Memory Managment

[Rincevent]

First of all I'm really pleased to see your answer.

And again I want to say that I already find Resolume very cool and the only thibng I'm trying to do is to help improve it, not criticize it for fun.

I also understand how difficult it could be to manage memory.

But I don't totally agree with you when you say "if you have a decent HD it,s not a big problem."
I think I have a decent HD (Maxtor 7200 rpm 8Mo cache) and I also think it's a big problem, for the perfs when playing 2 or 3 channels at the same time and also for the health of the disk...

I don't know but it makes so much noise when you're playing 2 or 3 channels at the same time... I imagine that in a wet and hot party environnment (+ the music vibrations) and I wonder how many times my HDD will support 2, 4 or 6 CONTINUOUS hours of that treatment...

Of course if you have 3 * 500Mo clips you cannot put them in your total 512 RAM But isn't there a way to use a "put that in RAM" command and if the RAM is already full then it goes to the pagefile or something ?
Isn't Windows already using RAM like this ? in an automatic way ?

at least for the active clips... please... I promise I'll be kind...

You say :
"This is because is it quite hard to find a good mix of reading from the hd and ram loading. "

I understand this as (tell me if I'm wrong) : We know how to put clips in RAM but we don't knw/don't want to spend too much time on Managing free RAM vs Clips size to avoid mem problems

Am I right ?

If so Can't you include this as an option ? event experimental one with warnings.
Like an "Load active clips in RAM" options
And it would be the user responsability to use it or not regarding the RAM he has and the Clips size he plays ?

I know I'm very demanding but as I said before that's juste because I fond Resolume to be the best VJ app (IMO) when it was in version 1.5 (and I tried A LOT of others like Arkaos, VJam and so on...) and when version beta 2 came out it has all the ergonomic issues I had with v 1.5 fixed or improved (multiple decks, swap channels, msg for already used shortcuts, better multi display support)

[Edited on 4-11-2004 by Rincevent]

[pxl]

dumb question: how can i know the rpm of my HD?

[Rincevent]

try this : Everest, Diagnostic tool, Freeware

[pxl]

thanx!

[metaprofessor]

now i see there's a thread dedicated to this. as i stated in a topic i started ("i just tested RAMDISK XP PRO"), working from RAM seems to be far superior to stressing the hard drive continuously for hours on end.

creating a RAMDISK will not be a viable solution until my laptop has at least 5 GB's of RAM, and even then it would be kind of annoying to have to load that much material into volatile memory every time i want to use resolume.

i used resolume every week at a gig for about one year, and one problem i noticed was that since the DJ booth was located above a giant subwoofer, the vibrations severely impacted the performance of my external WD 120 GB special edition drive.

i tried all sorts of solutions like changing the postion of the drive, putting padding under it, etc. but nothing really solved the problem. the other issue was how hot the drive was getting in that enviroment. i wondered if it was going to melt down at any moment!

as far as memory management is concerned, at the very LEAST, how hard would it be to have resolume load the three clips in the layers to RAM as soon as they're called?

let me explain why even this would be a vast improvement by describing how i personally was using resolume (1.51) at this gig:

i would usually load two indeo avi files to the bottom two layers as backgrounds, and leave them running continuously, then load a flash file to the top layer to mix in to the beat and key over the background layers in various combinations. i've never really tried to trigger a whole deck's worth of clips very quickly - i tend to go through my clips more slowly.

so for my situation, having those two background layers in RAM would take the burden off the HD, and eliminate the problem of vibrations from the low end disrupting my clips. i wouldn't even need the whole deck in RAM, even though that would be even better.

i think you guys (the programmers) are assuming that everyone is rushing through their clips so quickly that having whole decks in RAM would be neccessary (like a video sampler with everything on demand). well yes, we all want that, but realize the complications involved.

however, there's no reason to have my HD spinning furiously for 20 minutes accessing the same two clips while i play with a bunch of flash files keyed over the top!!!

[metaprofessor]

i should also mention that my clips are all in the 10 - 30 MB size range. i never use massive, very long clips.

[Rincevent]

I can do noting else than totally agree with you.

[edwin]

It' really hard to give a straight answer to all of your questions, but i will try.

We have allways tried to keep the response time of resolume as low as possible.
that means that you can load clips quickly and play them right away. that 's why we don't use the RAM, beceause loading the clips into the ram is what makes it slow.
Clips of 10 MB will be a few times bigger when umcompressed in Ram. So 10 mb could be 80 mb. You could load only the frames around the current position in Ram but that would not work when you set the playmode to random.

What we could also do is load the compressed files into RAM, that means that the files are more or less copied into the RAM (like the Ramdisk solution).

Some people might use long clips and let them play for a longer time like Metaprofessor, other people wil use Resolume as a trigger app and thus wants clips to be loaded and unloaded very quickly.
Some people want to load their decks in ram, but maybe there isn't enough Ram so not every clip can be loaded, so wich onces should be loaded and wich not.

There are so many questions to be answered that it makes it hard to come up with a nice solution.
We will try to get our hands dirty on this issue because the playback of clips from the HD is what makes Resolume slow down.

so i can only promise you that we will get into this.

Cheers
Edwin

[Rincevent]

Originally posted by edwin
It' really hard to give a straight answer to all of your questions, but i will try.

The more I dig about that memory managment issue the more complex it seems so I understand you can't give me a simple answer. Anyway I thank you very much for answering me and taking all this in consideration.

Originally posted by edwin
You could load only the frames around the current position in Ram but that would not work when you set the playmode to random.

I suppose it would only improve the perfs when changing the play direction of a clip and it would remain lots of HDD access so I don't think it would be a solution.

Originally posted by edwin
What we could also do is load the compressed files into RAM, that means that the files are more or less copied into the RAM (like the Ramdisk solution).

That seems far better for me ! (even if I don't really understand why a 10Mo File on my HDD would be 80Mo on my Ram and why and how you can store them "compressed" in RAM)

Originally posted by edwin
Some people might use long clips and let them play for a longer time like Metaprofessor, other people wil use Resolume as a trigger app and thus wants clips to be loaded and unloaded very quickly.

That's why the "store compressed in RAM" should be an option, that could be a general option or maybe a per-clip option.

Originally posted by edwin
Some people want to load their decks in ram, but maybe there isn't enough Ram so not every clip can be loaded, so wich onces should be loaded and wich not.

I understand but once again if you put this as an option you can delegate that responsability to the user. (and if you don't like to put a option that potentialy crach your app just make it hidden or comes with warnings.)

Originally posted by edwin
There are so many questions to be answered that it makes it hard to come up with a nice solution.

I know, I have the cool part of the job, requesting improvements and wheening

Originally posted by edwin
We will try to get our hands dirty on this issue because the playback of clips from the HD is what makes Resolume slow down.

That's cool news !

Originally posted by edwin
so i can only promise you that we will get into this.

That's very kind , from my side I continue to explore dofferent possible workarounds and post my experiences, good or bad, on this Forum.

You already made a great application, focused on what's really important (well thought interface, no fancy 3D effects with 150 useless parameters) You really deserve respect for that.

I can't wait to see the new Beta on 15th.

Cheers,
Rincevent