Resolume Forum

I'm using resolume for some HD playback and would appreciate some shared knowledge from others working in HD, if indeed there are any.

Currently I play a mixture of stills (jpeg) and video (either MJPEG avi or DXV QT - more on that later) generally I'm playing a "single hit" video file on layer 2 over a layer 1 still image so that when the video ends it falls back to the still rather than going to black.

I'm a bit disappointed with the performance so far, I'm finding that playback stutters a little bit and framerates are inconsistent eve with just a single layer of 1080p 25fps video, the machine I have for this is not too great (it really needs a better video playback hard drive - hopefully I will have a pair of SSD coming to put in as a raid0) but it has a good CPU (Xeon quadcore 2.66) and a decent GPU (Nvidia Quatro FX1800)

I'm hoping to get the better drives in and an additional GPU and then run resolume as a dualstream player running a composition size of 3840x1080 to provide 2 independent 1080p streams into the vista spyder that is controlling the LED screen. However the poor performance i'm currently getting is a worry and i'm not sure that the machine can cope with such a high resolution where I need consistent video quality without any stutter.

Is anybody else using resolume for such high resolution playback? If so what kind of spec machine do you have? Are you able to get smooth playback or do you see some jitter sometimes? What codec are you using?

With DXV i get a higher number in the framerate counter most of the time, but i notice that the framerate drops down below 25fps more often than with MJPEG. As DXV files seem to be about twice the bandwidth of MJPEG this is not a surprise to me, but i'd be interested in others experience with this (one thing i haven't checked is the bit depth of the files, I suspect that the DXV are 32bit,as opposed to the 24bit MJPEG files) I'm curious as to some of the glowing reviews i've seen for DXV as in my experience the trade off of better decompression speed on the GPU is offset by the bigger file size and thus extra disk read overhead. Maybe I haven't experimented enough with encoding settings but I'd like to hear some theoretical justifications for using DXV, especially given that it takes such an insanely long time to encode (0.22x realtime seems to be the deal using procoder to transcode from whatever format the clients have sent their videos in) I'm also willing to accept that i'm fussy and don't really care what the numbers on the FPS read out say, but do really really care when i see a visible stutter on the output.

I'm hoping that i can get my machine upto spec and get my dual outputs working, and would love to hear anyone's experiences with this kind of setup, especially if your working in an environment where people really care about smooth video playback!

first i think you're right that you'll need a better Hard drive, especially for long hd clips!
second your video card has the gpu of an geforce 9500, so your performance should'nt be better than on a macbook pro with mobile geforce9600!
for hd playback you should maybe use a newer graphiccard... ati 4870/ nvidia gtx260 upwards i would prefer!

i have a raid0 drive with 2 640gb 7200 rpm hd's and ati 4870. Maximum i ran live was 3200x600 or 3078x768 playing videos from pal up to fullhd and 2400x600.... 6 layers for 2 different streams, no big problem so far only using dxv!

maybe the mjpeg codec suites better for longer videos with less black parts!
with the dxv codec my cpu is very bored, so i think using some mjpeg clips for longer videos might be the best solution!

Hmm i'm not sure i understand how a faster / more modern GPU would help? I don't want to do any effects, don't need more shader pipelines and don't understand how having a better GPU would make any difference given my current one is adequate? (Bart / Edwin I'd be keen to hear you opinions about this)

I need another graphics card anyway but was hoping to get a cheapish one. Its really hard to find any good computer shop here (in Dubai) I've managed to track down some SSD but they are super pricey and not a brand i'm familure with.

Hopefully its not my money paying for any of this anyway but it is amazingly hard to get people to part with 500 quid sometimes, even if they have spent $17 Million on the screen!

Are you using a Mac or a PC?

On the Mac, ProRes codec seems to outperform DXV, in terms of encoding speed and playback performance. This is because it seems to rely quite heavily on the GPU for decoding. I used it for playback at 8192 x 768 resolution, 30fps, very smooth. (Two 3072 x 768 files and one 2048 x 768 file, all playing simultaneously, from 3 separate drives.) On an Apple platform, the ProRes codec is far more up-to-date and efficient than PhotoJPEG or MotionJPEG. We went from 24fps to 60fps in tests, same file, going from PhotoJPEG at 85% to ProRes. (ProRes decoding is not accelerated on Windows sadly).

On a PC, do all the usual drill to stop any unnecessary processes and services.

Also, what codec are you using to decode MJPEG AVI? Picvideo or something else? If you're using Picvideo, make sure to turn off advanced deblocking, and any other post-processing. If you're using ffdshow, turn off all postprocessing there too.

PC sadly though the prores comments are very interesting for when i get back from this dusty hell hole!

PC is massively unoptimised repurposed CAD machine (HP Z400) it has just 3GB ram currently which i don't feel is enough - currently it is used for graphics prep and playout which again is not what i want, but nobody seems keen to listen to me...

I feel like a idiot posting here really when i haven't been able to follow my own advice regarding setup and config!

isn't real work frustrating?

Hmm i'm not sure i understand how a faster / more modern GPU would help? I don't want to do any effects, don't need more shader pipelines and don't understand how having a better GPU would make any difference given my current one is adequate? (Bart / Edwin I'd be keen to hear you opinions about this)

DXV is a codec specifically developed for decoding accelerated by the GPU. So, as Herrnieda mentions, the CPU can become quite bored, since the GPU is doing all the work, even when only playing back clips. In that regard it is similar to Apple Prores, except it is crossplatform.

isn't real work frustrating?

Yup

Joris

Yes I know that DXV is decoded on the GPU.

what I do not understand is why you believe that a "better" GPU would make any difference to my system's performance? Surely if my GPU wasn't fast enough to decode DXV then DXV wouldn't work at all?

Anyway I will likely try an SSD next week to see if it helps (will have to buy it myself because the idiots i work for refuse to help) , I might also rebuild the machine with a 32bit OS given that it has just 3gb of ram anyway and resolume is 32bit only.

They brought me another crappy PC too so i will move all the preprep to that and just have the playback machine running resolume i think.

what I do not understand is why you believe that a "better" GPU would make any difference to my system's performance? Surely if my GPU wasn't fast enough to decode DXV then DXV wouldn't work at all?

Well, a better/faster GPU would be able decode faster. I have a comparable specced graphics card in my machine, and find it can get pretty worked up about 1080p content, let alone 4K. You're a knowledgeable guy though, so I'm sure you figured this as well.

Anyway I will likely try an SSD next week to see if it helps

There are many possible bottlenecks in a high end pipeline like this, and I tend to agree that disk access is probably the limiting one in your case.

(will have to buy it myself because the idiots i work for refuse to help)

They brought me another crappy PC too

Are you sure this job is worth it?

Joris

Hmm well that's an interesting observation / suggestion. I'm even less convinced the DXV is a good idea now than I was before! Really if it demands a latest generation graphics card to work at HD resolutions then that is a pretty serious disadvantage (seeing as MJPEG HD decodes perfectly well on an crappy old intel cpu)
Additionally the much larger file sizes of DXV really negate any advantage as not only do i need the latest GPU to decode DXV i also need a super fast drive to maintain the data rate.

I'd be much happier with the whole concept of DXV if it supported alpha, then i'd be forced to admit that it offered advantages over the ancient MJPEG codecs! Until the alpha bug* is fixed I can't help feeeling that the hype around GPU decompression is just hype with no real advantage to end users.
(* i'm calling it a bug as DXV is 32bit but the alpha channel is always a full frame matte)

Alpha support in DXV is very high on our priority list.

I should also make clear that I'm not saying a high end graphics card is needed to make DXV decompression beneficial. I was merely answering your question on how a newer graphics card could benefit the process. As mentioned above, it's most likely the disk access which is the bottleneck, and in that case an SSD would benefit you a lot more. I'm sorry if my answer caused more confusion than gave clarity, and I'd feel even worse if it actually put you off using DXV altogether.

Aside from that, it is of course totally up to you to decide which codec works best for you in a given situation.

Joris