Sparkol Help

Topic not covered?

Start a new topic

VS hanging + long render time = DAYS Wasted on useless videos.

Ok, first of all this is an advice to the VS developers.


I searched the internet and I know there are A LOT of complaints about rendering times, I do agree with all these complaints, I just found that while rendering in sho.co servers a 20 minutes video might take up to 3 days to complete.

Somehow I can deal with this since my videos are not for "immediate delivery", however my issue is that while progressing in my video the software becomes unstable (I have a super high desktop computer, so hardware is not an issue at all).

I noted that when the software start freezing my processor and memory usage are at very slow levels, with no options to increase memory to use and I guess your product is not multithread, so advise 1) Add an option to increase memory and make the software multithreaded.

But my main issue is not that, the problem is that while making the video larger and adding more and more images the audio and the sequence of video start getting out of sync, sometimes the audio still going while the image "freeze"  and when the images move forward again the audio and the image is completely unsynchronized.

So I need to count millisecond by millisecond in an external audio software and try to match images with sounds the best I can. Then I finish the project, wait for 3 days for my video to complete and PUM!!!! the video I got is completely useless since moving video and audio is completely out of sync, so this is advise 2) Please add a function in VS to locally render a video in a very low resolution video (something that can be render locally fast!!!) this only to check if the video and audio are actually in sync before uploading to servers and wait for 3 days for something that can't be used. 

Advise 2) should be really easy to implement and, if you communicate this new feature properly I'm sure that will save a LOT of resources in your servers since all your customers will not need to render over and over the same video.

Hope is taken in consideration. 


1 person likes this idea

If you're having issues with a specific scribe, it's best to raise a ticket for further support. 

A 20 minute video is very long- it would be recommended to perhaps break up this scribe into multiple videos and render these

You are able to locally render to 360 resolution, which would be quicker. 

Hi Hayley,


Thanks for respond BUT: "A 20 minute video is very long" is not an acceptable answer at all.  I look for cases like mine in the community and the constant is that VS team is always trying to "blame" the customers for this low performance (You are using too much images, you are using too aggressive zoom, your video is too long, etc.)

I never heard MS Word saying: "The book you just wrote is too large to open it, please write a letter instead". 

I'm a software developer myself and I understand rendering a video has nothing to do with writing a document or recording audio, but what I tried to say in my previous post is: There is a HUGE area of improvement in your software and you are not willing to improve, just justifying the flaws over and over. A software does not needs to be defended, it needs to be constantly improved.

Why do you not code your rendering process to automatically split large videos into smaller ones, then use ONE PROCESSING THREAD for each one of these small videos and once all the threads ended the render algorithm glue them together?  (This is just a blind suggestion since of course I do not have access to your code - Long shot)

For the experiments I did in my local the render process IS NOT multithreaded, meaning that despite how powerful my hardware is it will never be used at 100%, if your servers are coded the same way then I guess it make no difference to render it in an old laptop or in a supper server in the cloud, the rendering time will be very much the same. You can also allow rendering by GPU (My SLI Nvidia dual cards are just sleeping during local rendering)

Again: This is just a free advise, take it or leave it.

Regarding my case: 

3 days has passed and I still waiting for my 20 mins video to finish.

I did what you suggest about local render in low resolution, indeed it takes less (just 8 hours) the bad news is that the low resolution render ALSO loose synchrony with the audio, to be more specific: The sync get loose in a MORPH operation of a very simple svg (one color) that morph to the same svg on the same size and same location but just mirrored. 

Hope this helps

Ideally, Videoscribe SHOULD be able to render a 20 minute video (but it can't in most cases). Hopefully they'll make some improvements that will make longer videos possible.


Ideally it SHOULD be able to handle bigger projects without very optimized images and camera settings... but it can't. MAYBE it can handle a 20 minute video if you know how to optimize your project VERY well.  That's just an objective observation about the limitations of the software.



If you are being objective about the current limitations of videoscribe, and your optimizing skills... it would be a good idea to divide your work into 2 to 4 videos and then use a video editing program to combine the video pieces.  There are free video editors and there are editors that will perform direct stream video copying without quality loss.

Obviously, breaking a long video down into shorter pieces is not ideal, but it is the current option that is most likely to work for you.

You could attach a .scribe file her and raise a ticket or ask users for help if you want to learn how to optimize your work better.

If your finished video does not match the preview timing, you probably need help identifying problems that can be corrected in your project.




Mike,


When you said: "but it can't in most cases..." - how should I take this??

My rendering still on day 4 (see attachment), as I said earlier I can wait (I don't like it but I CAN), but now with your statement I'm thinking that your server may be "fooling me" waiting for something that it will never comes. - PLEASE CLARIFY THIS.

I already render the same scribe file twice in my local in low resolution and my computer can render, so I hope you just used a poor choose of words and only thing I need is to wait a little bit more.

Regarding understanding the limitations: Yes you are right, however this limitation should be warned by you BEFORE me paying the cost of the licence, and before ME spending one month in doing a video that can not be render or that I need to re make form the scratch just to split it in 4 pieces, simply not acceptable to get this information after I invested time and money.

Please clarify: By having a success local render can I expect a success (but slow) render in your servers? Or what do you meant?.

Thanks


4Days.jpg 4Days.jpg
23.9 KB

 I don't work for videoscribe, I just use it. I've been using videoscribe for about 6 or 7 years, and I am familiar with some of its strengths and weaknesses. (Customer support members who post replies here in the users forum will have "ADMIN" or some other title at the top of their replies, also they do not work on weekends)


The screenshot suggests that you are publishing your video using sho.co. You should probably raise a ticket if you want to ask customer support about the status of your sho.co video. (during regular UK business hours)


I doubt that a video will successfully finish rendering after 4 days, but that's a question for customer support.


If you save your work online or export it as a .scribe file and attach it here, customer support or other users might be able to help you or offer more specific advice.


So, I wasn't even aware of Sho.co, but have been having issues lately with the rendering from VS itself on videos more than 8-9 minutes.. I just started a second month, and I'm pretty sure this will be the last. The software, while somewhat useful, works in some non-intuitive ways, and probably not, randomly, is often extremely slow. 


I'm just pretty sure it doesn't suit my needs at this point. The fact that this appears to have been an issue since 2015, seems to lead one to assume it's a limitation of the software. 


Login to post a comment