I have a hard time with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050. When I use the CHroma Key effect the picture sometimes freezes, and the processor (Intel Core i5-9400F CPU @ 2.90GHz) is running at more than 90%.
Does it mean the graphic card cannot manage the chroma key effect ? If this is the case, then wich graphic card should do the job?
BTW, I have 32 Gb of RAM, and that does not seem to be the problem.
Thanks
Hi
We need more information - which program and version number and which Chromakey effect, the built in feature or, if installed/available, BorisFX BCC Key & Blend?
John EB
Forum Moderator
Hi Dan.
When you last posted a similar problem you were using an nvidia 1030 I think and trying to use the effect on HD video. If you are now trying to render 4K video I think you are running into similar problems as before as the 3050 is a 3060 GPU with a lot of it functionality capped and marketed as a capable 1080p card and not 4K. But I think it's now worse than that personally if you are trying with 4K material. Your CPU will also be struggling I think if you just try to upgrade the graphics card now. On the other hand, if you are still dealing with HD video then the problem may lie elsewhere such as John Baker is alluding to even if you are not using the Boris Effect version and assuming you have not upgraded from your previous version of MEP / MMS.
Ray.
Hi
. . . . Does it mean the graphic card cannot manage the chroma key effect ? If this is the case, then wich graphic card should do the job? . . . .
The issue could be caused by one or more factors such as video format being chromakeyed, GPU drivers, see note below,, or an unrelated program/software running in the background.
I did some load tests with the Magix Chromakey and the Boris Chromakey on my PC and laptop , specs are in my signature.
Test parameters:
Track 1: background video 1920 x 1080 25fps
Track2: Chromakeyed video - 4K UHD 3840 x 2160 h.264 (AVC) 25 fps with AAC audio
VDL 2026 settings Device options set to RTX 2060.
Results:
% usage figures are CPU / Intel UHD 630 / RTX 2060
No ChromaKey 7 / 11 / 43
Magix Chromakey 34 / 15 / 50
Boris Chromakey 80 / 10 /50
These are average figures of 3 runs, with and without the effect applied, from my PC and Laptop, preview playback was smooth.
Magix chromakey is using the CPU, with a small % of the iGPU and RTX
The Boris chromakey is predominantly CPU with a small % RTX usage, no iGPU.
Note: As per Magix recommendation use the Game Ready Drivers. I am on the latest update 581.29 for the RTX 2060
John EB
Sorry, I should have given you more infos. So here it is :
I am using MAGIX Movie Studio 2023 Version 22.0.3.172 (UDP 3)
BTW I tried MAGIX Movie Studio 2025 cause it comes with Boris Chroma Key, but it was worse, so I came back to 2023.
I show you print screens of all the settings, if it may help.
I am not using 4k, just plain 1920x1080 mp4 files. But I'm pushing the thing a little bit...
Ex:
Track 1: background video 1920 x 1080 30fps
Track2: Chromakeyed video - 1920 x 1080 30fps h.264 + Section + Size/Position
Track3: Chromakeyed video - 1920 x 1080 30fps h.264 + Section + Size/Position
So Tracks 2 and 3 are visible at the same time on the screen with the backgroud video
And I was about to add other Chromakeyed tracks... too much.
I will try the Game ready drivers, seems like the first thing to test right now.
Thank you very much for your comments.
Hi Dan
Thanks for the additional information, that helps.
Rechecking the i5-9400F CPU specs I see it has no hyper threading capability which effectively makes the CPU behave as if it has 12 cores running in parallel.
However, the source videos being 1920 x 1080 are not putting so much load on the CPUs as 4K video does which is a mitigating factor for the lack of hyperthreading, except for the slowdown in MMS 2025 with the BCC Chromakey.
What is the E: drive, a second internal drive, a NAS box or an external USB drive?
Which Antivirus program are using?
John EB
Hi Dan.
I notice you are running three video tracks. Do they all contain and use the audio in the project?
If so I personally find that reducing the amount of buffers but increasing the sampling rates helps with smoothing out playback without introducing audio glitches.
Are you using NB chroma key as you stated earlier in your other posted topic or the Boris or Magix one?
Can you do another screen shot of the Task manager but with the performance tab showing while the program is running?
How much of your graphics card vram is in use as well as the normal ram?
Ray.
The E: drive is a 1Tb internal HD and the C: drive is a 500Gb SSD. The program is installed on the C: and the video files are on the E:
The antivirus is Microsoft Defender
Thanx for your interest in my problem.
1. The 3 video tracks was an exemple. In this project I use more than 3. Only one audio track (wave file) and I remove audio from all the other tracks.
2. I am now using the built-in Magix Chroma Key. The Boris was too heavy, and the Chroma Key Pro don't seem to help.
3. The screen shot I sent the first time was in fact while the program was running with four tracks running: one wave file, one video background and two chromakeyed tracks.
I could send a short clip of what I am trying to achieve. You'll see that it's a lot of data running. But at the same time, when you see that it's something like 2Gb, and the PC has 23Gb RAM...
Do you think I could have better results with another program, like Sony Vegas Pro ?
Hi Dan.
23GBs of ram is an unusual amount of ram. How many physical ram memory sticks are you running? Is it an odd number of sticks?
If so.
Are you aware that having an odd number of ram memory sticks can force a PC to go into single channel memory mode or that having one stick that may be slower, slows down the other memory sticks?
If you do have three memory sticks running try taking the odd one out. Make sure you have one stick in each of the two channels. Preferably from the same batch. It may seem counter intuitive but may give your system a boost.
You also shouldn't need to be running four audio buffers for a single audio track. Try using just two buffers but make the audio sampling at least two steps higher than your current highest setting for both multitrack and especially preview. a setting of 32768 for both should be sufficient. Possibly slightly lower.
Also make sure your M audio sound device is set to the same sampling frequency as the projects sound files.
(Probably 48kHz). That goes for the project settings as well if possible. Don't underestimate how much audio settings can have an impact on smooth playback.
Really it's more about newer programs being made for newer hardware architecture so no I don't personally think running Vegas unless you have an older copy lying around would help.
Ray.
Hi Ray,
You're right, 23 Gb is very unusual, but it's just a typing error... sorry, my fault. It's in fact 32 Gb, two 16 Gb sticks.
As for the audio buffers, I'll take your advice and change from 6 to 2. When you say "a setting of 32768 for both should be sufficient": actually it displays 16 384, does that mean 16 384 each buffer that gives 32768 ? Or do I have to change the value from 16 384 to 32768 ?
The M-Audio interface is in fact set to 48kHz, so I'll check if my audio track is set the same. May be using a mp3 file instead of a wave file should give a little more space too.
My question about Vegas Pro was only because I want to know if some programs use the graphic card in another way than Magix does. The RTX 3050 has 6 Gb of RAM, and in this situation Magix uses only 11% of this.
For your other question: the C: drive has actually 350 Gb of free space. I know, it's a lot. May be I should do my projects on that drive instead of the internal HD. But I often heard that there is a problem with the SSD drives : when you erase data, it re-writes always on the same sectors, so they don't last very long... And I create and delete a lot of files when I woork on these projects.
Thanx again
Hi
. . . . M-Audio interface . . . .
Try unplugging this and play back the project to see if it 'freezes at all.
. . . . I often heard that there is a problem with the SSD drives : when you erase data, it re-writes always on the same sectors, so they don't last very long . . . .
This is incorrect, the SSD controller distributes the writing of data levelling out the number of writes to individual data 'cells' to maximise the lifespan of the drive.
. . . . the C: drive has actually 350 Gb of free space. I know, it's a lot. May be I should do my projects on that drive instead of the internal HD . . . .
While the free space is good, it does not start affecting performance until you get down to about 10 - 15 % free space left.
I have all my projects on a second drive, on my PC it is a SSD drive, and on my laptop an external 'hi speed' USB 3 hard drive, both have SSD C: drives for Windows and software installs.
. . . . Vegas Pro was only because I want to know if some programs use the graphic card in another way than Magix does . . . .
They work through the API's, eg CUDA or OpenCL for computational graphics. Decoding/Encoding go through and the dedicated decoding/encoding modules, where present, for some supported video formats.
. . . . The RTX 3050 has 6 Gb of RAM, and in this situation Magix uses only 11% of this . . . .
This value will vary depending on the content of the video files, ie high detail or fast action will give a higher %age value.
You need to compare the usage with chromakey applied to a 'base' level where no chromakey is applied, the difference is the approx amount of load for the processing of the effect.
For example I repeated the prevoius tests I mentioned above with 1920 x 1080 h.264 encoded video, AAC encoded audio 30fps. and got the following results adding each effect :-
CPU / UHD630 / RTX 2060 %age
No effects 6 / 13 / 15
Size Position 10 / 14 / 35
SP + Chromakey 21 / 14 / 35
As you can see the load contributed by the Magix Chromakey is on the CPU.
John EB
Hi Dan.
I did say "a setting of 32768 for both should be sufficient. Possibly slightly lower." I was being cautious in case the audio file was lengthy or an unusual bit depth or for another reason a large amount needed to be loaded to ram before played back. A sample polling rate of 16384 is actually the next lowest figure available and is reasonable if you are not suffering any audible dropout problems.
@johnebaker is suggesting you use the motherboards internal sound chip in case there is a problem with using the M-Audio sound card. I'm assuming this is an external USB device so could be worth trying. Make sure you have it running on the latest drivers for it and firmware if there were any updates for it if using the internal audio chip doesn't help.
If you are suggesting using an mp3 file instead does that mean the sound track does not belong to any of the video files? If the sound track is wav and 16 bit at 48kHz, that would be the least processing intensive format to use if not a part of a video file. Also if you have sound you do not want on the video files, make sure those tracks are muted in the track headers rather than just pulling down the sound levels on the tracks.
I'm glad the ram figure was a typo. 32 GB is a good amount of motherboard ram. Good amount of free space on the C: drive as well.
If the project is showing only 11% usage of the vram on the 3050, that seems very low. How hard is the GPU itself working? What does the task manager report? What usage of the individual CPU cores also show?
One of the reasons for me asking you to show images from the Task Manager is to see if there are any performance bottlenecks anywhere in the system.
So for a more complex video on my system that also has an internal Intel GPU built onto the CPU die as well as a 12GB 3060 nvidia card I get the following,
The results vary depending on how I set the import, processing and export settings. Above I have also put the Intel GPU to work on the importing.
The playback was far from being smooth if all tracks were enabled at once but exported OK without problems. This was a 4K project.
[Additional] I notice in your Playback program settings you do not have 'Update in the background' in the Display ticked. I feel that setting should be active. Also in the Video/Audio tab you have not set the 'Automatically create frame table on import', which may help.
Ticking the half waveform display and Simple video object display (first and last image) would also lower processing needs but may be difficult to work with visually.
Another difference is you have Downloads and Magix Content on your E drive. I have mine on my C: drive.
John is correct about how SSDs work.
Do not use Windows One drive for anything video editing related. (Just in case there is anything on there.)
You are running Chroma key with Size, position, rotation. That is an additional processing power requirement.
Again, images from Task Manager may help identify where the bottleneck is in the system.
Personally I have always used the nvidia studio drivers but try the game ready drivers. They are the drivers recommended by Magix.
Ray.