Thijs Koerselman

I was just testing a setup with different layers of video each processed by

a series of slab objects. The slab routing is switched in realtime, so they

have to be "stand-by". I build groups of slab with a static shader file

name, but noticed that if they don't do anything, they are still eating my

cpu. With 8 slabs this is fine, but the difference between 8 and 24 is about

When I DO put them to use, the increase in cpu usage is a little or a

lot depending on what they're doing, like I would expect.

I am wondering if there is a way to efficiently manage large amounts of slab

fx without draining the cpu. Maybe someone can give a little insight on how

slab is handled by Jitter? Is it normal to get cpu utilization from inactive

slab objects? If so, is it possible to dynamically load sfx files without

I was just testing a setup with different layers of video each processed by
a series of slab objects. The slab routing is switched in realtime, so they
have to be "stand-by". I build groups of slab with a static shader file
name, but noticed that if they don't do anything, they are still eating my
cpu. With 8 slabs this is fine, but the difference between 8 and 24 is about
30%. (pentium m 1.86)

When I DO put them to use, the increase in cpu usage is a little or a
lot depending on what they're doing, like I would expect.

I am wondering if there is a way to efficiently manage large amounts of slab
fx without draining the cpu. Maybe someone can give a little insight on how
slab is handled by Jitter? Is it normal to get cpu utilization from inactive
slab objects? If so, is it possible to dynamically load sfx files without
getting hick ups? Thanks.

efficient-slab-usage

On Feb 12, 2006, at 8:37 AM, Thijs Koerselman wrote:

> I was just testing a setup with different layers of video each 

> processed by a series of slab objects. The slab routing is switched 

> in realtime, so they have to be "stand-by". I build groups of slab 

> with a static shader file name, but noticed that if they don't do 

> anything, they are still eating my cpu. With 8 slabs this is fine, 

> but the difference between 8 and 24 is about 30%. (pentium m 1.86)

I might suggest sending them the message "enable 0" when not in use. 

> If so, is it possible to dynamically load sfx files without getting 

If loading a jxs file gives a hickup (which I believe only happens if 

the native driver doesn't support GLSL, and instead uses the Cg 

Runtime for compiling the shader), the hickup should only happen the 

first time, as we cache the compiled shader code for all subsequent 

Another thing which sometimes leads to file related hickups has 

nothing to do with loading/compiling the shader, but rather searching 

through a large search path for the named file. You might want to use 

absolute path rather than just the filename. There should be some 

threads in the archives covering this topic.

> I was just testing a setup with different layers of video each  
> processed by a series of slab objects. The slab routing is switched  
> in realtime, so they have to be "stand-by". I build groups of slab  
> with a static shader file name, but noticed that if they don't do  
> anything, they are still eating my cpu. With 8 slabs this is fine,  
> but the difference between 8 and 24 is about 30%. (pentium m 1.86)

I might suggest sending them the message "enable 0" when not in use.  
This might solve your problems.

> If so, is it possible to dynamically load sfx files without getting  
> hick ups?

If loading a jxs file gives a hickup (which I believe only happens if  
the native driver doesn't support GLSL, and instead uses the Cg  
Runtime for compiling the shader), the hickup should only happen the  
first time, as we cache the compiled shader code for all subsequent  
uses.

Another thing which sometimes leads to file related hickups has  
nothing to do with loading/compiling the shader, but rather searching  
through a large search path for the named file. You might want to use  
absolute path rather than just the filename. There should be some  
threads in the archives covering this topic.

Using @enable in combination with absolute paths will cure the problems. I

don't think my card (nvidia go6800) supports glsl, as I've noticed a delay

when first loading a file, but it's cached like you said. Thanks a lot.

Using @enable in combination with absolute paths will cure the problems. I
don't think my card (nvidia go6800) supports glsl, as I've noticed a delay
when first loading a file, but it's cached like you said. Thanks a lot.

efficient slab usage