Hi Peter,

I tried a couple of times, I think, by reopening MEP and the NB Skin Touch Up gave me the same problem, even with the image pre-rendered. Today when I opened the program, the pre-rendering was still there. I ran the playback marker over the images and there was absolutely no slow down.

This may be due to changing the Video Mode to "Standard Renderer" during the last session. It was at "Alternative mode 1..."

With GPU-Z, I could get the GPU load up to 65% by running the playback marker back and forth across the image with the NB effect or over the Pixelan effect. Playback on the monitor was smooth.

The first image on the timeline is the one with the NB effect. I noticed that the pre-rendered range starts slightly past the beginning of the image. When I place the playback marker at the beginning and press play, there is a long delay (about 5s) and then I get a pre-loading and finally play starts. CPU gets to 7% over the NB effect, then drops to about 3% over the Pixelan effect. I used the same image for both effects.

So, it's strange, but I still think that the NB Skin Touch Up effect need to be pre-rendered in order to scroll over them, whereas the Pixelan SmartBlur Pro effect does not. I will do more testing.

Below are screen shots of GPU-Z:

Thanks,

Another strange one: as I mentioned, the pre-rendering (preview-rendering) did not start at the beginning, and it extended slightly beyond the end of my image. I had moved the second image slightly to the right because of this. I went back, checked my range and it was at the beginning of the the timeline/image and at the end of the image. I zoomed in to single frame level to confirm this. I ran preview rendering on the range again and it was still off of my range by 3 frames to the right of the start and extended 1 frame to the right of the end of the image.

Is this normal?

The problem with not starting at the beginning was that everytime I moved the playback marker to the start of the timeline, it would hang there for a while. Pressing play took about 8s (I said 5 but it was longer) doing nothing before starting pre-loading. Why pre-loading each time?

I did a few tests.

Test 1

Here is the screen shot of the preview rendering and the range selected, first image at left end, second at right end:

Why does the pre-rendering only start at the fourth frame?

Why does pre-rendering extend 1 frame beyond the range?

Test 2

For the next shots, I moved the image 4 frames to the right on the timeline so that the start was frame 5, reset the range to be at the beginning and end of the image, and pre-rendered the range again, pre-rendering started 1 frame to the left and finished 3 frames before the end of the image and 2 frames before the end of the range. Also, the range changed to be 1 frame before the end of the image.

I went back and reset the range to the end of the image - end of the last frame while zoomed in to single frame, put the playback marker at the beginning of the image, i.e. frame 5 of the timeline which is the beginning of the image. When I clicked on pre-render, range, the range bar start jumped 1 frame to the left. When pre-rendering was complete, the range start jumped back to the beginning of the image, and the pre-rendered start was 1 frame to the left of my image, 3 frames to the left of the end, but at least this time the range end was at the end of my image.

I can only guess that preview rendering cannot start a 0, only at the end of the third frame.

Now with my image starting later and pre-rendering starting 1 frame early, I have no delay and no preloading when I press play with the playback marker at the very beginning of the timeline, but I have a hole at the beginning of the timeline.

Do you get similar results?

Test 3

I inserted the black background into the first 4 frames so that there was no longer any blank space. I re-rendered the same range. The pre-render line (green) still starts 1 frame before my range. Now when I place the playback marker at the beginning, there is no delay and no pre-loading.

I have experienced this pre-loading delay often. Inserting 4 frames at the beginning of the timeline may solve this problem. More testing required.

Comments?

Hi John

Firstly, the comments and GPU/CPU usage I was referring to are all made during preview without Preview rendering the clips. I do not use this feature much but will have a play with your observations when I have more time.

I presume your screen shots of GPU-z were made without MEP previewing but I notice that in the first one at the bottom, Direct compute  5.0 is the only one ticked which if I am not mistaken means that GPU-z is reporting that the Intel HD graphics is the only thing active and that Open CL on your Radeon card is not accesible / functioning. NB say in the Video Essentials Specs. that Intel HD is not supported.

Also the Core clock on the sensors screen shot is only showing it is running at less than half speed at 400Mhz. With MEP open it should be showing the full 850Mhz the card is capable of if the card settings are set for "maximum" or "adaptive" performance. 

Further more I would expect to see a lot more usage of the CPU than 3 - 7% during preview, but I presume this is with prerendering present?

Maybe a screenshot of TM and GPU-z during preview of NB and Pixelan with no prerendering would be interesting.

Peter

Hi Peter,

The GPU Core Clock does go to 850 if there is something on the screen and moving. I noticed that it drops down to 400 MHz if I stop playback and wait a couple of seconds.

For the Open CL, it would seem that you are correct; it is not accessible. Is it supposed to function?

I will monitor CPU and do another clean test with NB. NB works with my card. See this thread. I think that NB says that you need Open GL, not CL.

I will have to take a couple of days off here. Just bought a new desk unit, U-shaped, at my wife's urging, and I have to clean out my home office to be able to construct this new 1000 piece structure, before Friday or else. As Rumpole use to say: "She who must be obeyed..."

Hi

@John CB

Have you done rendering speed comparisons between the integrated HD graphics and the Radeon card?

From experimentation I have done the integrated HD is faster then the Radeon cards I tested.

The OpenCL (or CUDA) should only be used if you have the HWA turned on.  During rendering you should see when the GPU is being used.  |For CUDA you will see (CUDA) appear, for Intel graphics the words (QuickSync), what the wording is for OpenCL I do not know

. . . .She who must be obeyed..." . . . .

Hope your wife does not read the forums!!!!!

John

Hi JohnCB

The GPU Core Clock does go to 850 if there is something on the screen and moving. I noticed that it drops down to 400 MHz if I stop playback and wait a couple of seconds.

This May mean that in the Graphics card settings there may be a performance setting called "Adaptive" which cuts the clock rate back to save power when there is not work to do. I have mine set on "Prefer Maximum performance" so that it stays on the full clock rate whilst a 3D aplication is open. It throttles back when I close MEP but is always ready in its most responsive state when needed during preview.

For the Open CL, it would seem that you are correct; it is not accessible. Is it supposed to function?

Open CL, Cuda and Direct Compute are all there for the purpose of allowing the GPU to carry out parallel processing with the CPU and not just graphics layer tasks. GPU-z shows all 3 are available on my card but which one is used by NB is anyones guess. Your card's specs say that it supports open CL and Direct compute so the latter must be doing your realtime preview rendering of the NB effect.

 I confess I am a little confused by NB's comments / requirements, and assumed that as they said that CUDA was necessary on the Nvidia cards, that the Radeon cards also needed parallel processing, which I assumed would be Open CL. Whether this is installed as a component of Open GL 2.1, I do not know.

Not easy to keep "Her" happy when you spend many hours on the PC playing with Magix MEP!

Best

Peter

Hi

. . . . Open CL. Whether this is installed as a component of Open GL 2.1 . . .

These are two entirely seperate graphics progamming languages.

Open CL = Open Computing Language - a framework for writing programs - gives access to a graphics processing unit for non-graphical computing and is often confused with:

Open GL = Open Graphics Library - a cross-programming language, multi-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics.

For completeness - Direct Compute is a part of Direct X 11 and later versions.

HTH

John

Hi JohnEB

I am aware that the 2 are different (albeit at the limit of my knowledge in that area) but thought that the 2 were interelated in terms of the current discussion, bought about by New Blues comment that the card needed to be OpenGL capable, along with mention of an Nvidia Card with CUDA. The fact that the card needs to be Open GL capable may have nothing to do with the parallel processing issue.

My interest was peaked by John CB's comments that the NB Skin touch up did not seem to be performing well, and that GPUz did not report OpenCL capability on his Radeon Card which might have some bearing on NB's ability to render the effect on the fly. I believe the real time rendering of the NB effects preview is a parallel computing acceleration as opposed to a Graphics layer rendering task but with the absence of Open CL it appears that MS Direct Compute is taking care of that to some extent. It may perform better with OpenCL or even an Nvidia (Cuda) card.

John CB - maybe check the driver details in Device manager to see if the OpenCL.dll is part of the driver package you have installed. Do you have the Catalyst driver 11.11 or later recommended by NB installed?

Hows that desk going?

Peter

Hi

. . . . New Blues comment that the card needed to be OpenGL capable, along with mention of an Nvidia Card with CUDA . . .

If that is the case then the ATI Radeon HD5770 only satisfies half of the requirements  - according to NVidia specs - the HD5770 is a DirectX 11 (inc Direct Compute 11) and Open GL only graphics card - it does not support Open CL or CUDA - which is born out by John CB's image showing only DirectCompute capability.

John

"it does not support Open CL or CUDA"

At the bottom of the 5770 specs. page it says it has ATI Stream acceleration technology - OpenCL 1.0 support, as well as Direct Compute11. There is also a footnote saying that this was not going to be enabled untill late 2010 so it may just be a newer driver required.

Peter

Gentlemen,

The desk has been put together except for about 50 screw covers and I still have move my, ah, stuff back into my office and organize it. I also winterized the tent-trailer as I was informed that there will be a winter again this year. Didn't have a trailer last year. Just got my computer and peripherals all back together, wires all sorted out (I hope) and it all seems to work. I'll get back on this on Sunday.

Thanks for keeping up the discussion.

Hi Peter

Oops - missed the footnotes .

. . . . it may just be a newer driver required. . . . 

Most definitely - the drivers John CB has installed are very out of date the latest version I can find is 14.9

John

Yes, that driver showing in GPUz must be the original that the card came with in 2009!!

Just had a wee look at the Tute for Skin Touch up on NB's site where they describe getting rid of wrinkles specifically.....hmmm..... Quite clever really- you just select the darker skin colour in the creases with the eye dropper and it provides the most blending in that area.

Hey JohnCB - as long as it is only screw covers you have left over then things are looking good.

Peter

Hi,

I have a few minutes before getting back to arranging my office and put up some shelving in my wife's office. I have a much larger work surface but less drawer space, so I have to find a way to hide all of the junk. For the famous desk, there are 536 pieces plus a dozen nails; I added them up. I also managed to somewhat modify the mass of wires going to the power bars. Instead of being all over the floor, they are now mounted on the wall.

I checked my ATI Radeon HD 5770 driver before posting the information. I had updated it earlier this year, and checking again showed that it was up to date, at least according to the search done by Windows. I checked on the site and downloaded and installed version 14.9.

Here are the new parameters:

OpenCL is now checked.

I went back and unrendered the NB Skin Touch Up effect and it still drags; I had to re-render it to be able to scroll across it. I'll reboot and try again later.

Thanks for pointing out that my driver was way out of date. Windows should have picked this up, but I guess with ATI now belonging to AMD, Windows couldn't find the new driver.

As I mentioned, Pixelan SmartBlur Pro does the same job as the NB effect, but allows a second mask in the effect to limit the extend of the smoothing. In my example that I will demonstrate in a couple of days, with 2 people or images with similar skin tones, NB smooths both. Pixelan allows me limit the area to smooth only one face.

More later.

Hi,

I wonder if the "ATI error - can't load HydraDMH.dll" that comes on the screen when I boot is causing me problems. I was ignoring this until now. aAter loading the new driver, I noticed on the first reboot a message about problems with the ATI message centre or something. I should have noted it properly because it hasn't reappeared with subsequent reboots. I looked up this problem and it seems that I have to remove all things ATI and reinstall. Not relishing the thought of doing this.

Has anyone ever seen this error?

Thanks,