DXV profiles

[dirtyjohn_lv]

Tried out the different profiles in Resolume.

The normal HAP and HAP Alpha are smaller file sizes of the same videos, ONLY because they use a slightly small bitrate. Frame rates inside Resolume stay the same as DXV

HAP HQ is a standard high nitrate, larger file size and lower frame rates than DXV. I imagine this would be the case with DXV if it used the higher bitrates.

Haven't tried both out in VDMX yet tough

[bangnoise]

It's interesting though. As far as we know, the latest internal Resolume build is currently the only software that can actually do an A/B test of both codecs in the same software, and we found CPU usage was identical.

How have you tested the CPU usage? Maybe it's just that VDMX has a lower CPU overhead?

For everything except DXV it was measured in a custom app which programatically measured usage over 40 seconds for a range of different styles of 24 FPS 1080p clips. I then subtracted the "idle" usage of the app. For DXV I used Activity Monitor on its longest interval (5s) and played back the same range of clips in Avenue, averaging a series of readings for each clip. I then measured and subtracted the "idle" usage of Avenue (ie discounted as much of the overhead as possible).

We did a lot of testing of various secondary compressors during development and went with Snappy because it offers substantially lower CPU usage than anything else. An interesting test would be the number of simultaneous 1080p streams of DXV vs Hap you can achieve from the fastest SSD you can get your hands on.

[Joris]

@bangnoise
Thorough testing! That must have been geeky fun times. We just had our own little geek session comparing encoding times this morning

@dirtyjohnlv
FPS comparisons are a bit moot at this point, since the public version of Resolume does not play back Hap on the GPU. Not yet anyway.

[mfo]

Hi everyone,
so, what is the current state of affairs?
Is Resolume supporting Hap in current releases, and on all platforms?
And is/will HapQ actually be available for Windows?

I'm asking this as the problem of poor image quality (caused by banding in gradients) is still unresolved for me (on latest Arena, Win7). And Hap Q sounds like the solution..

[Joris]

We've always been a bit apprehensive when it comes to a high quality version of DXV, as the resulting file size would be quite large. We get enough messages along the lines of "I converted my youtube download mp4 to dxv and it became much bigger, this is not right!'.

However, VJ performances are getting more and more high quality, so we've been working on improving DXV in the past months. A HQ profile could be part of the options.

Hap support is coming in Res 5. Whether or not HapQ will be cross platform is not for us to answer.

[mfo]

Hi Joris,
thanks for the info. Can't wait for Res5 - but i won't ask for a release date...
When it comes to unreflected (or: incredibly dumb) user behaviour there is really no limit. And I very well understand the annoyance coming with that. But if you introduce profiles and keep the advanced ones "hidden" in a submenu then all should be fine, right?
Bests,
Marcel

[Joris]

My comment was not meant to complain about the people asking these questions, we're here to help people with any questions they have.

It's more to indicate that people can have trouble with codecs and their benefits and drawbacks altogether. DXV was intended to take all the hassle out of that, and to give people a decent image quality with high performance playback, without having to mess with all sorts of options. But even without any options at all, people still have trouble grasping that concept.

Introducing a HQ option will surely improve image quality, and we recognise the demand for that. But it will be even more tempting for novice users to always put it on HQ (because why would you not want the highest quality possible, right?), even though for the majority of VJ content, it's not really required.

[Programfeed]

Asking novice users to read the manual and learn tradeoffs between DXV and a DXV HQ codec would be an acceptable part of the learning curve.