Stuttering Playback

[cat]

I was hoping I wouldn't have to start this thread after my years of blathering about stutters in R2, but I'm getting them with R3 too, most of you rave bunnies wont notice as you don't go for slow clips, but I'm an old man, I use a lot of slow moving gfx!
I've uploaded a clip http://www.provoke-ism.com/Movies/RotateLine.mov its about 12MB photoJpg75% PAL clip,
can you download it and play it back in R3 for me, it should rotate as smooth as silk, if it doesnt and you get any judders, its dropping frames in spite of the fps counter saying 50 or whatever. Can you then report back here your findings?
If it is smooth, try adding some layers till it judders and we can get an accurate idea of performance...
Open it in qtime as well to see if it plays ok in that too.
I get judders with 1 layer just to start the findings....
Cheers guys

cat

[Rene]

Hi cat,

I've downloaded your clip. Put it (always the same physical file) into 3 Layers with the following results.

Code: Select all

Layer(s)  FPS   CPU(Avenue.exe)
   0      60        30%
   1      33        60%
   2      17        74%
   3      12        74%

With just one layer it seems to be okay, but when I add a second or third one the frame rate drops.

I've also observed, that sometimes a clip (it seems to be always clips in the bottom most layer (layer 1)) just drops out of the layer after looping 3-5 times. It's like pressing the "clear layer" button when the clip is at the very end. - strange.

[cat]

Cheers Rene, so do you get smooth playback with one layer and only notice stutters after that, thats good, I need to find out why my machines don't play smooth, this is the only way I can think to do it! Are you using XP or osx?

[Rene]

ups, forgot to mention the specs

Yes, I've tested under
Windows XP SP3
P4 - 3,4GHz /1,5 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 3600

And yes, it runs smoothly in Quicktime player and also when there is only one layer playing in Resolume.

Maybe I've missed something, but your file is encoded @ 25fps. I would say, as long as you get more than 25fps in Resolume everything is fine, isn't it?

BTW: Did you ever observe that active running clips are suddenly dropped?

[gpvillamil]

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but have you tried using G-Spot (http://www.headbands.com/gspot/) to figure out what your decoding path is?

Often stuttering is due to:

1) Windows can't build the playback graph, so it errors and falls back to a default - this takes time.
2) There are additional filters in the playback graph that are not needed - sometimes ffdshow
3) Another filter is handling playback - once again, ffdshow often takes over from PicVideo, but with post-processing enabled, which slows things down
4) Advanced deblocking is switched on in PicVideo
5) Something other than the AVI splitter is handling reading of the movie file - the Open Source AVI splitter sometimes causes problem, and Haali used to cause problems - these have routines to facilitate playback of incomplete files, which can get in the way of Resolume seeking

[cat]

This is happening in osx and xp for me, on 2 separate laptops, one very clean install, the other not so. ~Have you tried my file to see if you get frames dropped, with R2 not many people noticed but everyone I saw performing with r2 had frames dropping, they just weren't noticing, either because of the content they use or they have different expectations, I use a lot of smooth slow moves, and dropped frames are really obvious and annoying! The fact that this is multiple machines and os's suggests to me that something is wrong at a base level, if its something specific to me then, I can look into whats happening to my installs, if it isn't I'd rather flag it now to the dev's so they can look into it while its still in beta.

[ilah]

i find i get jitters when i max out my 2 gig of ram and windows starts churning into my virtual mem. i think im gonna get 4gig b4 i try playing live with it.

[incuf]

I tried the clip, unfortunatelly i didn't get a smooth playback, not even with One layer!!!! Tried with another Vj Soft on the same machine, and got a perfect playback with a least 5 layers.
Avenue isn't working yet! I regret buying it before its final release, i should have waited at least till 1.0 version.

Macbook pro, 2,5 Ghz 4 gb. 7200 firewire 800 hd

[edwin]

We get stutters as well when running more then one layer with the same video.
I can't say more than that we will try to get it to playback more smoothly.
What other VJ Software are you referring to b.t.w, maybe i can break into their office and steal their code

[GuruMeditation]

On a Mac, I think you should try to knock at the door of m****8 or A****s, maybe they have a little piece of code for you
But I know that A*****s g*****j has the best render engine ever, I can play 6 layer with blend mode and effects @ 1280x720 without any slutter or framedrop, and with "only" a PC
Unfortunately, for the video playback performance, Resolume is not at the same level