CPU usage while rendering (and taskmanager display)

[maxtrack]

Okay, something has been bothering me about what I see when my machine is rendering.
I posted a few days ago about a render that ran 9 days.

The part that really puzzles me is the CPU usage display in taskmanager only showed the CPU usage to peak at 35~40% one moment in every 14 seconds. It never went higher than 40%.

Shouldn't the CPU be constantly busy at close to 100% while rendering?

Second question: what is the significance of the colour in the graphic CPU usage display?

It might show 40% usage with half in red.
Or it might show 100% usage all in green.
What is the deal with the green and red colour?

Thank you
~ Allen

[maxtrack]

I have a new clue as to why CPU is not being used constantly . . .

I was using Virtual Dub against a SATA drive when I saw the 40% CPU usage every 14 seconds, I just happened to have defraged an IDE drive on the same box and used it to target another Virtual Dub process and the CPU is at 40% contantly . . . .

Something different between the drives. Yes SATA is faster than IDE, but in my practical use as described here, the SATA is a whole lot slower . . . . so I suspect something in the set up of the SATA drive is messed up.

~ Allen

[redwudz]

I would suspect something is accessing your SATA drive. Do you have a anti-virus program that may be scanning your SATA drive?

And have you defragged and ran CHKDSK on it lately?

Depending on the codec you are using with VD, you should get much closer to 100% CPU usage when encoding. Divx does that easily, and sometimes Xvid, depending on the version.

I haven't seen any red and green with Task Manager, just green. (And yellow for the page file) You might check to see what processes are running. And while you are in 'Processes', you can right click on your codec and set the priority higher.

[maxtrack]

I called my friendly neighbourhood computer shop and asked one of the techs what he thought might cause these symtoms.

He said : check to see if DMA is active on the SATA drive.

Okay, so now I am trying to figure out whether or not DMA is active . . . . .
he gave me a start, to check via device manager, but so far I have not found a DMA toggle switch

Anyone got a more detailed way to check DMA status?

thank you,
~ Allen

[jagabo]

Having switched from DMA to PIO isn't likely to be the cause of your problem. But here's how you check:

Right click on My Computer and select Manage.

Select Device Manager in the left hand pane.

Open up IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in the right pane.

Double click on Primary Channel (or whichever one you need to check).

Go to the Advance Settings tab. You'll see Device 0 and Device 1. Transfer Mode should be set to DMA If Available. Current Transfer Mode should show a DMA mode like Ultra DMA Mode 6. It should not show a PIO (programmed I/O) mode.

You might not always see 100 percent CPU usage while encoding (depending on a lot of things) but what you're describing (a small peak of CPU usage every 14 seconds while rendering) is a very sick system.

[maxtrack]

Okay, thank you
ULTRA DMA Mode showing for all hard drives
I think the SATA were mode 2 and the IDE mode 4

so . . . why are the SATA acting differently than the IDE, which in turn seems to be creating a different in render rates . . . .
. . . when the SATA drive is the target of output, very slow render rate with CPU at 40% every 14 seconds
... when IDE is the target of output, very fast render rate with CPU usage constant, peaking at 40%

~ Allen

[lordsmurf]

Are you rendering or encoding?

If rendering, it may be issue with the read/write not being sustained due to the loading and then processing of assets.

Software is a factor too. What are you using?

[jagabo]

9 days to render a 19 minute file is not normal for any program on any modern computer:

https://forum.videohelp.com/topic333912.html#1735049

There is a severe misconfiguration error somewhere.

There might be an IRQ conflict with the SATA controller and some other device. The symptoms of such a problem are usually much worse, and should show up any time you access the sata drive, but it's something to check out. Didn't you mention something about problems copying files in another thread?

From Device Manager select Resources By Type on the View menu. Open the Interrupt Requests (IRQ) item in the right pane. Look for any yellow exclamation points. And look to see if the IDE controllers are sharing the same IRQ number with any other devices.

[maxtrack]

Lord Smurf, I am using Pinnacle Studio (9).
When I launch the make movie task to spin off an AVI file it says it is rendering, but it also lists DVencoder as what it is using.
(As apposed to MPEG2, I suppose.)

Thank you
~ Allen

[maxtrack]

JAGABO
no yellow flags, all devices appear to have separate IRQ #
Yes, there was a copy problem, but that seemed to clear up when I used MS DOS copy and sent the output file to the IDE drive.
Obviously the IDE drive is working just fine

The sata, well, not so fine

~ Allen

[jagabo]

Is it only Pinnacle Studio that's having problems with the drive?

[maxtrack]

It looks like the SATA drives are slow anytime anything is using them.

Pinnacle to IDE is fast, Pinnacle to SATA is slow.
MSDOS (copy) to IDE is fast, MSDOS (copy) to SATA is slow

~ Allen

[jagabo]

Look for updated SATA drivers and/or updated motherboard INF files. Also consider upgrading to XP SP2.

[maxtrack]

Just noticed something else, which will seem OBVIOUS

I started to review the location of my source AVI and my destination drive. . . . .I noted my SATA was source and my IDE was output . . .
When I ran from one source drive to another separate output drive, the process moves along very quickly.
The really slow render was from SATA #1 ===> SATA #1
OBVIOUSLY a bad Idea to use the same HD for read and write.

Not certain if that is the only problem, but it certainly goes a long way to explain the 9 day render time.

~ Allen

[jagabo]

OBVIOUSLY a bad Idea to use the same HD for read and write.

Not certain if that is the only problem, but it certainly goes a long way to explain the 9 day render time.

Not really. For highly compressed formats like DV and MPEG there's very little difference between using a single drive and multiple drives (single digit percentages at most). When you're using uncompressed, or lightly compressed (huffyuv) formats there will be a more significant difference. But not as much as minutes vs. days.

[Webster]

Just curious is the SATA your boot (system) drive? and is there any antiviral program running in the background?

[maxtrack]

THe machine I am using is set up as follows:

AMD Sempron 2400+ 1 Gbyte RAM
on an ASUS K8S-MX mother board

IDE Ribbon #1
15 Gig boot & programs HD
DVD/CD ROM burner

IDE Ribbon #2
160 Gig IDE
empty (but soon to be 40 Gig dedicated Page File)

on the same mother board there are also 2 SATA 'ports'
250 Gig Sata
250 Gig Sata

I would write more but I can't boot the box right now, I've taken it apart to put the 40 Gig HD into it.

NO anti spam or anti virus, etc, software on the box as it is an isolated machine only used for digital editing.

~ Allen

[redwudz]

Just at a quick read, I would say there is a problem either with your SATA drivers or the SATA drive itself. You could run a benchmarking program like Sandra to see how your drive compares to other similar type drives: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4664 You should get at least 40MB/sec with most any hard drive. SATA should be higher, maybe up to 75MB/sec.

I would also check with Asus for motherboard and possibly BIOS updates.

[maxtrack]

I will have to start a new thread . . . .
after I worked on the machine (hard drive install / changes) and RAM install, Pinnacle Studio 9 won't run without crashing the system.

I'll return when the machine runs stable again . . . .