smooth animation test

Thijs Koerselman's icon

I really like to clear some things up about the patch below. My problem is:

- 40fps doesn't look smooth, even though there is almost nothing going on
and my cpu is at 7%
- raising it to 60fps makes it smooth but kills the max interface.

I don't want to believe that jitter can't generate this simple animation
fluently on my computer. I can't raise the framerate to 60 because it'll
kill my cpu if I want to do more interesting stuff than this. I really hope
there is something wrong about the way I'm experiencing this patch, please
have a look.

t_

winmax 4.5.6, jitter 1.5.2, nvidia go6800, pentium m1.86, 1gig ram.

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

David Stanford's icon

Try connecting a number box to the right inlet of [line] and sending it
some low values - around 1 or 2. The default time grain for [line] is
20ms, which could be the problem. Feeding it a time grain of 1ms
smooths things right out on my machine (Max 4.5.6, Jitter 1.5.2 ,1.5Ghz
AluBook OSX.3.9). - David

Thijs Koerselman's icon

I forgot to set the interval for the test patch. In my own patch I had it at
5ms, and it helps, but doesn't completely smooth out the animation. Still 60
fps runs a lot smoother. I this also true on your powerbook? I don't
understand why this can't run perfectly smooth at 30 or even 40 fps.

t_

David Stanford's icon

Well, on my machine the jerkiness was very minimal to begin with - no
large hesitations or jumps - just some chunky movement at the rate of
the [line] time grain. 60 fps looks pretty much the same for me,
although the responsiveness of the UI does take a hit, of course. Is
the rough rendering really dramatic on your system?

Thijs Koerselman's icon

No it's not dramatic at all, but noticeable. I just don't understand why it
has to be this way. A framerate of 30 fps with just one moving object is not
a lot to process. You can do far more complex jitter and max processing
without this getting worse, so I guess it's just always there. If Jitter can
do all this fancy stuff, I don't understand why a simple smooth animation at
a normal framerate is impossible. Maybe it has to do with the low priority
jitter processing? O well, so be it.

t_

randall jones's icon

You can definitely get "smooth" animations if you work at it. It's
complex because there are many ways to approach timing in your Jitter
patch, some of which won't be so smooth. My current approach is to
run everything as closely to the DSP as possible. A single train~
object generates bangs which are sent to a dsptime~ object that
clocks my patch, including spatial things. Scheduler in audio
interrupt and overdrive are on. This works well for me-- and like
yourself, I am cursed with an eye for detail.

-Randy

Thijs Koerselman's icon

That's good news! I'll give it a try tomorrow. Hopefully I can integrate
something like that into my patches without too many adaptions. It's also
good to know that I'm not the only one who cares about stuff like this.

Best, Thijs

lists@lowfrequency.or's icon

Or forget using [line] and use [bline] - looks very smooth on my
computer, without having to write your own audio-rate clocking system.
If that's a little jumpy, you can always throw in a [jit.qball]
somewhere to smooth out the rate of incoming bangs.

here's what I mean:

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

>

Thijs Koerselman's icon

That is a really nice and easy solution if you're doing animation that isn't
time sync. I need it to be as time sync as possible. On my system the two
different framerates automatically create different speeds in movement. The
inconsistency in position is solved but by sacrificing overall timing
accuracy. I think the actual problem still remains, which would be the
timing of rendering bangs/events. Or am I missing something?

Thijs

vade's icon

changing the millisecond sampling rate for line didnt solve this?

v a d e //

www.vade.info
abstrakt.vade.info

Thijs Koerselman's icon

On 1/23/06, vade wrote:

> changing the millisecond sampling rate for line didnt solve this?

No not really. On my system 60fps looks smoother than 40fps, even with 1ms
line interval. I think Randy's solution is the only way to go, but I
haven't found the time to try it yet.

Thijs