Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up (7.2.1)

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cdelguercio
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Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up (7.2.1)

Post by cdelguercio »

Resolume Avenue 7.2.1
Windows 10

I have a problem which I believe is a duplicate of this issue from a few years ago: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=16485

I have a set of clips that are bpm synced with a pattern of "2 beats, 2 beats, 4 beats". The first and third clip of each set are Beat Snapped to 1 bar and the second clip is Beat Snapped to 1/2 bar. All clips are set to loop exactly once in Autopilot.

90% of the time, the clips will Autopilot correctly: 2-2-4-2-2-4; but about 10% of the time, which is a lot in this case considering how often the clips are triggered, a clip will repeat and mess up the structure of the sequence. The Beat Snap settings will correct this a little bit by repeating other clips until the pattern is back in phase, but the problem is still very noticeable.

Here's a video of my issue: https://vimeo.com/470341575. I trigger the sequence at 5 seconds, and you see the third clip immediately repeat at 8 seconds. The repeats have no pattern. If a particular clip repeats on one pass of the sequence it may or may not do the same during another pass.

I've seen the solution of "make a single clip" so that I don't have to use Autopilot, but A) that's a lot of work to find all the speeds that the clips are stretched to for the beat sync to work, especially since I do a lot of fine adjustments to the start and stop of each clip and B) I would like to be able to do live changes to my clip decks quickly. I feel like this solution is like saying "don't use Autopilot because it's broken" :(

Hopefully this issue isn't embedded deep in how you guys implemented your render pipeline. Autopilot is potentially such a cool feature and I'd love to be able to use it to its full potential.
Last edited by cdelguercio on Thu Oct 29, 2020 22:56, edited 1 time in total.

Zoltán
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by Zoltán »

Sounds like auto pilot might trigger clips just a frame behind the tempo grid, so beat snap waits another x beats to trigger the clip.
As the frame renders are independent from the Tempo grid, I can imagine this happening quite often.

Have you tried disabling beat snap for all but the first clip in the chain?
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cdelguercio
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by cdelguercio »

When I first noticed the problem, I didn't use Beat Snap at all, just BPM sync with Ableton Link. (fyi: My more recent test that's outlined in my original post doesn't use Ableton Link)

cdelguercio
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by cdelguercio »

Also, I'm running on a gaming-grade laptop that I bought in 2019 with an RTX2060. Also, all my clips have been encoded using Alley, so they are in that every-frame-is-a-keyframe format. I assume that means they are RAM hungry, but require less CPU to decode.

Zoltán
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by Zoltán »

What's the audio buffer size set to in preferences?

Are the transports for these clips which can show this behavior set to a shorter range?
And do you only see the looping with such clips?
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cdelguercio
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by cdelguercio »

My audio buffer is set to 480. The issue happens with other clips, but they are all prepared in the same manner (using Alley). I'm not sure I understand your question re: transport.

Zoltán
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by Zoltán »

Can you try increasing the audio buffer a bit?

re transport, do the clips where you cut the clip play range inside Resolume with the transport markers in the clip panel, the only ones where this double looping happens?
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cdelguercio
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by cdelguercio »

I increased the audio buffer to 1024 and nothing changed.

Most of my clips are set to play the entire thing with the exception of 3 clips. Whether or not the clip has custom start and stop points doesn't seem to have a bearing on the repeat behavior.

Zoltán
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Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by Zoltán »

The looping doesn't want to happen in my testing with Beat snap off.
Have you tried disabling it?

If you have it set to 1 bar, then if a 2 beat long clip gets launched at the start of the bar then it will loop before the next clip can be launched.
Beat snap can also be set on the clip level, so those would be also worth to take a look.
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cdelguercio
Is taking Resolume on a second date
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Joined: Sat Oct 17, 2020 08:53

Re: Autopilot with BPM Sync can't keep up

Post by cdelguercio »

I first noticed the problem before I used Beat Snap. I turned on Beat Snap and it partially alleviated the issue by doing intentional repeats to put the sequence back in beat whenever there was a bad loop event.

In my setup Beat Snap is set only on the clip level. I have it as follows for a 2-2-4 set: 1 bar, 1/2 bar, 1 bar.

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