Bug? Movie Studio very slow if the media files are on a network drive

cris wrote on 8/12/2017, 2:54 PM

Hei! I'm editing videos from two Windows 10 workstations (a laptop and a desktop, both with relatively small SSD drives) so I connected a network drive to my gigabit router and uploaded video media there. I've optimized the LAN for fast large file access (jumbo size frames, large send offload disabled) and with Windows Explorer the video files on the network drive open and play very quickly. So the network works just fine. Both pcs are pretty powerful and they show no sign of strain otherwise.

However, if I create a Movie studio 14 (build 210) project and want to use the media on the network dis, things are incredibly slow. Adding media via drag and drop is well a "go to sleep and check tomorrow" type of activity and when re-opening a project the application freezes for minutes at least. I searched the forum and there's people talking about this from 2003 (!)

I need to use the network drive, so storing locally is not an option.

Wonder if there's something that can be done to resolve the issue. It's Movie Studio specific because other applications access the files with no problems.

Thanks,

.cris

 

Comments

Markk655 wrote on 8/12/2017, 3:12 PM

The good: It sounds like you have done your homework and can appreciate the fine issues with networks.

Some questions to help troubleshoot:

Are you using the basic version of Movie Studio?

Does it happen every time you start a new project and drop a media file?

If you start a new project and drag the following (close and start a new project for each)

  • jpg picture
  • then try various movie file types - for example mpg, mp4, m2ts, mov....
  • How big are the video files? Try small ones first. Do those work?

I wonder if it is all video types or you can narrow it down to just a one type.

I usually have my files local, but do have a Synology Diskstation NAS (NAS hard drives - not SSD) for backups with a wired Gigabit connection. I use VMS14 build 122 (platinum; Win 10 64 bit). So, I tried to use the files on the NAS. I added files via VMS Explorer (or via Windows Explorer) and they opened without issue (and quickly).

Another option depending on where troubleshooting leads is to try out VMS14 platinum or reinstall (or reset) your version of VMS.

Marco. wrote on 8/12/2017, 3:18 PM

Are you sure you're using build 210?

cris wrote on 8/12/2017, 3:47 PM

Thanks gents, appreciated!. Marco, you're right, it's 122, must have had 210 from someplace else! btw, win64 here as well.

Markk, I have tried with one project so far, I'll make a quick try making a new one and see what happens.

The files are mostly .MTS (from Panasonic G5 and G6) but there are few .MOV from and older Nikon camera of a friends. The biggest is a little over 2GB. I've used similar sized files (from the same cameras) for previous project with MS13 and a little local USB disk and it was working reasonably well.

What I haven't tried is to "add media" rather than doing drag and drop. Let me make a new project and report back.

cris wrote on 8/12/2017, 4:15 PM

Tried a new project. Added only MTS files, with "add media". it seems a little slow with one file, a bit slower with two etc. It seems that the application does something that requires file system access every time it's put back in focus or some type action is taken - probably the something is very fast if the file is local but noticeable for remote files.

What is odd is that also the "add media" dialog becomes much slower the more files one selects. It seems like the application tries to read properties for all selected files every time. I've now selected around 60 files in one go in the dialog, and the dialog itself has become unresponsive. I'm pretty sure it'll wake up in some time.

Could be simply an issue of user interface - as the application doesn't "say" anything (the mouse simply assumes the waiting icon and the UI or the dialog becomes unresponsive) it's hard to say if it's crashed or simply working. It could be an idea to keep the file transfer independent from the UI so that one does not get that "frozen" feel.

However, the video project needs starting so I'll simply get a portable drive, move the files there and connect locally via USB. Hope I can retrieve the video proxies I'd already created since that takes a long time as well (and in this case, understandably so)!

Markk655 wrote on 8/12/2017, 4:20 PM

Cris,

Do you know if it waiting to make the skf files (audio peaks)?

cris wrote on 8/13/2017, 5:24 AM

Not sure - when it does on a local or USB disk it is indeed a little slow but it gives a clear message in the bar at the bottom of the screen. It makes sense that it takes time the first time and that would not a problem.

As I wrote, it might be simply an UI issue - Movie Studio may well be doing something very sensible for each of the files, but without any feedback other than the waiting mouse icon, it's hard to say.

cris wrote on 9/19/2017, 3:49 PM

Just a small update on this.

Now that the music video is produced and released (you may find the mp4 render, re-crunched by YouTube, at if you are curious), I've had a little time to look further into this and got a partial improvement, if not a total fix.

I re-hooked the driver to the router, opened MS14 and replaced the base directory. Still impossibly slow, but monitoring what MS14 does with ProcMon, I saw there was a huge amount of "file not found" on the CSC cache. That's the Client Side Cache, which at user level is "Offline files". MS14 opens a huge amount of different small files which is really the worst possible scenario for that type of cache.

So the fix is simple: I disabled offline files (Control Panel/Sync Center) and whoa!, a big improvement.

It's still slow-ish at start (and I suspect there's little to do about that, the overhead due to context switch in using UNC paths is much higher than the regular kernel mode switch for a local path) but once you are in the project, it no longer takes forever to do anything which affects the footage files (like switching from another app) and it's actually quite usable.

I'll see if there is any other UNC-related optimization that can be done but this makes quite the difference.