Performance issues
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Hello all,
I have a project and I have some questions about some stuff
It's a line animation, 6 min. long projected on two walls, a large one and a smaller one perpendicular to the first one.(a corner)
It's going to be covered by three projectors fullHD, two on the first wall and one on the second. There are also going to be some objects on the wall and some objects on the floor that I will project on them also.Im trying to decide if it is best to render one large canvas (6500x1080 more or less) or four full HD canvases. Does the number of clips matter for the performance? or what matters is the total number of pixels? If I render in one large canvas I can propably save some pixel space and squeeze some artwork so the the total number of pixels is going to be less..
Also does the duration of the video matter?I did some testing on my pc and it didn't go so well. On both cases I was dropping frames, and it wasn't consistent every time so i'm not sure. I wanted to have an alpha channel because i wanted a background, and be flexible with the mapping. is the patch going to be lighter without alpha?
I want to buy a computer for the installation (perminent installation, its going to be only for this project) and i need to know in what to invest. Ram? graphics card? CPU? hard drive? Multicore? is everything important and with what order?
Is Isadora multithreading?Do you know if there is a software or something to monitor the performance of my computer while playing isadora so that i know where is the bottleneck? so that i know where to start.. I monitored the performance tab in task manager(windows) and couldn't see something going through the roof.. The patch is going to be simple only playing the videos and a lot of mapping.
I tried Hap with Alpha (dropping frames)
I tried Hap Q without Alpha (it said 25fps but it was actually playing in slow motion)What is actually happening when dropping frames? why the slow motion? Shouldn't it just drop frames? The thing is that I will have sound as well, is the sound going to drift?
Also is it possible to have multichannel audio embed to the video file or does it have to be a seperate file?
I am also going to have some machines with mottors that will interact with the animation and i need to be precise with the frame i want to trigger them. Can i count frames in isadora? (eg. Trigger at frame 528)
One last question, the animation is with lines and there is aliasing when skewed to be mapped, is there antialiasing in isadora? Is it better to do oversampling? or is it going to be worse for the performance?
About my Computer that i performed the tests:
I did the tests with two hard drives - not a major differenceSamsung SSD 860 EVO
Samsung SSD 960 EVO (nvme)
Intel Core i7- 7820X CPU @ 3.60Hz
64 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080I know this was long and a lot of questions,
sorry and i appreciate the help!Thank you very much
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Hi Alice.
There is a lot to answer here. I don't have a lot of time right now to answer everything in detail. But here is my brief reply:
Im trying to decide if it is best to render one large canvas (6500x1080 more or less) or four full HD canvases. Does the number of clips matter for the performance? or what matters is the total number of pixels? If I render in one large canvas I can propably save some pixel space and squeeze some artwork so the the total number of pixels is going to be less..
Also does the duration of the video matter?
The number of clips should not matter. As long as they are in the correct codec and file type and running of a solid state drive you will be fine. Equally, one large canvas should not be a problem either. The duration of the file does not matter at all.
I did some testing on my pc and it didn't go so well. On both cases I was dropping frames, and it wasn't consistent every time so i'm not sure. I wanted to have an alpha channel because i wanted a background, and be flexible with the mapping. is the patch going to be lighter without alpha?Again I feel this is down to codec. Hap AVI is what you want. I also have GTX1080 in one of my machines and I can get very good performance at resolutions you are describing. The NVME SSD should fly through this!
I want to buy a computer for the installation (perminent installation, its going to be only for this project) and i need to know in what to invest. Ram? graphics card? CPU? hard drive? Multicore? is everything important and with what order?
There are loads of threads discussing specs of machines and I feel it can get quite opinionated. 32gig of Ram will be fine. A decent i7 or AMD 7 will be ok. You can get an RTX3060/3070 for quite cheap now (if you can get hold of one!) M.2 NVME ssd for sure! Get two and Raid 0 if you can.
Is Isadora multithreading?Yes but only three cores I believe.
What is actually happening when dropping frames? why the slow motion? Shouldn't it just drop frames? The thing is that I will have sound as well, is the sound going to drift?
Its hard to tell you the answer to this. It could be many things. Again; Codec? I know you are using HAP but as .mov or .avi are you using lots of effects, etc?
I am also going to have some machines with mottors that will interact with the animation and i need to be precise with the frame i want to trigger them. Can I count frames in isadora? (eg. Trigger at frame 528)Not that I am aware of. Isadora deals percentages and can do timecodes but I have never seen frames. In theory though with some maths, you could do this. Time x FPS?
One last question, the animation is with lines and there is aliasing when skewed to be mapped, is there antialiasing in isadora? Is it better to do oversampling? or is it going to be worse for the performance?
Make sure that the OpenGL full-frame Anti Aliasing is on. But you will still get some aliasing. Ultimately the projectors will create aliasing. Depending on your projector resolution and how far away the audience is will depend on it you can actually see it or not.
I hope this helps for now!
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@alice said:
I am also going to have some machines with mottors that will interact with the animation and i need to be precise with the frame i want to trigger them. Can i count frames in isadora? (eg. Trigger at frame 528)
When you use a Movie Player, you can easily get the position in timecode format. That is plenty of accuracy for your motors / go triggers
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@skulpture thank you for your reply,
I am using Hap avi.. (Should have clarify that) and no effects at all! just the mapping..
Thats why i want to monitor the performance somehow.. Maybe there is something wrong with a part of my computer? its four years old.. Is there a way to mathematically calculate what i need? Thank you very much for your recomendations and info : )
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@juriaan yes, thank you, this is the way!
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