ADVICE PLEASE

CubeAce wrote on 6/13/2021, 7:57 AM

Hi Mark.

Normally I wouldn't advise this but have you tried transferring the project to your C: drive and trying again to see if it is your external hard drive at fault? How many tracks are you running? What effects or titles?

Have you tried using proxy files?

Also what type of external drive is it and what port is it connected to? Has the drive been de-fragmented? Specifications of both please.

The maximum core speed of your processor is listed at 4.6GHz not 2GHz.

It really doesn't matter how powerful a system is if effects and tracks keep being piled on. Sooner or later it will slow down without the aid of some pre-rendering. Some effects are really processor hungry and will not play back in real time without a pre-render of that section. Does the project play if you disable all effects for playback?

Some effects can only be processed by the CPU and cannot be rendered by any GPU so those sections may also have to be pre-rendered.

Although the specs of the new system is much better in theory you must check that both GPUs will be able to be enabled on the laptop at the same time. If not you may be wasting your money. The additional two cores of the new systems CPU could also help though.

My machine is lower specified in some respects to your present one except I have 32 GB of ram and more CPU cores with an nvidia 1650 Super, and I have little difficulty in editing or exporting in 4K. I seldom get above using 16 track though and few of those have audio. I suggest using task manager to see the amount of ram in use on your current project and hard drive activity while playing the project.

Another thing to check is to make sure you are using the wave driver for audio and that the buffers are correctly tuned for the mount of audio tracks being used. Not having that correct can impact the replay quite hard.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/13/2021, 8:10 AM

@MCK

Hi

. . . .a message saying there's a problem with the external hard drive and I need to scan and fix it. All of the media is there. I follow the instructions and run the scan, but the message re-appears. Yet the hard drive is accessible.
Could this be causing the problems? . . . .

This suggests the disk is failing - I had the same issue 2 weeks ago with a Western Digital Elements 2TB USB HDD. Over, about 3 days, the disk took longer and longer to respond, Windows kept saying it required scanning, which worked initially, then the scanning started failing. The drive could also not be formatted and ended up hanging Windows Explorer every time it was plugged in.

If you do not have any backups I would suggest not using the drive until you can get it backed up.

The laptop will handle 4K video, the T1000 does have the necessary features, though it is not a particularly fast GPU compared to the likes of the GTX 1650, nor is it listed on the Nvidia Studio drivers compatibility list, however it does support 4K.

However, IMHO, the question is what performance do you expect ie:-

are you happy to work with proxy files? The SSD drive is certainly big enough to use them.
are the longer export times, possibly several hours, a limiting factor for you?
is working with a 4K 15.6" screen going to be suitable for you.

On point 3 - if you have not already seen the size of icons, text etc on a 4K 15.6" screen, I would suggest, if you have a computer store near you, having a look at one before you purchase.

HTH

John EB

MCK wrote on 6/13/2021, 8:35 AM

CUBEACE: Many thanks. Am going to check the points you made. By the way, I am using nowhere near 16 tracks.
JOHN: Are points 1, 2 and 3 relating to the laptop I am considering buying? Are the longer export times because the T1000 isn't the fastest?
I normally have proxy files on. And my current laptop is 15"... have grown used to it.

MARK

johnebaker wrote on 6/13/2021, 10:27 AM

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

Mark is quoting the base frequency which is the one that should be quoted. The software system specs are based on this as not all processors, particularly older ones, do not have have, or have a very limited, turbo mode.

The maximum frequency (turbo) is the design maximum, subject to load limitation, heat sink efficiency and the core temperature/stepdown speed profile of the particular chip.

@MCK

Hi Mark

Points 1,2 and 3 are relating to the any laptop with similar combinations of CPU/GPU ie Intel processor/ Nvidia, or AMD graphics card/chipset and the screen size/resolution.

. . . . Are the longer export times because the T1000 isn't the fastest? . . . .

No, this refers to what you can expect if the Intel iGPU, is not available for hardware accelerating the export render process. In the case of the i7-10850H the integrated Intel® UHD Graphics for 10th Gen Intel® Processors may be disabled and cannot be enabled to run in a 'hybrid' mode.

The big problem I met from several manufacturers and suppliers, when I was looking for a new laptop and asked, they either would not tell me until I bought a machine - which by then it is too late, or the sales/technical departments did not understand the requirement for both GPU's to work in a 'hybrid' mode.

HTH

John EB

MCK wrote on 6/13/2021, 10:33 AM

Understood.
I am copying all project files from the dodgy hard drive to another one. Then I can check if the problem is the external drive after all.
The total size of the filrd exceeds that of my laptop's hard drive, so I cannot go down that route.

CubeAce wrote on 6/13/2021, 10:47 AM

@johnebaker @MCK

Hi John.

Not really a user of laptops and have good heat dispersion as you know so haven't really experienced thermal throttling. Even so, would it throttle all the way down to base frequency?

Hi Mark.You said.

The total size of the filrd (files) exceeds that of my laptop's hard drive, so I cannot go down that route.

That may well be the source of your current problem.

When the project gets loaded from MEP ready to play, it is loaded into ram. If there is not enough ram, the excess that would normally be loaded to ram at any one time is placed on the C: drive in virtual memory. That in itself would slow the program down but if the C: drive is particularly full without enough space to do that it could freeze the project.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/13/2021, 11:36 AM

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . Not really a user of laptops and have good heat dispersion as you know so haven't really experienced thermal throttling. Even so, would it throttle all the way down to base frequency? . . . .

That greatly depends on the load, the thermal throttling profile and how dust free the heatsinks are, if the laptop is a few of years old, and never had the heatsinks/fans checked/cleaned then throttling is likely to occur when rendering.

@MCK

Hi Mark

Does your current laptop have the capability of having a second drive installed?

With the current laptop specs, that you are using proxy files and, assuming there is no Nvidia or AMD GPU, in it then it should handle 4K easily, and with hardware acceleration on export.

. . . . The total size of the filrd exceeds that of my laptop's hard drive . . . .

Are you saying that the 4K video files exceeds the free capacity of the SSD ie are more than the 330GB free space - ie there is 12+ hrs of 4K video?

If so, is all the video on the timeline?

John EB

MCK wrote on 6/13/2021, 12:10 PM

Hi John
I have a folder on the external with various sub-folders. All the footage I need is here and the total size of the folder is 1.3TB. But the film itself is about 100 minutes.

CubeAce wrote on 6/14/2021, 5:39 AM

@MCK @johnebaker

Hi Mark.

I am only replying at this point because I'm not sure if John has seen your reply and because of John's superior knowledge of using laptops I am less certain now of the causes of your problem.

I am going to assume that the project started OK but at some point started to either slow down in response due to added material or adding effects. If that is correct, have you tried running the project with all effects turned off?

That can be done using the blue lightning symbol and ticking the 'Deactivate effects' box.

If that works we can probably rule out both the project drive problems and the amount of free space on the C: drive, but not necessarily other related problems.

The length of the project (As long as the project export doesn't exceed a defined amount of frames that I can't remember but John can) that should not matter, but.

Because video editing is non destructive every clip you add is added whole and just started and stopped and added at specific points where you have made edits. The program is an instruction set, telling the project which part of which clip to present in which order and time length to be re-encoded into a new file for export.

That is an awful lot of data being pushed around the system, loaded and dumped into memory or onto drives and shifted around while the program runs.

[Edit] Another possible problem may be the type of video clip added. An H265 video clip would need a lot more processing power than using an H264 video.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/14/2021, 7:01 AM

@MCK, @CubeAce

Hi Mark, Ray

. . . . All the footage I need is here and the total size of the folder is 1.3TB. But the film itself is about 100 minutes . . . .

Of the 1.3TB of video, how much of that, actually belongs to, or is used in the project that is causing issues - I would be surprised if all that video was actually used in the project.

Can you post a screenshot of the Project settings, Movie Information tab.

At 100 minutes the project length is well within the capabilities of MEP 2021 which is restricted to a maximum project length of 6 hrs according to the manual, however no fps is quoted for that time. If you work on an absolute maximum of 1,064,875 frames, this I believe is the maximum number the frame counter can store, divided by the project fps will give you how much you can load on to the timeline

When you load a video on to the timeline, the video clip in itself is not added to the project, what you see on the timeline is actually a reference to the video file the .H0 and .HDP files created on import are representations of the clip - these are what you 'see' on the timeline.

John EB

MCK wrote on 6/14/2021, 5:13 PM

Alas, I cannot check any details about the project because it literally won't respond anymore. But I can confirm that the lightning symbol, and all three options, is selected.
I emailed a PC seller about a laptop and received the following reply:
"'I'd recommend connecting an external GPU for 4K video editing/gaming requirements..."
and he suggested this product...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Razer-External-Enclosure-Thunderbolt-Connection/dp/B07D9CD8M9/ref=pb_allspark_dp_session_sims_pao_desktop_2/258-1692191-5593644?pd_rd_w=U4Hvy&pf_rd_p=a80b8663-76e7-42fc-9cdf-f601eec9bc07&pf_rd_r=7CS7TES3T3R6793PJBYP&pd_rd_r=3ccc70b3-c50e-488a-91aa-088515c9dfc3&pd_rd_wg=R5O2H&pd_rd_i=B07D9CD8M9&psc=1
I'd never heard of external GPU. Any thoughts?

MARK

CubeAce wrote on 6/14/2021, 6:23 PM

@MCK

Sorry to hear that Mark, so we don't even know if the project has corrupted or not.

That link is just to a case and power supply along with an interface. There is no graphics card supplied and it needs a thunderbolt 3 connection.

Do you know the codecs used on the files? Are they H265? (HEVC)?

Ray.

MCK wrote on 6/15/2021, 2:58 AM

How do I check the codecs? Can't see anything under Properties.
I successfully transferred all the files from the faulty portable hard drive to a different portable hard drive. But then I got a message saying that the new drive had an error. So I ran the scan and, as always, it said something like "Scan successfully completed, no faults found". What's that all about?

CubeAce wrote on 6/15/2021, 3:37 AM

@MCK

Hi Mark.

You need to download MediaInfo and look at the text view. It should show you the type of codec in use.

What is telling you there is a hard drive problem? MEP or Windows?

What type of hard drive and what is its rotation speed \ cache size \ USB type? It may just not be fast enough.

Ray.

Scenestealer wrote on 6/15/2021, 5:58 AM

@CubeAce @johnebaker @MCK

I normally have proxy files on. And my current laptop is 15"... have grown used to it.

. . All the footage I need is here and the total size of the folder is 1.3TB. But the film itself is about 100 minutes . . . .

"Of the 1.3TB of video, how much of that, actually belongs to, or is used in the project that is causing issues - I would be surprised if all that video was actually used in the project."

If there is 100 minutes of 4K plus all the lowly (de)compressed .mxv proxies on there then there is a massive amount of data on one (or both) of the drives for us to consider!

Peter

johnebaker wrote on 6/15/2021, 6:42 AM

@MCK

Hi

The cost of the external GPU box and graphics card would set you back somewhere between £470 and £690 - based on a the GTX 1650 price depends on specific model and supplier.

Putting that in perspective, the cost is approximately 1/3 to 1/2 the price of a brand new laptop with 10th gen Intel processor and a much faster RTX 2060 graphics card.

IMHO - avoid.

. . . . I cannot check any details about the project because it literally won't respond anymore. . . . .

How big does Windows File Explorer say the project file is ?

Is it all video on the timeline or a mix of video and still images?

If video and images what percentage (roughly) is the video content?

Are there a lot of effects applied to objects on the timeline?

John EB

MCK wrote on 6/15/2021, 9:49 AM

Just got a spare moment to ask your opinions on this laptop (yes, another one, but not being able to work on the project is so frustrating!).

ASUS Zenbook Pro Duo UX581LV i9 10980HK 32GB RTX 2060 1TB OLED Gaming Laptop
Storage Type:SSD
Operating System:Windows 10
RAM Size:32 GB
Graphics Processing Type:Dedicated Graphics
Processor:Intel Core i9 10th Gen.
Hard Drive Capacity:1 TB
Screen Size:15.6 in
GPU:NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060
This laptop features 8 cores and 16 threads.
The highlight is the dual display, the main one being a 4K UHD OLED Multitouch display, with a secondary touch display between the main screen and the keyboard.

What do you think?

Mark

CubeAce wrote on 6/15/2021, 10:28 AM

@MCK

Hi Mark.

Assuming you get to use both GPUs I personally like it but bear in mind I don't use laptops. It will eat battery life and will probably need to be mains powered most of the time, but very nice.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/15/2021, 11:05 AM

@MCK

Hi Mark

This one has a lot going for it if, as @CubeAce has commented, 'Assuming you get to use both GPUs'.

There is one downside side for me, and that is because I switch between PC and laptop frequently, the lower touch screen makes the keyboard smaller then I would be happy with, however from what you have said before though, this may not be an issue for you.

As Ray has commented, 'It will eat battery life and will probably need to be mains powered most of the time'

This is very true, particularly when the RTX starts assisting acceleration in MEP/VPX on my laptop. I get about 4 hours battery usage when editing, however as soon as I start exporting the battery lasts about 1 hr from full charge. The power pack for mine weighs in at about 900 grams (2 lbs) and delivers 230W of power - 11.5 Amps at 20V.

Plus points:

Good brand - was the in my top 3 when I was looking.
The dual numberpad / mouse touchpad being to one side is a big bonus - no accidental brushing your hand over it when typing - the mouse flying off was a bit of an issue with my old laptop.
If possible, dropping the MEP media pane onto the lower screen.

HTH

John EB

Scenestealer wrote on 6/15/2021, 5:01 PM

Hi

Graphics Processing Type:Dedicated Graphics

Nicely speced machine but that comment tends to indicate that the Nvidia is the only GPU that is activated!

Peter

CubeAce wrote on 6/15/2021, 6:21 PM

@Scenestealer

Hi Peter.

It seems odd to use a processor with inbuilt HD 630 graphics and then disable it. It's marketed as an all round workhorse.

The Asus tech phone helpline for the UK is 01442 265548 for laptops so I'm assuming each country has a phone helpline to ask such questions.

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/16/2021, 6:03 AM

@CubeAce

Hi Ray

. . . . It seems odd to use a processor with inbuilt HD 630 graphics and then disable it. It's marketed as an all round workhorse. . . .

For most things this would not matter.

It is common practice with laptops to mix Intel with Nvidia or AMD GPU's, however, in some cases as soon as a 3rd party device is added into the mix the iGPU is automatically disabled in the BIOS, in others the manufacturer deliberately disable it and offer no way to enable it.

If the iGPU has been disabled in the BIOS only, and the option to enable it is there, then it can be turned back on; however this may may require a monitor or Headless Ghost plugged into the laptop video out port to fully activate the iGPU.

You also do have to get past convincing them of the software's need for the iGPU to be available - 😖.

John EB

CubeAce wrote on 6/16/2021, 7:46 AM

@johnebaker

I do understand it's an uphill struggle to convince any manufacturer to change anything but MEP and VPX are not alone in using the two GPUs. Edius also uses the two GPUs as can Premier. There may well be others I'm not aware of. I would have hoped that Asus of all manufacturers would understand that.

Yes, I would think a headless ghost would be needed unless one GPU could be placed on the second monitor. That could be problematic looking at the Asus software suite controlling the video side of things.

I know there are many more gamers willing to pay more for top model machines but really. 😡

Ray.

johnebaker wrote on 6/16/2021, 8:39 AM

@CubeAce

Hi

. . . . Yes, I would think a headless ghost would be needed unless one GPU could be placed on the second monitor. . . . .

Would you believe that my Lenovo does not need a headless ghost the iGPU is fully functional with out one, I suspect it is something to do with the Vantage software.

. . . . Edius also uses the two GPUs as can Premier. . . . .

They can however they can also happily run with one or the other - for HWA NVENC is the 'preferred' option.

John EB