Which actors need most power

niknaim

Hello,
is there any guide that shows how much CPU the which actors needs. Or which actors needs more or less CPU? I come finally to an end with my computerspeed and would like to know what kind of actors or which kind of use of actors makes my framerate to go down. Of course I can try to delete all the actors one after another, to see when my framerate goes up again. But my project became very large and maybe some kind of description exists already. I am talking about the basic actors and not the 3D-actors which I dont use at all.

Thanks,
Niklas

DusX

Hi Niklas.
There is no per actor meter that will show cpu unit used. You have the Performance Monitor, that will show your scenes framerate and cpu cycles.
As far as what uses the most CPU, there are a couple things to remember:

generally doing calculations is not a strain on the system. Even the Smoother actor which runs many quick calculations will not be a huge strain.
Video processing is the big one (FreeFrame effects, and analysis)
Video Scaling is a big one (this can be tricky since scaling may occur differently depending on your preferences)

A good rule of that I follow is to ensure that at any point the video resolution is as small possible for the next process.
You can accomplish this a number of ways.. The scaler actor... mixing with another stream (or re-sizeable background actor) etc... but remember scaling also eats CPU so sometimes its a balance between scaling and the effects you are running.

I hope that helps.

niknaim

Hi DusX,
thanks! That information was what I was asking for. Scaling should be an issue in my project because I use as footage only MOVs with dv-codec (768x576) in 100% size. The thing I am not sure about is, if that is sclaed to 16:9 (set up in the preferences)...does that count as scaling too?

And there is one special effect I use. To double my image and place the the two versio on top of each other I used the multivid actor with 1 column and two rows and scaled the outcoming video with the zoomer actor vertically two 200%. Is there another way of doubling my video image?

Thanks again for your really quick answer,
Niklas

dbini

i think zoomer is bit of a CPU killer. could you achieve the same effect with 2 projectors?

if you compress your MOVs into photo JPEG at about 80% compression then 768x576 should run pretty smoothly - depending on your system.

to check if its a specific actor that's eating your CPU then use the Performance Monitor and click on the bypass of each actor in turn instead of deleting it. a bypassed actor does not use any resources.

niknaim

Hi dbni,
i thought that the zoomer need a lot CPU. I had it befor exactly as you said, with two projectors, but my impression was, that this cost meed even more. I will try to go back and compare the two version.

Niklas

DusX

Scaling via the Projector should offset this processing to the GPU rather than CPU.
Likewise any stage settings that scale should be handled by the GPU.
Its always finding the right balance for a specific machine. If you have a strong GPU its good to try to move a lot of the work over to it.