Not utilizing full processor

[aggiestudd07]

Last week I made a slideshow for my buddy's wedding using Ulead Videostudio 11.X. When the video was rendering, both in low quality WMV and high quality AVI, the processor never exceeded more than 40% overall usage, no single core exceeded 60% usage, and my ram never saw more than 45% used.

is there any way to make the program use more resources to run faster other than just setting affinity to that process (which doesnt help)? i wouldnt mind the computer actually breaking a sweat to get the project done a little quicker. any suggestions? rig is in my sig

 

[Eulogy]

HDD I/O would be my next guess as to what was actually holding you back.

 

[aggiestudd07]

HDD I/O would be my next guess as to what was actually holding you back.

but the project itself, with all images and songs, would have easily completely fit into the available ram i had. i had originally suspected that as well, but do you think its possible that videostudio isnt designed to utilize all of the ram?

 

[commandercup]

thats always possible

or... it could be that the program isn't optimized very well for quad cores? (I assume you have one since you said no single core was used more than 60%)

also... you could try raising the program priority (is that what its called?) so that the program will assume more control of CPU cycles and RAM space since that will be the first thing your PC will allocate its resources to

 

[aggiestudd07]

thats always possible

or... it could be that the program isn't optimized very well for quad cores? (I assume you have one since you said no single core was used more than 60%)

also... you could try raising the program priority (is that what its called?) so that the program will assume more control of CPU cycles and RAM space since that will be the first thing your PC will allocate its resources to

ya i had already tried the program priority previously and it didnt help.

the ulead website said that the new version is optimized for intel quad cores, so i was hoping for a little more performance

 

[Eulogy]

ya i had already tried the program priority previously and it didnt help.

the ulead website said that the new version is optimized for intel quad cores, so i was hoping for a little more performance

If the app's quad-core aware, and able to make use of all four cores, and you still have wait time, then your bottle neck is not your CPU.

 

[aggiestudd07]

If the app's quad-core aware, and able to make use of all four cores, and you still have wait time, then your bottle neck is not your CPU.

therefore you are thinking hdd limited. even on a raptor?

 

[LanceDiamond]

Optimized for quad cores and using all 4 cores to render *could* be two different things. Call Ulead and ask them if there is any way to have the app spawn more rendering threads maybe...

Also, when it's rendering and you say the project should fit in memory - does it quit accessing the hard disk? If not, then why not - it shouldn't need to churn the disk if the whole project fits in memory.

Could be some ways to configure the app - maybe tell it to use more memory, spawn more threads etc that would help.

 

[aggiestudd07]

Optimized for quad cores and using all 4 cores to render *could* be two different things. Call Ulead and ask them if there is any way to have the app spawn more rendering threads maybe...

Also, when it's rendering and you say the project should fit in memory - does it quit accessing the hard disk? If not, then why not - it shouldn't need to churn the disk if the whole project fits in memory.

Could be some ways to configure the app - maybe tell it to use more memory, spawn more threads etc that would help.

didnt really think about the configuration options, thats a definite possibility. i will probably also send in an email to ulead, i think they would be able to answer the question to the fullest. thanks for the advice gentlemen