Resolume Forum

Hi

This has been an issue since R6 came out, yet I had hoped it would be solved over the following releases of Resolume, especially as many people seem to have this issue. The frame rate of my old XPS15 (with Nvidia gtx750) was going low as soon as an external projector is connected.

Now I got a new laptop, the latest XPS15 with a AMD Radeon Vega GPU, no more Nvidia mess, and guess what - the problem is even way worse! For a 3840x1080 composition, two HDMI outputs (and several DXV clips played), it runs stable around 60fps without any output connected. It roughly remains the same when connected to my studio monitors.
Yet, turning up at a venue yesterday, connecting to two projectors, framerate goes down to crazy 9-11fps!! With only one projector connected it was around 20-24fps.

You will understand that this is a massive problem! Spending that much money (for the Resolume license and for a new laptop, essentially bought for this) and all I get is a broken ~10fps playback solution. This is _very_ frustrating.

Trying out various output framerates (59Hz, 60Hz, 30Hz interlaced..) had only very minimal effect on R6's framerate. Same for all tries with colour spaces, reducing resolution of main laptop window, reduction to FullHD composition size, different Radeon settings etc. etc..
Btw, during all of this the laptop doesn't even break a sweat. CPU is at 10%, GPU around 30%, SSD at 5% .. so that is not the bottle neck.

Out of desperation I started Resolume5 and here comes the surprise: it ran stable at 90fps (with a single fullHD composition).
So, long story short, this needs to be fixed as soon as possible! It renders R6 useless, especially for bigger setups.

I mean, first of all I don't understand why R6's new playback engine is tieing its internal frame rate to the connected outputs. This causes all kinds of issues. For example, another recent situation, playback from the Mac version of Resolume6:
6 screens, latest Epson projectors, running output at 60Hz. Playback from latest iMac, via Thunderbolt with extra HDMI outputs, thus 6 x fullHD. All working fine in 60fps. Clip triggering sometimes pushing it a little under 60, but that was fine.
But, as soon as one Atomos 4K recorder, 30Hz capture, was connected (instead of one of the projectors), the whole playback was capped to 30fps. Clip triggering then sometimes pushing it under 30. Which became very noticable on screen.
This capping doesn't make sense to me, output on 5 screens was damaged only to server one Atomos the right frame rate.

R5 tied it's frame rate to the GPU's refresh rate as well.
There's nothing new here.

If you turn off your V-Sync it will no longer tie it's frame rate to the external monitor, but why would you want to do that? You're going to start adding screen tearing at that point.

I use to think turning V-Sync off was a good idea, until I started noticing screen tearing.
Thinking that I was rendering at 120+ fps, but in reality I was just wasting GPU resources.
Also, If you monitor or projector can only do 30 or 60, what advantage is rendering or pushing out anything past that? The output device physically can't use any of that.

Resolume will set it's frame rate sync to the GPU that is rendering the application.
That GPU decides the frame rate, so at this point it sounds like a GPU configuration issue, not Resolume? Could be wrong, but that makes sense to me.

99% of all fps issues for me have come down to drivers.
I don't use AMD so I can't offer any advice on that stuff. For me nVidia has been rock solid.
Falls creators edition of windows threw all kinds of problems for me, but the Spring creators update has fixed all of that.
If you're on a solid version of windows and use tested and confirmed driver revisions you should be at 60fps all day.

Sorry you're having issues. Sounds like a driver issue to me.

Not sure what exact model of AMD you're using, but I see there's a lot of those builds with a 4GB GPU.
With 4GB you should be ok doing shows, nothing crazy like 16 layers of 4K with 10 video routers and 12 groups or anything lol, but your typical shows should be rock solid.

From the composition and output's you described, your well withing your capabilities with that build IMO.
And your system resources reflect that. there wasn't anything bottle necked from what you described. So again, I think it comes back to a driver issue and or GPU configuration issue.
Again, I don't know much about AMD so I couldn't even start to tell you what menu path or settings to start looking into. Or what driver versions are stable.

Anyone else on here running AMD? What driver version is everyone on?

As I read it the Intel Core i7-8705G, and the i5-8305G still have Intel HD Graphics 630 on board.
I bet some of the graphics outputs are ran off the intel GPU.

If you switch on the Show display info on the output menu you should see
- which GPU renders
- which GPU the display is connected to.
These are ideally the same and the more powerful one.

Do the same with windowed output to your primary laptop screen, to see which GPU it is connected to.

My Razers render everything of the nVidia GPU but only the HDMI is physically connected to the nVidia GPU.
When I use a TB3 dual HDMI adapter, it runs through the Intel GPU and I have to configure it accordingly.

Great catch Zoltan.

Yeah, maybe check the Intel settings and see if that helps?

Thanks for all the answers. I'm on tour atm, not near a projector before tomorrow.

R5 tied it's frame rate to the GPU's refresh rate as well.
There's nothing new here.

Not for me, R6:11fps, R5:90fps on the same hardware setup.

V-Sync off

I tried that, in this Intel Radeon dialog where you profile each software. It had no visible effect. Framerate remained super low, yet there is massive tearing either way. Seems I got the worst of both worlds.

Also, If you monitor or projector can only do 30 or 60, what advantage is rendering or pushing out anything past that? The output device physically can't use any of that.

a) See my second post with the Atomos. Huge issue, as the slowest device pulls down everything else.
b) Whenever a clip is triggered the framerate briefly falls below the ideal 30 or 60. This stutter is visible and could be avoided with Res running faster. Of course not at the price of screen tearing...

Sounds like a driver issue to me.

Brand new laptop, everything was as uptodate as Dell Updater knows.
I bypassed the Dell Updater by now and manually clean-installed the latest available drivers, will see tomorrow, but I don't expect any improvement. Just a belly feeling.

I don't use AMD so I can't offer any advice on that stuff. For me nVidia has been rock solid.

My old XPS15 has an Nvidia card inside, a 750gtx. Drivers are uptodate, yet I have the same problem, just not as bad. (Framerate falls to around 20fps with two external projectors connected.)

For starters I don't get why the issue only occurs with projectors in live situations, but not with the two monitors in my studio. Everything running at 60Hz. Shouldn't make any difference, no?
Seems I'm cursed.

Zoltan, yes, you are right, there is still a Intel GPU on board. The strange thing is, when I run Resolume both GPUs go up (in Win10's Task Manager -> Performance view). Intel GPU goes to around 30%, Radeon GPU to whatever the workload happens in Resolume. With no external displays attached, no frame rate limitation set and a few clips running, I can drive the Radeon GPU up to 98% while having some 100something fps.

I use a TB3 dual HDMI adapter, it runs through the Intel GPU and I have to configure it accordingly.

Maybe that's the cause? You configure it via the "Intel HD Graphics Control Panel", right? There doesn't seem to be much in there. Vertical Sync can be set to "Use Driver Settings" .. but what are the driver settings? It doesn't say.

What codec are you using? You wouldn’t be using pro res or non dxv would you?

I had a similar problem, could use pro res nicely in R5, R6 unusable.

nope, it's all DXV.

I actually am not using the latest nVidia drivers for my setup. The new drivers aren't playing well with me, I was getting 12fps. So I rolled them back to last months driver release. So it could have something to do with it?? BUT I was getting a constant 12fps on R5 and R6, so since you are getting 2 different fps's it may not be in your case?

Here's a link to show you what V-Sync is doing:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/13hh02ouudyg ... HfNia?dl=0

With V-Sync on, I get 60fps on R5 and R6 since my screen is 60.
with V-Sync off I'm getting close to 140fps (but I also get screen tearing with V-Sync off)

When you turn V-Sync on and off, you should see some sort of change, it shouldn't show the same fps.

Spend the last days with rented projectors to run tests and here are the frustrating results:

First of all, Arvol, you were right, with Vsync on (!) R5 and R6 deliver more or less identical results. My differences resulted from different Vsync settings. Apologies for claiming otherwise.

Vsync is a massive slow-down on my old XPS and an even bigger one on the new one, yet on both machines I see tearing without. Working with a 3840x1080 composition and two outputs framerates roughly are:

Old Dell XPS 15 (9530), GT 750M (2GB)
/w Vsync: 19fps
/wo Vsync: 36fps (and mild tearing)

New Dell XPS 15 (9575), Radeon RX Vega M GL (4GB)
/w Vsync: 10fps
/wo Vsync: 23fps (and massive tearing)
via onboard Intel 620: 26fps

As you can see, my old machine renders faster then the top-of-the-line pretty-expensive new one!
Even the onboard Intel chipset is faster then the brand-new Radeon Vega stuff??

This got me curious, so I ran the latest 3dMark - and here Radeon performs way better! 509 overall score vs 224 on the old one. So, how is it that Resolume performs so terrible on the Radeon chipset? Anything I can do to improve this?

(I've tried all available drivers and checked the Bios - to no avail.)