PlayBack Problem

sbico

Hi guys,

I have a playback problem. I made a simple patch that output a prores 422 1920x640 at 25fps with no effects, just some text that appears on the image, trigger value for control movie start. A movie player is attached at a projector that move down the image down to align the video at the bottom of the screen image.I have frequently drops (24.5, 24.7 playback rate in the status monitor), but I can't figure why.

I'm on a mac pro 8 cores 14 gig of ram and a Ati radeon 5570 for my screen and a nvidia quadro 4000 for the video projector output on 1920x1080 hdmi signal, hard drive 7200...

I settings the default resolution to my movies resolution, target frame rate at 25.

I'm doing some stupidly wrong?

Nicola

Michel

Are you asking why the framerate is falling down to 24.5, 24.7, or do you see that the movie is not playing smooth?
What version of Isadora are you working with?
What kind of resolution is 1920x640, that you output at 1920x1080?

Best
Michel

sbico

I see the movie not playing smoothly. The resolution is set to fit a 3:1 ratio screen, but I output on a 1920x1080 vidéo projector, throw ans DVI to hdmi cable.

I tested with the c32 and c24 version.

Michel

I exported a movie in the format 1920x640 and on my MacBook Pro it 2.53GHz Intel Core i5 it plays smooth with the normal Movie Player and Projector. In Isadora I set the resolution to "Scale to largest Image". What you can do is try the Movie Player Direct, could help in some situations.

If you have the core version you can give the Ci Movie Player and the CI Projector a try this will improve the performance quite a lot. If you do not have the core version, put Isadora into demo mode.
Close Isadora and go to "Users/shared/" and move the "isadora-registration.izr" file to the desktop. Now restart Isadora and try the CI Movie Player. Does it work better? For the Core Video functions you have to pay another $ 25.- but its well worth it. To put Isadora back into licensed mode move your registration file back to "Users/shared". You will be asked if you want to replace the existing file, click yes.

Best
Michel

sbico

I have the core version.

I tried with CI movie player and CI projector, movie is smoother, but there are still some drops, often where there are a lot of movements in the image... Compression settings problem? But in proRes the bit rate is constant...

Michel

Maybe you can try the lower ProRes 422 (LT) this uses 100Mbit/s instead of 147 Mbit/s. Or try PhotoJPEG between 50% and 75%. It's often dificult to say why does this codec work on the one computer and not on the other with similar specs.

Best
Michel

craigw

Hi,

Isadora isn't the only program that does this. QT 7pro is bad also. QT 10 is better but still has the problem. I've been trying to get to the bottom of this for a while because I would love to use

Isadora for video playback, but I still haven't solved this problem. I've tried many different codecs even lowering the resolution all the way down to 480x320\. And still stutters in different spots of the video.

I'm using a Macbook pro with a USB 3.0 SSD hard drive that I've clocked at over 200MB/s which helps the read. So with a video file that has such a small resolution and fast drive speeds I've pretty much ruled out the hard drive. So next part of the chain would move to data to processor. Is something getting dropped there with buffers or look ahead? Or possible the graphics cards?

I'm still testing on different computers with different hardware setups because I love the power and ease of this program.

DusX

For best results, make sure your video footage has a fps that relates directly to both your projector/monitors refrash rate, and the target rate in isadora.
For example.. video at 30fps, Isadora target 30fps, projector refresh 60hz
or video at 30fps, Isadora target 15fps, projector refresh 60hz
or video at 25fps, Isadora target 25fps, projector refresh 75hz

this way the system won't have to double/drop any frames to compensate.

sbico

I checked every parameters : 25 fps projector set to 1080p PAL 50hz. I noticed that when export a full hd (1920x1080) instead of 1920x640 performances are better, but always some drops appears. I start to think the problem is from qt side.

fifou

@ craigw
I'm in the same situation as you :
I have tried several players to have perfect smooth movements in my movies.
QTPlayer, QLab, VPT5, Max/MSPJitter, Resolume, GrandVJ... And the winner is ... Modul8 : extremely fast and smooth VJ software. But no triggers, sequential actions...
Too bad that Isadora's play engine isn't as good.
But I still love it..

Best
Philippe

vanakaru

I use M8 too for the good video performance reasons and since I have 2 licenses anyway. Often conjuction with Isadora doing all triggering/interactivity and sending over MIDI to M8. If ever Modul8 would implement good MIDI control it would be great, but it does not seems to happen. So the MIDI is piece of job to set up in Modul8, but doable with the help of Isadora.

I would gues however that Resolume actually will beat M8 if you use DXV encoded video.

And I think CoGe would beat them all with Hap supported video codec. CoGe is very interesting app with fantastic Quartz implementations.

Look at this work is rather impressive.

http://www.cogevj.hu/blog/

I do not have workable(expired trials) CoGe or Resolume to run tests, but I would be most interested in results.

Millumin supposed to be very good timeline based player too with excellent MIDI, OSC support and to my knowledge is supporting Hap as well.

fifou

Hi Vanakaru,

For Isadora(master)->Md8(slave) users like you, i've written an user actor to control layers of Md8 via OSC.
It's more accurate than Midi and you don't have to configure midi links.
Just leave the OSC(global) module in md8 running (the GarageCube's Library one, not the others !) on port 8002.

This actor controls one layer of md8 : movie n°, speed, position, loop, volume, opacity, X,Y position, zoom, X,Y,Z, rotation, Sat, Lum, contrast controls with auto off to spare cpu...
You can use several actors to drive several layers.
The only problem, there's no feedback from md8 about movie running or not, (not end trigger) no timecode return... So this actor only sends data.

Hope you'll find it usefull

Best
Philippe

80f63e-modul8-layers-osc-remote-v1.1.iua

vanakaru

Very nice. I like it a lot. Thanks!

fifou

An update of my Modul8 Layer OSC remote control Actor.

Some bug fixes, but still not perfect.
When you copy or add this actor inside a patch, you have to change the layer n° (to update osc message inside the actor).

Best
Philippe
65f8b1-modul8-layers-osc-remote-v1.2.iua