Hi

An intelligent  guess would be that the optimization stops the processor(s) maxing out during transitions by reducing the display frame rate - hence the jerkiness - so that other windows functions and software can have some processor time instead of having to wait.

John

Hi John,

Sounds reasonable to me. Do you normally have it enabled or not?

Others?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi

i have mine enabled as I am working with AVCHD and  MOV (H.264 ) files and I only get slow down/jerkiness when processing complex transitions unless I pre-render first.

John

Thanks for bringing this up Terry. It has long troubled me that I am not sure what that is there for and testing has been inconclusive up until now, but you guys have made me think about it in a different light.

I think it is better unticked - in 2013 at least. In this mode it seems to allow higher peaks in CPU usage which is beneficial given the under utilisation of resources during preview, that seems to always have been a flaw with MEP. My system could be described as medium to high performance.

Using windows task manager and the Resource monitor available via the Performance tab in Vista and W7 there is a column called average CPU which shows average CPU usage over recent time. This gives a clearer picture than just looking at the graphs in TM, mainly because you always get a different result each time you play back a section of the timeline, when stuttering occurs. I took a section with 4x 1080 50p clips with a couple of crossfades and replayed this about ten times in quick succession and looked at the highest peak and average with option ticked and unticked and found unticked showed peak usage went from 50% up to 60% and average went up from about 35% to about 43%. Preview did seem to be smoother overall also.

This all fits well with John's estimation and I guess this is why they suggest its use with older and lower performance systems as there is not as much (comparitive) processing overhead left for other processes on these rigs. I have to say, that the fact that this is ticked by default, has always thrown me off the scent but I guess they are trying to cover the lowest common denominator in systems.

It is a pity the manual doesn't give a bit more explanation, as you say.

Thanks

Peter

Hi Peter,

Many thanks for that great feedback on your methodical analysis. Those improvements of 20% or so in your case are pretty striking IMO. I know it depends on so many factors, but that's enough for me: I've switched it OFF.

For this and future discussions involving performance, how would you and others rate my system please? It was once up there but it's now quite old (like me!).

Quad Core Q9450 2.66 GHz, 4 GB DDR2 667 MHz (but under XP, so at most 3 GB, possibly the worst factor), 512 MB nVIDIA GeoForce 8800GT

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

There are a couple of things that will give you an incease in your computer performance - motherboard permitting - upgrade to Windows 7 64bit and add more memory to your system.

John

Hi Terry

My system is much the same as yours except that I have overclocked the processor from 2.83 to 3.5Ghz.but I am seriously considering an upgrade to an I7 and 64bit Win7 etc.

If you go to the top of this page and click on my PC > Performance Check there is a facility to test your PC and rate the performance of its subsystems which you can then compare against everyone else's PC ( 100's of!) that has used the same test. Quite interesting - it put mine somewhere in the middle to lower half although it said my video processing score was quite good but you can see how many points more, the new generation Intel sytems score. Worth a look for a giggle although if I now look in My Overview there is a performance rating lodged in there that appears to be from a totally different PC so I don't know what that's about??

The testing of the Overload Optimization function has made me more convinced there is something strange going on with that GPU Hardware Acceleration in that often when there is a transition that the GPU should assist, the GPU monitor load indication all but shuts down instead (with the associated jerking) and usually does not kick back in untill I stop the preview and start it again.  I think this is related to the random performance we saw with the MPEG4 encoding using HW acceleration. BTW I reverted back to the Nvidia 280.26 driver (from the latest 306.23) which Magix gave the big tick to, but no better. Ticking the DX9 checkbox only reduces the amount of GPU usage and does not help either.

Something is not right.......!

Peter

Hi Peter,

In all this time I'd never noticed that MyPC tool!

But as you see from the following screenshots I don't think much of it:

Error on clicking the online version:

Confusing results with offline version:

Then this (not sure if this was online or offline version, as my second attempt to use the online tool succeeded to some extent.)

Also, why are many users listed as having a Performance Index of zero points? (Some of whom are high ranking.)

And are the online and offline tools both needed?

In short, all very confusing IMO.

--------------------

I agree with your conclusion about something being very wrong with the GPU Hardware Acceleration. Have you made a formal report?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi Terry

There are a couple of things that will give you an incease in your computer performance - motherboard permitting - upgrade to Windows 7 64bit and add more memory to your system.

John

Hi John,

I fully agree. But the daunting prospect of re-installing, tweaking, rewriting a hundred or two macros, etc, etc is a major demotivator to buying my i7 with Win 7! But one day I will have to bite the bullet...

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK