@Jeremyds @Scenestealer @browj2 @johnebaker @pmikep

Hi John.

I have just discovered I made a mistake.

After I rebuilt the project I forgot to check the GPU settings in MEP. They were not correct.

I have rerun the tests again with slightly better results.

With Calculate video effects on GPU unticked the export time is now 15:33

With Calculate video effects on GPU ticked the export time is now 15:15

Still slower than with MEP 2020 but an improvement.

So not much difference in performance but distribution of resources on exports changes a lot. I would imagine that will make a difference on different systems.

With the Calculate video effects on GPU ticked I took screenshots at various stages where the resources were distributed differently.

As I said before I have never seen all my CPU cores workload more evenly distributed than with this release.

Sorry Mike.

Ray.

In case I made the same mistake, what "GPU settings in MEP"? And your results seem to be reversal from before, where most of us were seeing that unticking the "Calculate FX on GPU" made the encode go faster.

Also, I can't remember if HRD had been selected in MEP 2020. I don't think "Streamable" was.

After seeing Ray's results improve with "Calculate FX on GPU," I tried it. Now MEP 2021 is down to 18:43. My previous best with MEP 2020 was 18:16. So we're in the ballpark now.

Interestingly, when I set Windows' Graphic Settings to High Performance, the Intel GPU usage went up remarkably. I would sometimes see near 100%. Nevertheless, the encode dragged out to well beyond 21 minutes.