Jit.gl.videoplane and jit.xfade

    alessandro.saccoia
    May 03 2006 | 5:09 pm
    Hi list, I finished my VJ patch, but now that everything works well I am experiencing low framerate if multiple movies and video-synths are working at the same time. If we think at my patch as a mixer, I have 2 cannels that generate shapes etc connected to a jit.xfade, 2 channels that play videos connected to another jit.xfade, and finally the 2 outputs of these first 2 xfades goes into a 3rd xfade. It happens that if I am playing with all the 4 videosources switched on the framerate drops to 6-7 fps from the original 20 (NB this happens only on my laptop, while on my desktop that is much stronger still doesn't happen but since I plan to add new features I could have problems also on the desktop in the future). I am think that using jit.gl.videoplane to enable hardware rendering would improve the performance, but I have some doubt about how to use it in conjunction with the xfade objects. In the videoplane help it's shown how to couple it with a jit.render, which I read in its help has to be attached to a jit.window or jit.pwindow to use hardware rendering. But I don't want to output every channel to a window, I want their output to go to the appropriate xfade. As you see I am a bit confused on how to use this videoplane. Basically I want to move some of the CPU effort to the GPU, and I don't know how to do it. Maybe this is possible just in the last stage, when the last xfade is connected to jit.window. Help! Thank you Alessandro
    PS: the jit.fpsgui object after some processing gets transparent in jitter 1.5.2 :s
    • joshua goldberg
      May 03 2006 | 5:20 pm
      shaders, shaders, shaders. xfade, although altivec-enhanced, still slows down the cpu. use jit.gl.slab and co.normal.jxs.
    • alessandro.saccoia
      May 03 2006 | 6:10 pm
      Thanks Joshua Where can I find documentation about writing jxs files? >From the docs: "Currently the high level languages GLSL and CG, as well as ARB, and NV assembly programs are supported." which are the differences? What would you suggest for a beginner? And the co.normal.jxs you mentioned isn't anywhere on google. Where can I find it? I'd need a comprehensive guide on using gl stuff. :s Thanks, and sorry for the trivial questions, Ale
    • joshua goldberg
      May 04 2006 | 2:26 am
      try jitter tutorials 41-43. and search the archives for jit.gl.slab.
      don't write your own. they're in c74support/jitter_shaders.
    • KillingFrenzy
      May 04 2006 | 6:14 am
      Just a test
      Just for your own testing curiosity... Try running all your sources without mixing them.
      I've found that as much as I optimize various things, just having multiple quicktime objects/other sources is often the real framerate killer.
      I find my framerate tanks because of the following. -Multiple Quicktime objects. -High processor load Codecs in movie files. MP4/Divx/etc. -not limiting update rates of preview windows. -Using messages such as "gettime" on quicktime movies to update time/position. -not optimizing message order/sending messages to too many places at the same time.
      GL can be handy, but it isn't always the biggest issue.
    • randall jones
      May 04 2006 | 6:17 am
      Hi Leo,
      I think this is good advice! I look forward to seeing what you're up to one of these days.
      best, Randy
    • lyallmarcus
      May 04 2006 | 6:59 am
      I was just making a patch with a bunch of tiny movies playing.
      12 x 4 pixels each.
      With 6 movies playing through separate jit.qt.movie objects, my framerate dropped to about 10 fps on a dual g5 2.3 ghz.
      it seems like each instance of jit.qt.movie adds a lot of overhead.
      I was triggering each object using send-recieve. I'd like to be able to run more movies if I can. Like 20 if poss.
      I know there are workarounds, but is there an intrinsic issue with running multiple qt movie or Is there something I'm doing wrong here?
      Is to do with the triggering?
    • joshua goldberg
      May 04 2006 | 10:30 am
      what codec, what framerate?
    • lyallmarcus
      May 04 2006 | 2:04 pm
      'None' compressed. 30 fps.
    • joshua goldberg
      May 04 2006 | 2:44 pm
      very, very bad idea.
      try this: compressing them with photoJPEG, highest quality, 30fps. then look at your patch. pjpg at highest quality is lossless.
      j
    • Thijs Koerselman
      May 04 2006 | 2:56 pm
      do you mean that photoJPEG @highest is the same quality as raw when used to export jitter output??
      -thijs
    • joshua goldberg
      May 04 2006 | 3:36 pm
      i believe so.
    • Peter Nyboer
      May 04 2006 | 4:01 pm
      > > I find my framerate tanks because of the following. > -Multiple Quicktime objects.
      for clarity, however, it should be noted that if the object is not playing anything, it won't affect your framerate.
      > -Using messages such as "gettime" on quicktime movies to update > time/position.
      i can't say i've found this to be true. perhaps what was slowing things down was the process that the resulting "time" message output was directed to, for example, a graphical display widget. in this case, qlim or speedlim the "time" messages from jit.qt.movie's output (i.e., [jit.qt.movie}->[route time] -> [qlim 100] -> [widget])
      i would also add that using jsui's as interactive or constantly updated interface elements (such as a timer display) can be a real framerate killer, even if fsaa is disabled on the jsui's. Pictslider or LCD should be used instead. This is sad-making for me, because I very much like the jsui!
      it also helps to use jit.change on the output of your video sources. in the event that you want to use a still and your patch depends on a constant stream of video (quite likely), you can write a bypass routine:
      P.
    • Johnny deKam
      May 04 2006 | 4:19 pm
      just chiming in:
      technically pjpeg @ 100% is still "lossy", but not detectable by the naked eye
      this is very important though: 100% quality setting is logarithmically more CPU overhead to decompress vs 75% EG while 75% may take 3% cpu, 100% quality may take about 10-15%
      imho 75% looks just as good with most material, although the discerning eye can tell the difference looking at a still frame, its very hard to tell with video.
      -- deKam
      what is deKam up to these days? http://www.thomasdolby.com/
    • Thijs Koerselman
      May 04 2006 | 4:20 pm
      On 5/4/06, joshua goldberg wrote: > > i believe so.
      that's new to me. it sure is a more convenient format to archive my jitter output then exporting raw ;-)
      best, thijs
    • lyallmarcus
      May 07 2006 | 6:09 am
      Er. So photo-jpeg quicktimes, which involve decompression, are better than uncompressed quicktimes? Surely getting rid of the decompression bit would speed things up?
      At only 12x4 pixels, I I don't want to factor in compression, even lossless. These movies are under 10K bytes for 30 seconds. I'm not sure that slow retrieval times are the problem. Is Max particularly optimised for photo-jpeg?
      What does seem to be the problem is multiple instances of jit.qt.movie. Whether large or small, compressed or uncompressed.
      Is there a workaround or magic button?
    • Wesley Smith
      May 07 2006 | 6:14 am
      Use loadram for such small files. That will be much faster.
      wes
    • lyallmarcus
      May 07 2006 | 6:18 am
      loading to ram isn't making a difference.
      Also, in principle, I want to play movies off a hard drive, not load to ram.
      The hard drive I have does about 180mb per second, so access speed isn't a huge issue.
      Maybe something else is at work in my patch....
    • Wesley Smith
      May 07 2006 | 6:31 am
      Perhaps posting your patch will provide more insight into your problem.
      wes
    • Joshua Kit Clayton
      May 07 2006 | 9:24 am
      Yes. It would help us do more than to just speculate if you could upload an archive (with media files, preferably) which demonstrates your issues.
      One thing to consider is if you are using metro, rather than qmetro to drive the process, and if you are using many instances of jit.pwindow to preview the movies. These all will cause additional low priority queue events to be processed. By default, only 10 queue events are processed per "tick". You can increase the number of events processed per tick, by changing the queuethrottle settings inside the performance options window. Hard to say without seeing an example patch.
      -Joshua