Laptop performance issues...

[brashquido]

Hi All,

I'm still using Edius 3.62 as it has been very stable for me and also as I have very basic editing requirements so far V4 has offered nothing I need that would justify the cost of the upgrade.

One thing that possibly could convince me to upgrade is if there is any significant performance improvements with V4 over V3 when dealing with HDV content. I'm using a Dell XPS1210 laptop with an Intel dual core CPU running at 2.16Ghz, 2GB of 667Mhz DDR2 and a 100GB 7200RPM drive and am finding that it simply is not able to keep up with Edius V3 (which it should as it is close to a top of the line laptop, and very similar in spec to the Edius broadcast laptop ). This issue is so bad that I can't even play HDV items from my bin in the playback window for more than a few seconds before the buffer empties out and playback stops. Playing these same HDV clips in an external player works flawlessly.

Until now I've only been doing very small projects with minimal clips and transitions, so it hasn't been too bad. However I am currently trying to wade through 16 hours worth of HDV footage from an extended holiday through Central and South America, and this performance issue is really slowing me down as I have to review each clip externally from Edius before placing it in the timeline to make sure it is the correct clip. Secondary to this is it is also painful when trying to trim clips in Edius before placing them on the timeline. Still love it though :) .

Anyway, point of this entire post is to find out if there is anything I can do differently in Edius 3 to fairly drastically increase performance, and if not does Edius 4 offer any significant performance gains over Edius 3. Would the encoding/format I'm using for capturing my HDV content have any bearing?

[kwshaw1]

Would the encoding/format I'm using for capturing my HDV content have any bearing?

Yes, definitely. I've been editing HDV footage in Edius 4.0 on a laptop similar to yours and finding it barely manageable, so I did a test using the "HQ" capture format and found I could easily do a three-layer PIP in real time from an external USB2 hard drive. Suggest you check whether you can use HQ in version 3; if not then upgrading to 4 might be worth it for this feature alone.

By the way, editing in the HDV format does work tolerably for basic stuff on my Dell Latitude D820, so I'm not sure why you're having so much trouble with it. Moving your footage to an external drive and/or having someone fine-tune your laptop performance might be worth trying.

[brashquido]

Thanks for the reply kwshaw1, very interesting. For some very strange reason it never occurred to me that I should use the Canopus HQ codec. Seems a bit silly now as it is so obvious.

There must've been a reason and the only one I can see right now is that in Edius 3.62 the capture mode has no facility to split scenes using scene change detection. I used the HDV Split program with preview turned off and scene detection on to capture all my video. Thinking about it there was no other way to realistically capture 16 hours of footage as just looking now there are over 3200 files. Is Edius 4 able to split scenes for you automatically on scene change? If so it might be worth looking at doing all again, but otherwise I'm just going to have to **** it up I think.

One other thing. Is there any image quality degradation by using the HQ format? The thought of being able to do effects/transitions in real time simply by using the HQ format is a very very tempting idea. However, again not worth it if it is going to degrade image quality at all.

Finally, I'm not sure why my laptop is running Edius so slowly. I mean not even being able to playback video from the bin is definitely not ideal. Are you able to playback HDV in Edius without it stopping? Also, what format are you using for your HDV clips? I'm using .m2t from my Sony HDR-HC1E.

[Philip]

One other thing. Is there any image quality degradation by using the HQ format? The thought of being able to do effects/transitions in real time simply by using the HQ format is a very very tempting idea. However, again not worth it if it is going to degrade image quality at all.

Finally, I'm not sure why my laptop is running Edius so slowly. I mean not even being able to playback video from the bin is definitely not ideal. Are you able to playback HDV in Edius without it stopping? Also, what format are you using for your HDV clips? I'm using .m2t from my Sony HDR-HC1E.

I'll jump in here. The HQ is one of the better frame based upconverting codec on the market to make HDV easier to edit. THere is very little degradation in the conversion. If you look really hard with the image blown up really big you may be able to detect something. It is hard to see any quality loss. HQ really is easy on the machine compared to native m2t files. Be aware that you hard drive space will need to be increased though. m2T files are the same 13gb per hour as DV. HQ is around 30-40gb hour of video depending on quality settings. With all those files from 16 hours of tape you may be looking at around 500gb of video files and you still need room for audio, project and render files. You may want to look into one of those new 750gb or 1tb drives or possibly build a RAID0.

If I play back m2t files on my newer Dell laptop with a core2Duo it will choke pretty quick. HDV and Edius will play together but not well because Edius previews are full quality and that's lots of data to unpack. Your laptop is probably not behaving too badly under the circumstances. Remember that laptop have a slower Front Side Bus and desktops (normally) so things will be a little slower on the laptop. They don't have true desktop speed yet unless you spend 4000-5000 on one.

[brashquido]

Thanks for the insight Philip :)

Moving to HQ format clips is looking more and more attractive, and the thought of being able to edit in realtime is really starting to convince me of this upgrade. Basically the only things holding me back are;

1) Cost. To use HQ I would need to upgrade to v4 as the capture functionality seems very basic in v3.62 (see point 4).
2) Image quality degradation
3) Having to recapture 16 hours of video using 2~3 times more disk space
4) Ability to capture with scenes automatically split on scene change with dropped frame detection.

Of those I'd say only points 3 & 4 are in anyway significant considering the advantages. Does Edius 4 enable you to split scenes automatically when capturing, or is it still a manual process?

[kwshaw1]

1) Cost. To use HQ I would need to upgrade to v4 as the capture functionality seems very basic in v3.62 (see point 4).

Upgrade priciing is available through Canopus/GV per the following link: http://www.canopus.com/products/upgrades/upgrades.php

2) Image quality degradation

I'd be surprised if this is a noticeable issue compared to the convenience of improving your real-time performance. Try doing a short test capture first using the trial version and see how you feel about it.

3) Having to recapture 16 hours of video using 2~3 times more disk space

Yeah, that would be a bummer...and it is about 3 times more using HQ at the standard quality setting. Another option would be to go through your existing HDV clips and pick the ones you really want to keep, then convert those to HQ using Procoder Express.

4) Ability to capture with scenes automatically split on scene change with dropped frame detection.

Scene detection works fine for me in Edius 4: just pick the settings you want in the program preferences before you start capturing.

[GrassValley_BH]

3) You can also right-click and Convert|File them in the Bin.

[kwshaw1]

If I play back m2t files on my newer Dell laptop with a core2Duo it will choke pretty quick. HDV and Edius will play together but not well because Edius previews are full quality and that's lots of data to unpack.

I can deal with one layer of HDV pretty well on my Dell Latitude D820, and managed to get through a project involving footage from up to three HDV cameras - but I probably won't do that again using native HDV clips. After experimenting with HQ I was surprised to see how well that performs even from a standard USB2 hard drive, so I'm going to try using HQ for my next big project.

[brashquido]

Forgot to reply to this. I've use Procoder Express 2 to transcode a few HDV files to HQ format, and the difference when working with the files is like chalk and cheese. With HDV I can't even play my clips on my high end laptop, yet with HQ I can add transitions/effects all in real time. I'll be converting all my files to HQ before working on them as it is going to save me a stack of time!

[JohnnyD]

HQ

"To use HQ I would need to upgrade to v4 as the capture functionality seems very basic in v3.62"

Huh? What am I missing here? I can capture HQ HDV from my HDV deck with
3.61. And my 4.03 still has basic capturing. 3.61 seems to have less bugs than a 4. version, at least to me.

JDF

[STORMDAVE]

The only addition I see with Canopus HQ is the new Canopus HQ+, which add's full HD (1920x1080) support and Alpha support...but it's still the same great codec with 3.x

[brashquido]

"To use HQ I would need to upgrade to v4 as the capture functionality seems very basic in v3.62"

Huh? What am I missing here? I can capture HQ HDV from my HDV deck with
3.61. And my 4.03 still has basic capturing. 3.61 seems to have less bugs than a 4. version, at least to me.

JDF

What I meant by that is from I understand the capturing functionality in V4 is much richer that what is in V3. I don't have a problem capturing in V3, it's just that there is no ability from what I can see at least to automatically split files up on scene change detection and such. Maybe I am wrong here?

Anyway, all I've done now is continue to use everything I capture using HDV and have used a watch folder in Procoder express to transcode the clips to HQ for editing.