@pmikep

Hi Mike.

I'm not sure what you mean by time stamp. Should you not be watching instead for how many frames into the export I am instead?

Ray.

Not uncoincidentally, the number of frames and the movie time are the same. You're at 1143 frames. I'm at 1195 - a little late - in my screen shot. But no CPU spike like you had.

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

I do notice your nvidia card is showing twice as much usage as mine at that point. Possibly a reason for the difference and maybe the CPU core count? There may be some 'clever' form of balancing act going on here.

Could it be down to motherboard differences or power management settings? There are so many variables it's hard to tell. If a system isn't identical I would expect to see variables in parts of the system at any one time.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . Like Johns' setup I no longer got any help from the nvidia graphics card and showed little to no signs of life throughout the export. . . . .

Alas you spoke too soon.

Last night I had an issue with a project I was working on - comprising of 4K video, images, music clips, 1 title, some keyframing on three animated sequences, mainly xfades and a custom transition I made - resulting in a reset of MEP 2021, customised my settings again, and did the usual Export as MVD/import to new project to fix the project issues and subsequent crashes.

MEP has kicked into life and is now using the RTX when exporting - however not to encode - it looks like it is decoding the video on the timeline before handing it over to the iGPU/CPU for encoding, max load seen on the RTX so far was 49% where video was involved and down to zero for images, and the export (Full HD) was at about 50 fps (1/2 real time 25 fps project) the only effects being applied to the video when it peaked were global sharpening and global limiting of the audio using MDynamicEQ

Observation of the project export showed:

1. the SSD drive was not doing any writing, this was where the export was set to save the file, the hard drive with the project on was writing large blocks of data at frequent intervals - it turned out MEP was writing to a temporary file in the Export folder set in the program settings, I don't know if this is new as with the older versions where I could not determine with confidence where it was writing too - it appeared to be the SSD, however it was inconsistent.
   
   I changed the Export folder to the SSD drive and exported again, the results were surprising, I was expecting a faster export however the export time was double that when the Export folder was on the hard drive.
   
   As a double check, I suspected the drive may be failing, it is about 7 yrs old, I used the SSD toolkit to check the drive and it was operating optimally and has used only 2% if its life. I also 'trimmed' the drive and exported again - same result.
   
   Export folder is now back on the hard drive.
    
2. I also found effects not being hardware accelerated also include Brightness & Contrast, Gamma and Blur

BTW the audio setting Wave driver/Direct Sound makes no difference to the export times here.

John EB

@johnebaker @pmikep @johnebaker

Hi John.

I've not had anywhere near the same nvidia activity on an export but I do the the same behaviour regarding graphics vs video content.

I see the same behaviour when MEP is writing to any disc. Not just SSD.

Was the export to the SSD the only thing the SSD was doing? No files being read from there at the same time?

I think your point 2 is mentioned in the manual somewhere but now I can't find that info.

Last point, that is different. I only tried your sound setting out of curiosity. I am back to my normal settings now.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . Was the export to the SSD the only thing the SSD was doing? . . . .

Yes, it was only for writing to.

The only time it was used for reading was when playing back the exports - always in pairs one for the Internet (mp4) and the other for DVDA (.m2ts), and final move to the appropriate folder for use later on.

Point 2 agreed it is in the manual, forgot that, there is also the curious behaviour of Neat Video, the plugin is not accelerated - will have to check that again given that the RTX is now in use.

. . . . Last point, that is different. . . .

Interesting, I am now back on Direct Sound - while doing some research on DS, I found several articles (about 6 to 8 yrs old) talking about an issue when in long continuous playback use, ie > 5 to 6 hrs, with audio breaking up on play back irrespective of the program - cannot find anything if this was fixed by MS. This may be something to bear in mind if users have audio popping/crackling issues for no apparent reason.

John EB

So, a "reset of MEP 2021": I'm game. Is this as simple as clicking "Default Settings"? Or do we have to use a cleanup tool? (Clean the Registry, etc.?) This might be back to my "Get it to resniff a system anew."

@pmikep @johnebaker @browj2

Hi John.

I tried writing to my SSD again and it froze, again. After an hour I rebooted the PC and I got the message (briefly) This file (something about a jpg file not being able to be written to a file on the D: drive) was preventing shut down.

During the writ to disk though it was written in large chunks with long gaps between each write.

Also there were dips in the processing across all parts of the PC from time to time.

Even the C: drive worked in chunks.

The project drive activity

Anyway.

After rebooting the PC, the drive was unfrozen. The MP4 was there but no image of the file and could not be played or read by mediainfo again even though the file size was correct.

Five minutes later and the file had a thumnail image but still had no readable data within.

So still don't know what is going on as I can copy videos to the drive and play them with no hassle.

Another thing. You said Neat Video is not accelerating. Do you have the Intel Graphics Command Centre on your machine? When I opened mine recently I found this.

I have never added any program to Graphics Command Centre or altered the Boris Effects as far as I'm aware.

I think the more I am doing this time around the more confused I'm getting.

Ray.

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . You said Neat Video is not accelerating . . . .

It was not, however, I need to revisit that one as MEP is now using the RTX - I suspect I may have to upgrade to the latest version to take advantage of the RTX..

. . . . When I opened mine recently I found this . . . .

There is nothing in the Intel Command Centre - will see what happens when I revisit this.

Boris or the Command Centre would have added the entry probably on first run.

John EB

@CubeAce

Maybe this article can shed some light to your SSD problems?

https://www.techradar.com/amp/news/windows-10-update-could-be-damaging-your-ssd

Edit: Changed the acronym to the correct SSD instead of the wrong DSF (where did that come from?)

@shgrude

Thanks. That doesn't sound good at all and explains the almost constant low level background activity on the drive in the past. I have disabled the scheduler.

Ray.

@CubeAce

02:46 - you're up even later than usual, Ray! I bet an acronym search for SSD would include Systemic Sleep Disorder

Terry

Sunday 30 August 2020, 0826

@CubeAce

Hi again Ray,

(Hope you had a good night's sleep! 🙂 )

I'm curious about your version of Windows OS, which your sig says has the format '19041.450 (2004)'

Using winver, my Win 10 Pro is shown as 'Version 1909 (OS Build 18363.1016)'

Terry

@terrypin

Hi Terry.

Ha! Not far off. 😂

I'm on Windows 10 Enterprise.

Ray.

@browj2 @johnebaker @pmikep @shgrude @terrypin

I checked my D: drive by copying a MEP project to it with no problems. No disk activity after the copy and paste. Then I ran the project from the drive and exported an MP4 file to an internal SATA drive. Still no freezing of the drive. I then tried to create proxy files within the project. The drive really slowed down to a crawl to the point I didn't think it would create one proxy file so I cancelled the command and the drive froze.

Wondering if this was then a MEP problem I rebooted the pc and used OBS studio to record but put the file onto the D: drive. The drive froze again so it does look like the SSD is on its way out.

Windows is also taking longer to start up and shut down. I don't know if that is because the D: drive is connected to the system or whether the C: M.2 drive has also taken a hit.

Will try taking out the D: drive next to check. Luckily I still have some similar sized SATA drives lying around to transfer data to as a stop gap.

Ray.

@browj2 @johnebaker @pmikep @shgrude @terrypin

Hi Guys

The following I think is serious.

The PC took fifteen minutes to shut down and reboot using restart. Then I shut down again and another fifteen minutes. Then removed the D: drive.

Startup was back to normal boot times although startup had never been adversely effected too much. Shutdown was then back to normal. Less than 15 seconds.

Started up again and rechecked all setting in MEP.

Exported test project running from H: drive SATA WD Black and exported to I drive SATA WD Black ticking the 'Calculate video effects on GPU' (Rendering to MP4 4K using 'Best' setting.

Showing as many project settings as I can.

Export result.

New Best export time of all time of 12:33. Beating my Best MEP 2020 of 13:35

Was my SSD causing so much trouble Even when not reading or writing to it?

That has serious implications for me at least.

Ray.

Interesting. I'm still slower than MEP 2020. And if I was correct that my previous best time with MEP 2021 was 18:43, then I've gotten worse after dong the "Reset All Settings" thing. (Although I do see an item flash on the TaskBar that says "Resetting" - so perhaps that's the Re-sniffer?) I'm now at 19:10.

However, I've observed a few new things.

When I do not have "Calculate FX on GPU" enabled, then I see Ray's CPU spike at Frame 1070. However, when I enabled "Calculate FX on GPU" then I see a spike on the GPU! Here it is with the Nvidia selected in Graphics Settings AND Display video.

Also, I see a noticeable difference when I select which GPU is used for video in the Display Video of the "Arranger." Here is Graphics Settings set for the nVidia, Calculate FX on GPU enabled, and the UHD 630 selected for the Arranger. Notice the big dip in CPU and the 100% spikes on the iGPU at frame 1070.

I also found what probably should have been obvious - that if I have my other video editor open during these tests, that my times are slower. Perhaps my other editor grabs control of my GPU?

Along similar lines, I've started testing with my browsers closed. Waterfox says that it can use Hardware Acceleration, and I'm trying to eliminate anything from grabbing the GPU.

And, last for now, I found that I get my best times with MEP 2021 when I have Graphics Settings set to High Performance.

I have taken to rebooting between tests, and also to Resetting to Defaults when I change the Graphics Settings.

@pmikep

Hi Mike.

To fill in some gaps.

My copy of MEP during these tests in on the monitor powered by the nvidia card.

I have no other programs open during testing except paint to capture screen shots and Firefox is often open but only ever using one tab. Neither seem to make any difference whatsoever to my export times. I have tested for both now, and in the testing when using MEP 2020. Setting MEP to High power still disables both GPUs on my system while running MEP. MEP is currently set to Power Saving. 'Let Windows Decide' gives pretty much the same result as Power Saving for me.

I have not bothered to reboot during the last set of tests between MEP changes but have checked nothing has changed in the program settings that I am not responsible for.

All relevant settings for my best test result are in the images above apart from the Windows setting of Power Saving.

All I really changed was disconnecting that SSD D: drive and disable automatic defragmenting.

[Edit]

I am also wondering if there is a fundamental difference to running Windows 10 Enterprise over other Windows 10 editions.

Ray.

I got offered the 2021 update and took it. Not like me, I usually wait for new stuff to be out a while... I wish now I had waited.

The first thing I noticed was that I had to re-create my custom hot keys. Nuisance.

But by far the worst thing gradually became apparent as I started a new project. I brought in the clips I needed and started editing bits out, closing up the gaps, etc. I noticed things weren't behaving as I expected and thought it must be me. It wasn't. When I cut and edited out a piece of a clip, both by playing it and using the cursor to find the correct start and end points, I cut it out only to find when playing the remainder that some or all of the clipped out section still played and previewed! I undid everything and tried again, with the same and different clips - same result. Closed the program and reloaded it and then the project - no change. Also, the frames under the cursor don't correspond to where they should be when playing the clip versus placing the 'now' time on them. I never experienced anything like this with my 2020 version. I've skimmed this thread and can't find anyone else having this editing issue, so I probably have no alternative but to uninstall everything and re-install my 2020 version from disk, hoping that will work ok.

😖

I might do that too. Except that when I deactivated MEP 2020 to activate 2021, it said I could do only one deactivation a month.

So unless a patch comes out in a month for 2021, I will probably go back to 2020 too.

@Skyline_UK @browj2 @johnebaker @pmikep @shgrude @terrypin

Hi Guys.

I'm sorry most people seem to be having trouble with MEP 2021.

Not that I initially didn't.

I've been playing virtually all the time with various settings. What I've been amazed at is how the Program adapts to various settings made both in MEP and Windows. Neither now am I bothering to reboot the system each time I change settings.

I've now settled on the windows graphics settings of 'Let Windows Decide'. There was a very slight performance hit on exporting with the MEP default MP4 codec on my project, but almost immeasurable with plus or minus results of less than two seconds. The reason for choosing Let Windows Decide over Power Saving is when exporting in HEVC, the export time is now much closer to the MP4 export times than previously with MEP 2020.

I'm also now getting consistently faster export renders in both MP4 and HEVC in 4K and 1080p.

The way MEP is now handling HEVC seems a big improvement.

4K export from the Tech Tips project. (31:47)

And 1080p (4:39)

I've noticed as well as the nvidia card getting more use in all file formats the amount of DDR6 Vram being used is a lot more than before. During the video portions of the project, the intel GPU is hovering around the 97% usage rate with HEVC. The export times for HEVC are now shorter than the export times I had for MP4 in MEP 2020

To be sure I've no idea which bit is doing what but I'm finding the results to be better.

Again, all of these result are with ticking the 'Calculate video effects on GPU.

Ray.

I will try the "Let windows decide" setting. It's the only thing that I haven't tried.

In the meantime, I am posting this screen shot from Handbrake encode from H.264 to H.265 NVEC on my box.

You can see that 1) my CPU is maxed out. I presume it is doing demux/mux. 2) My UHD 630 is fairly loaded. It is doing decoding. 3) my nVidia is heavily loaded, doing encoding. (Sometimes reaching 85%.)

A 1.5 hour video converted in 25 minutes. 3:1.

I presume that my bottleneck here is my CPU and if I had more cores, then the bottleneck would move to the nVidia.

Of course, there is no editing going on here. Still, I post it as an example of what is possible when it comes to maximum utilization of hardware and, therefore, performance.