nangyor

I'm working actually on a musical spectacle in Paris, with 5 video sources. I'm working on a PC with Windows XP Pro (double processeur Athlon Opteron 2,36GHZ, 2Go RAM, carte video Nvidia Geforce 4 with 2 Matrox TripleHead2Go to manage the screens.)

In my Max patch, for each source, I have simply :

The problem is when I launch the 5 movies simultaneous, the fps fall down at 7 frame per second, whereas the CPU is used at 50% and the RAM isn't totally dedicated to Max (500 Mo only on the 2 Go !!). 

Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?

The first representation is tomorrow, and for the moment, I only use 2 or 3 sources at the same time, which is too bad for the spectacle. It's very urgent, thank you very much for your help !

Hello
I'm working actually on a musical spectacle in Paris, with 5 video sources. I'm working on a PC with Windows XP Pro (double processeur Athlon Opteron 2,36GHZ, 2Go RAM, carte video Nvidia Geforce 4 with 2 Matrox TripleHead2Go to manage the screens.)

In my Max patch, for each source, I have simply :
#toggle
#metro 2
#jit.qt.movie 640 480
#jit.brosca
#jit.window name @border 0
All the movies are Quicktime PhotoJPEG.
The problem is when I launch the 5 movies simultaneous, the fps fall down at 7 frame per second, whereas the CPU is used at 50% and the RAM isn't totally dedicated to Max (500 Mo only on the 2 Go !!). 
Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?
The first representation is tomorrow, and for the moment, I only use 2 or 3 sources at the same time, which is too bad for the spectacle. It's very urgent, thank you very much for your help !


problem-cpu-multi-player-jitter

>I'm working actually on a musical spectacle in Paris, with 5 video 

>sources. I'm working on a PC with Windows XP Pro (double processeur 

>Athlon Opteron 2,36GHZ, 2Go RAM, carte video Nvidia Geforce 4 with 2 

>Matrox TripleHead2Go to manage the screens.)

>In my Max patch, for each source, I have simply :

>The problem is when I launch the 5 movies simultaneous, the fps fall 

>down at 7 frame per second, whereas the CPU is used at 50% and the 

>RAM isn't totally dedicated to Max (500 Mo only on the 2 Go !!).

>Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which 

>can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?

in my opinion (i work on macs - and mostly on pbooks) if you manage 

to have 3 movies it's not so bad already !!!

__more seriously, when i asked the same question recently i got some 

nice answers, most notably from vade, (the jitter thread named "basic 

1) mix on the GPU. try loading up the GPU DV mixing patch in 

examples/jitter/render. I bet you will find it performs better than 

2) I usually mix on the GPU on my 1.67 powerbook with ~ 1/4 res HDV 

stuff, 426x 240 @ 15 fps Photo Jpeg, plus slab effects and openGL 

rendered and mixed in as a texture, I can get between 40 to 25 FPS 

(or, well, much lower if I turn on everything) on my rendered output, 

depending on things. this is using the built in hd, a lowly 5400 rpm 

maybe that will shed some light. If you keep the patches simple, you 

/Examples/Jitter-Examples/Render/Slab/jit.gl.slab-compositeDV.pat

I finally did not do the project in jitter but on different miniDV 

cams, but from my first trys playing on the GPU did a difference

there was other answers as well - check the thread

>Hello
>I'm working actually on a musical spectacle in Paris, with 5 video 
>sources. I'm working on a PC with Windows XP Pro (double processeur 
>Athlon Opteron 2,36GHZ, 2Go RAM, carte video Nvidia Geforce 4 with 2 
>Matrox TripleHead2Go to manage the screens.)
>
>In my Max patch, for each source, I have simply :
>#toggle
>#metro 2
>#jit.qt.movie 640 480
>#jit.brosca
>#jit.window name @border 0
>All the movies are Quicktime PhotoJPEG.
>The problem is when I launch the 5 movies simultaneous, the fps fall 
>down at 7 frame per second, whereas the CPU is used at 50% and the 
>RAM isn't totally dedicated to Max (500 Mo only on the 2 Go !!).
>Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which 
>can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?

in my opinion (i work on macs - and mostly on pbooks) if you manage 
to have 3 movies it's not so bad already !!!

__more seriously, when i asked the  same question recently i got some 
nice answers, most notably from vade, (the jitter thread named "basic 
jitter playing and mixing on a G4")

1) mix on the GPU. try loading up the GPU DV mixing patch in 
examples/jitter/render. I bet you will find it performs better than 
CPU mixing, esp on a lower end G4

2) I usually mix on the GPU on my 1.67 powerbook with ~ 1/4 res HDV 
stuff, 426x 240 @ 15 fps Photo Jpeg, plus slab effects and openGL 
rendered and mixed in as a texture, I can get between 40 to 25 FPS 
(or, well, much lower if I turn on everything) on my rendered output, 
depending on things. this is using the built in hd, a lowly 5400 rpm 
POS

maybe that will shed some light. If you keep the patches simple, you 
should be able to do it.

I finally did not do the project in jitter but on different miniDV 
cams, but from my first trys playing on the GPU did a difference

kasper
-- 
  Kasper T. Toeplitz
noise, composition, bass, computer
http://www.sleazeArt.com


do you need to manipulate the video while playing, or you just hit play, sit 

if there is no need for realtime meddling, then you could render the movies 

with jit.brcosa, remove jit.brcosa, and play using direct-to-screen mode of 

loading movies into ram might help too, checkout loadram message of 

is your movies PhotoJPEG quality at more than 75% - it shouldn't more than 

maybe you should set sync attribute of jit.windows to 0*

five 640x480 sources might be too much for your computer, but i'm not 

do you need to manipulate the video while playing, or you just hit play, sit 
comfortably and enjoy the performance?

if there is no need for realtime meddling, then you could render the movies 
with jit.brcosa, remove jit.brcosa, and play using direct-to-screen mode of 
jit.qt.movie.

loading movies into ram might help too, checkout loadram message of 
jit.qt.movie

is your movies PhotoJPEG quality at more than 75% - it shouldn't more than 
this for better performance*

five 640x480 sources might be too much for your computer, but i'm not 
sure(for my it surely is).

Attached are some patches and js that is useful for best multi-file, multi-screen playback. It uses a modified "jsmoviebank.js" from the jitter-examples/javascript/video folder, and does everything with uyvy colormode on videoplanes.

I have found that four 640x480 movies is a limit - jkc mentioned this was seemingly more a fault of Quicktime than cpu or drive speed. You could try using an instance of MaxRuntime at the same time you run Max to make use of both processors. Or you can network 2 machines, and run 3 screens from each. 

To "buy some time", you could recompress the movies to a lower resolution for your demo, and have no problem playing 6 movies at the same time (I've used these patches to play 6 320x240 movies on a computer similar to yours). Depending on the content, there's a good chance the extra pixels won't be missed.

If you can't figure it out, you can fly me to Paris and I'll get it working :) HA HA.

Attached are some patches and js that is useful for best multi-file, multi-screen playback. It uses a modified "jsmoviebank.js" from the jitter-examples/javascript/video folder, and does everything with uyvy colormode on videoplanes.
I have found that four 640x480 movies is a limit - jkc mentioned this was seemingly more a fault of Quicktime than cpu or drive speed. You could try using an instance of MaxRuntime at the same time you run Max to make use of both processors.  Or you can network 2 machines, and run 3 screens from each. 
To "buy some time", you could recompress the movies to a lower resolution for your demo, and have no problem playing 6 movies at the same time (I've used these patches to play 6 320x240 movies on a computer similar to yours).  Depending on the content, there's a good chance the extra pixels won't be missed.
If you can't figure it out, you can fly me to Paris and I'll get it working :) HA HA.

Q> Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?

> The first representation is tomorrow, and for the moment, I only use 2 or 3 sources at the same time, which is too bad for the spectacle. It's very urgent, thank you very much for your help !

as you dont provide a patch for us to test its hard to say, but you certainly have lots of little jit.pwindows , that you use as previews, make sure to turn off onscreen mode. ( get info on jit.pwindow). this could help a bit, but you would be really better of switching to the gpu.

bonne chance pour le spectacle. tout ira bien ;)

Q> Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?
> The first representation is tomorrow, and for the moment, I only use 2 or 3 sources at the same time, which is too bad for the spectacle. It's very urgent, thank you very much for your help !

bonne chance pour le spectacle. tout ira bien ;)


Quote: nangyor wrote on Wed, 08 November 2006 12:21

----------------------------------------------------

> The problem is when I launch the 5 movies simultaneous, the fps fall down at 7 frame per second, whereas the CPU is used at 50% and the RAM isn't totally dedicated to Max (500 Mo only on the 2 Go !!). 

> Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?

This has to do with jitter multi-core support. A good thread that explains the problem is here:

https://cycling74.com/forums/index.php?t=msg&goto=78171&rid=3579&S=266c595fbb6d78dcb5fdfea86037a9a2#msg_78171

To increase your framerate with at least a factor 2 you should open a new instance of max (or a max runtime environment) and send data to and fro with networking objects.

When playing back multiple movies, loading the movies in ram will probably make quite a difference, especially if you're not playing linearly.

Btw I done quite a few seminars with 320x240 movies. I never heard one complaint about the quality.

Seems a little late to start the first performance tests, no? ;)

Quote: nangyor wrote on Wed, 08 November 2006 12:21
----------------------------------------------------
> The problem is when I launch the 5 movies simultaneous, the fps fall down at 7 frame per second, whereas the CPU is used at 50% and the RAM isn't totally dedicated to Max (500 Mo only on the 2 Go !!). 
> Do you think the problem is from my development, or from Max which can't use all the cpu and the ram available ?

Thank you very much for all yours answers,

all very happened well for the spectacle, last Thursday and Friday !

Finally, in details, the main problem was the use of the CPU with 2 processors. Then, lauching at the same time Max and Max Running make the cpu used at 100%. When the 5 sources are playing simultaneous, 2 movies are played at 18/19 fps with Max, and the 3 others at 12/13 fps with Max Running. It passed well.

In addition, to gain in fludity, I reduce my movies to 640x480 at PhotoJPEG compression 60%, set sync attribute of jit.window to 0, load into ram all the movies (short loops).

I keep jit.brcosa to make some fade in and fade out with a midi controller, and to have little previews (pwindow 80x60) for each source, between jit.qt.movie and jit.brcosa.

Sure soon I'll use gpu to still improve fluidity !

Thank you very much for all yours answers,
all very happened well for the spectacle, last Thursday and Friday  !

In addition, to gain in fludity, I reduce my movies to 640x480 at PhotoJPEG compression 60%, set sync attribute of jit.window to 0, load into ram all the movies (short loops).
I keep jit.brcosa to make some fade in and fade out with a midi controller, and to have little previews (pwindow 80x60) for each source, between jit.qt.movie and jit.brcosa.

Sure soon I'll use gpu to still improve fluidity !
Thanks for all your easy ways,
ClaireR


problem CPU multi-player Jitter