MEP 17 HD patch and cpu at high levels

emmrecs wrote on 7/18/2017, 3:38 AM

Hi.

By sort of putting together the information you give I gather your computer has an AMD dual-core CPU @ 2GHz (hopefully NOT MHz, as you wrote) and 3GB RAM. Is that correct?

If so, then I fear your set-up is considerably under-powered. I realise you are still using a version of MEP that is now quite "old" but I think even MEP 17HD really needed a faster, possibly quad-core CPU and more RAM. If at all possible you should seriously consider upgrading your hardware.

To directly answer your question about the possibility of removing the latest patch, the only possible method I know is if you have a System Restore Point which was created before the patch was installed you may be able to successfully roll-back your computer.

Jeff

steve1000 wrote on 7/18/2017, 3:03 PM

Thanks Jeff,

I know my system is really under powered.....I had hoped that tweaking in many ways would make it workable

to a point, including shutting down all background tasks and anything that would consume CPU.

I had done a really extensive video project on this system before, not at a great smooth speed either,

but it was workable. For the record, now I load 1 1920x1080 video in the arranger and that's all.....which now

pegs the CPU up in the 90 to 100 percent when just doing nothing and being idle. I now will work on getting

another CPU because this one is lacking, but it never pegged before when just at idle.

Thanks for the restore point scenario, and I will test again if I'm able to remove the patch.

Most appreciated Jeff!

emmrecs wrote on 7/19/2017, 3:38 AM

Hi and thanks for the additional information.

1920 x 1080 (HD) video is pretty demanding of all but the highest spec systems! Your mention of the CPU being up in the 90 to 100 percent when just doing nothing and being idle leads me to wonder whether MEP is attempting to create proxy (= low resolution "working copy") files in order to make editing of the footage much easier? Does MEP 17 have that facility? If so, is it turned on? (Check the Help files for details on this). If so, given the rather low spec of your machine I would strongly recommend allowing MEP to complete this task. You then "edit" using these proxy files but the final export will use the full HD files as the source, so no quality is lost.

A "better" CPU would certainly be beneficial but check first what your motherboard will support. Quad-core Intel i5 or i7 seem very popular amongst users here, AMD rather less so, I think.

The amount of RAM available also makes a considerably difference to the speed and efficiency with which video editing takes place. Your mention of 3Gb leads me to wonder whether you are using a 32 bit version of Windows? If so, there is no point in increasing that to more than 4Gb since a 32 bit OS can see and use only about 3.25 Gb.

In the longer term, if you wish to really exploit the possibilities of video editing and to possibly update your version of MEP, you will certainly need a 64 bit operating system. I made the change from 32 bit Win 7, with 4 Gb RAM and Intel Quad-core Q9600 to 64 bit Win 10, 32 Gb RAM, intel i7, just over a year ago. The speed and additional ease of use for all kinds of tasks, including video editing, is rather like chalk and cheese!

HTH
Jeff

johnebaker wrote on 7/19/2017, 4:04 AM

Hi

. . . . wonder whether MEP is attempting to create proxy (= low resolution "working copy") files in order to make editing of the footage much easier . . . .

MEP 17 HD does not support proxy files nor hardware acceleration.

. . . . A "better" CPU would certainly be beneficial but check first what your motherboard will support . . .

Agreed, however, IMO, it does mean a complete new PC. The AMD motherboard use a different socket, Intel and modern AMD processors will not fit.

Without knowing the full spec of the PC, a few assumptions would have to be made, however if this is an older AMD dual core PC, which has not been upgraded in any way, then it is likely that most of the components in it cannot be reused as they are incompatible with modern hardware.

HTH

John EB

Recycler wrote on 7/21/2017, 2:41 PM

The amount of RAM available also makes a considerably difference to the speed and efficiency with which video editing takes place. Your mention of 3Gb leads me to wonder whether you are using a 32 bit version of Windows? If so, there is no point in increasing that to more than 4Gb since a 32 bit OS can see and use only about 3.25 Gb.

( My apologies to steve1000 for hijacking his thread...)

@Jeff: your comments about RAM are of interest to me. For yonks I've been working on 64bit Win 7 and now Win10, always on 16GB RAM machines (details in my sig.) and using MEP 2016 Plus, 2017 Plus and recently VPX. I'd always assumed (and hoped!) that the Magix family would utilise a significant fraction of that RAM to improve performance, and yet I've never seen the usage go much beyond 4.2, 4.4GB. As I type, VPX on the machine in question is grinding through a down render from 1080p to DVD, with lots of picture in picture work, and yet the usage is just 5GB. Am I missing a trick here, please?

- Mike -

terrypin wrote on 7/21/2017, 4:54 PM

Mike,

i get similar usage and have also wondered why it's so low.

Terry, UK

johnebaker wrote on 7/21/2017, 5:41 PM

Hi

. . . . As I type, VPX on the machine in question is grinding through a down render from 1080p to DVD, with lots of picture in picture work, and yet the usage is just 5GB. Am I missing a trick here, please? . . . .

I suspect MEP is using this low amount of RAM because it is using the Windows paging file.

If you look at rendering, I have just been testing this watching the C drive and the rendered file destination drive activity, it would appear that the video is rendered to either the Windows page file portion assigned to MEP or a temp file on the C drive.

At the end of rendering, the complete rendered video file is offloaded in to the empty file waiting for it on the destination drive or file on the same hard drive.

I suspect with longer timelines, if the paging file is used, then once the paging file approaches the limit assigned to MEP, Windows or MEP then off loads the rendered video so far, to the destination file and then continues using the paging file.

One of the recommended 'tricks' to increase performance, if you have sufficient RAM - which IIRC the minimum is 32 GB - is to reduce the maximum paging file size to 2GB or less, to force Windows to use RAM. However if you reduce the page file to a a very low value or zero, it does stop Windows collecting data and creating crash dumps, in the event of a crash - this is OK except when you are trying to find the cause of the crash.

HTH

John EB

Scenestealer wrote on 7/21/2017, 7:36 PM

Hi

I have seen a little over 10GB in the past, MEP2016 I think, but can't remember what the project or process was that was happening at the time.

Edit:- Just tried this with a VPX 16min project 1080 50p .mts render and it was writing all the time to the export file on my Video (F) drive. No sign of pagefile activity in Resource Monitor either, and about 6GB of RAM usage.

Peter

Recycler wrote on 7/22/2017, 11:58 AM

I suspect MEP is using this low amount of RAM because it is using the Windows paging file.

JohnEB's post raises the question with me of "Why?". I'm puzzled why Magix have seemingly engineered their product (and I would imagine memory management is far too complex for it to have happened "by accident") to use the slower storage option rather than available physical RAM? As I understood it, the OS resorts to the paging file system only when it senses more memory is needed than can be provided by the physical RAM. So I assume that Magix have deliberately engineered their code the way it is, but with my limited knowledge I can't think why that might be.

My own machine has the luxury of an SSD C drive which I noticed was set for use as paging file. As an experiment I altered it to use my data drive (a hybrid SSD/HDD, presumably slightly slower), but saw no increase in physical RAM usage.

It just strikes me a lot of us may have been putting money into unnecessary RAM that might have been more productive going up to the next grade of CPU!

[Masochistic readers with considerable reserves of coffee may care to review Mark Russinovich's authoritative commentary on virtual memory here.]

- Mike -

johnebaker wrote on 7/22/2017, 4:55 PM

Hi Mike

. . . . I'm puzzled why Magix have seemingly engineered their product . . . . to use the slower storage option rather than available physical RAM . . . . I would imagine memory management is far too complex for it to have happened "by accident" . . . .

Memory management is a complex subject, in principle Windows controls all memory management. There are a defined set of rules a program must follow - the Windows equivalent of 'rules of the road', and these are determined by Microsoft in the memory management functions of Windows.

Programs can have limited control of memory - usually deciding what memory already allocated it has finished with and can re-use without going back to Windows to do the release or request more.

When a program requires more memory, it must ask Windows for more, it cannot grab more memory directly as this would give rise to memory violations and cause issues with Windows and other running programs.

. . . . It just strikes me a lot of us may have been putting money into unnecessary RAM that might have been more productive going up to the next grade of CPU! . . . .

More RAM means Windows / programs will not use the paging file so much if at all in some situations, the paging file just has to be there.

In my experience, upgrading to another generation of quad core processor does not give such a big increase in performance, in real situations, as one would expect. For example, a while ago I tested MEP on my i5 4670K against an i5 6600K, the increase in performance was not significant enough for me to consider upgrading to a newer processor, the most likely upgrade I will make is to add more RAM to my system.

HTH

John EB