Even More on DPP

[Edward1064]

Hi All,

As a satisfied LR Classic user, I occasionally revisit the use of DPP, especially if I hear of a major upgrade.  With LR I do miss being able to see the focus points (Apple Aperture had this).  So when I give DPP another shot, I see again the real difficulty to using it: It runs so slowly that it is essentially non-useable.   My hardware consists of a late-2017 27" iMac with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD storage.  Graphics card is an AMD Radeon Pro 670 (4 GB storage).  In the small amount of time I have spent with DPP, the editing operations take 2-3 seconds to register each step change and dragging a photo happens in a very slow, jerky motion.  By comparison, LR is blazingly fast.  The photo files are RAW, from my 7DII.

LR provides the option of using the graphic card's processor, but there is nothing I can see in DPP's setup that mentions this.  Could that be the reason?  Am I overlooking something?

As some others have mentioned in this Forum, Canon is not a software company, and probably subs out the DPP development.  Canon's smaller user base probably does not warrant much investment in DPP.   So perhaps it is too much to expect that it could match LR's performance. 

Does anyone here have hardware like mine, without the glacially-slow performance?

Thanks for your comments!

Edward

[RobertTheFat]

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@Edward1064 wrote:

Hi All,

As a satisfied LR Classic user, I occasionally revisit the use of DPP, especially if I hear of a major upgrade.  With LR I do miss being able to see the focus points (Apple Aperture had this).  So when I give DPP another shot, I see again the real difficulty to using it: It runs so slowly that it is essentially non-useable.   My hardware consists of a late-2017 27" iMac with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of SSD storage.  Graphics card is an AMD Radeon Pro 670 (4 GB storage).  In the small amount of time I have spent with DPP, the editing operations take 2-3 seconds to register each step change and dragging a photo happens in a very slow, jerky motion.  By comparison, LR is blazingly fast.  The photo files are RAW, from my 7DII.

LR provides the option of using the graphic card's processor, but there is nothing I can see in DPP's setup that mentions this.  Could that be the reason?  Am I overlooking something?

As some others have mentioned in this Forum, Canon is not a software company, and probably subs out the DPP development.  Canon's smaller user base probably does not warrant much investment in DPP.   So perhaps it is too much to expect that it could match LR's performance. 

Does anyone here have hardware like mine, without the glacially-slow performance?

Thanks for your comments!

Edward

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DPP runs fine on my 1-year-old Lenovo Thinkpad laptop. It's a fast computer, but I don't think it has a particularly remarkable graphics processor.

[wq9nsc]

DPP uses the "CUDA" (shader) cores on Nvidia graphics cards and may not be able to utilize the graphics co-processors in your Mac.  On the PC version, there is an option in the preferences section of DPP to enable the use of these shaders to improve performance.

I use an HP Z820 workstation with twin Xeon (server version of I7) 8 core processors and a Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card and it is fast and smooth even with the large image files from my 50 megapixel 5DS R and the new much more processor intensive file structure of the 1DX III.  I have never used DPP on a Mac so it is quite possible that it doesn't run as well in that environment but it runs quite well even on my HP Z series laptop with its single I7 4 core processor and integrated Nvidia card with far fewer shader cores.

Rodger

[ArnoldvO]

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@wq9nsc wrote:

DPP uses the "CUDA" (shader) cores on Nvidia graphics cards and may not be able to utilize the graphics co-processors in your Mac.  On the PC version, there is an option in the preferences section of DPP to enable the use of these shaders to improve performance.

I use an HP Z820 workstation with twin Xeon (server version of I7) 8 core processors and a Nvidia RTX 2060 graphics card and it is fast and smooth even with the large image files from my 50 megapixel 5DS R and the new much more processor intensive file structure of the 1DX III.  I have never used DPP on a Mac so it is quite possible that it doesn't run as well in that environment but it runs quite well even on my HP Z series laptop with its single I7 4 core processor and integrated Nvidia card with far fewer shader cores.

Rodger

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Hi,

I'm curious what you mean by "it is fast and smooth even with the large image files"

When editing RAW images from my EOS R in DPP, the program takes about 20+ seconds to show the images with all camera settings processed. 

I had a speed up from 65 to 20+ seconds after I've upgraded my 5 year old Intel for a new much faster AMD equiped PC (Ryzen 7 3700x and 32GB intern memory). My files are now on a fast NVMe SSD.

My Nvidia card is not the fastest but has a Compute Capability score of 3.0.

Still, I experience no difference in speed whether I have the GPU option in DPP enabled or disabled.

So, does the GPU has influence on processing the RAW files in DPP?

[wq9nsc]

Arnold,

Do you have lens correction turned on in the camera?  This is the only thing that I have seen that will really slow down DPP operation significantly.

I have all of the in-camera settings like this turned off on my 1DX series bodies and my 5DS R.  Opening a file into the DPP edit window and having it ready for editing is pretty much instantaneous.  Digital lens optimizer takes 4 to 5 seconds to finish its work.

DPP does use the Nivida Cuda cores but not well or effectively.  I recently added a HP Z 840 workstation and it has a Nvidia Quadro workstation graphics card and like the Nvida "consumer" card in my HP Z 820 I never see GPU load over 5% during DPP.  Maybe the graphics cores make a bigger difference with less powerful processors.  My Z 820 has two 8 core 2.6 Ghz. Intel Xeon processors and the Z 840 has two 6 core 3.4 Ghz. Xeon processors and DPP does load all of the cores to nearly 100 percent for brief periods of time.

I compared the performance this morning between the two HP workstations with different camera files and 1DX III RAW files are definitely more resource intensive than previous 1DX model RAW files or those from my 5DS R.  With the Z 820 workstation, selecting the clone/stamp tool with a 1DX III file takes about 12 seconds before it can be edited and that drops to 7 seconds with the Z 840 but only for the first few seconds on either machine are all of the cores heavily loaded and DPP continues to display its spinning circle busy sign for several seconds after processor loading has dropped to near nothing.   Fortunately I rarely use that tool.

From this, it appears DPP does respond well to a faster CPU but I don't think it matters much whether you have a fast or average Nvidia card in terms of DPP performance.  In the HP Z 840 I set up two of its SAS solid state drives as a performance RAID drive to improve read/write performance and that is the drive that DPP uses for its workspace but I really don't think it makes much difference because results with those dual 6 GB SAS channels was identical to letting DPP use the HP Z turbo drive which is a solid state drive in one of its 16 bit PCI 3 slots which and has about four times the read/write bandwidth of the paired SAS channels in the RAID array.  So with DPP, the best route to better performance appears to be biased heavily towards CPU speed.

Rodger

[ArnoldvO]

Hi Rodger,

Thanks for replying.

I've noticed not much difference in speed with DLO on or off. I do notice difference when pictures have a lot of noise.

I did some testing with a fast Nvidia card (GTX 1070), but noticed no difference in speed.

No difference at all with GPU use on or off.

So, I've contacted Nvidia and their tech support did some investigation in DPP. Their response: "It doesn't seem like the app really benefits much from the GPU for RAW photo processing/editing/conversion. It uses some GPU acceleration for image previews but most of the work seems to be done on the CPU. The Studio drivers will not give you any special benefits on Canon DPP since the software is not utilizing the full capabilities of the GPU".

I've reported this to Canon Support Europe. No response yet.

[wq9nsc]

Thank you for following up with Nvidia!  T

hey have confirmed what we have observed as DPP users.  Hopefully Canon will update the processing and conversion engines in DPP to better utilize the GPU.   I used DPP on the HP Z 840 last night and while DPP was running I never saw GPU utilization go past 5% and 4% of the loading was from the Opera browser and Window's DWM process.  But at least DPP was fully using both CPUs because I recall when I bought my first Z series workstation a few years ago that version of DPP was only heavily using one of the two and it was not close to 100% loading even on its primary CPU choice.

Rodger

[ArnoldvO]

Hi,

Got a response from Canon Europe (Netherlands). In my own words, they stated that the GPU option is only to support preview display and one can not expect more from an application that is made available for free .

Ofcourse I responded and explained to them my interpretation of what the GPU support should be is different.

I've noticed there are different views on what the GPU option in DPP is intended for. In my opinion this is caused by the fact that in DPP the GPU support option has two different functions mentioned and there is only one on/off option.

So, the question is, is this on/off option intended for both mentioned functions ("image processing" and "speed up preview display") or is it only for on/off support "image processing".

My view on this is that this on/off option is only for "image processing".

I think the GPU support for "speed up preview display" is always on and for this it is not relevant what videocard you have. This is because preview display does not stress the video card very much. 

For "image processing" the videocard is stressed more, so this option is only available when your videocard meets the minimum requirements.

And my interpretation is that the GPU on/off option in DPP is broken, because setting it on or off has no effect on "image processing" (and also no effect on "speed up preview display").

I tried to explain my view to Canon Europe (Netherlands). No idea if they are going to agree on this.

If only I could send a message to the DPP developers of Canon Japan ....

[Waddizzle]

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@ArnoldvO wrote:

So, the question is, is this on/off option intended for both mentioned functions ("image processing" and "speed up preview display") or is it only for on/off support "image processing".

My view on this is that this on/off option is only for "image processing". ....

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I think you are looking at that checkbox the wrong way.  There is only one checkbox, which controls only one option.

It might make more sense if the second line about image preview were indented slightly.  AS IS, it looks like there should be another checkbox on the second line.

I think it somewhat unclearly states that the image processing by the GPU will only be for image previews.

[FloridaDrafter]

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@Waddizzle wrote:

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@ArnoldvO wrote:

So, the question is, is this on/off option intended for both mentioned functions ("image processing" and "speed up preview display") or is it only for on/off support "image processing".

My view on this is that this on/off option is only for "image processing". ....

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I think you are looking at that checkbox the wrong way.  There is only one checkbox, which controls only one option.

It might make more sense if the second line about image preview were indented slightly.  AS IS, it looks like there should be another checkbox on the second line.

I think it somewhat unclearly states that the image processing by the GPU will only be for image previews.

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I agree that it is poorly writen. But, this is what it looks like on my laptop with a low end dedicated AMD Radeon 4gb GPU, which might lead you to believe that your GPU could be used for image processing. Obviously that isn't true, judging from comments in this thread.

On a side note, DPP4 reacts differentnly to certain camras RAW files, at least on my system. My wifes T7i RAW files are more sluggish than my 5D mark IV, and I've also noticed that my 7D mark II RAW files act the same way as the T7i, but only for files before the last 7D2 firmware update. Our T4i RAW have never been sluggish. I sometimes need to go back in time to re-edit files, so I notice a difference in older files "snappiness", LOL, for lack of a better word. I keep DPP4 up to date along with all camera FW updates. I know, off topic, but just some observations about DPP4.

My laptop has an i7-4720HQ 2.6ghz CPU, 16GB RAM, with the above mentioned dedicated AMD Radeon. It's not a workhorse, but does well with my graphics program, CorelDraw Suite, and movie editing program, Corel Video Studio Ultimate.

-FD