MacOS NDI optimisation - resolution degradation

[Bassindaniel]

Hello all.

As an "Heavy" PC user,
(DELL XPS 9550, Win 10, 16gb RAM, GTX960m \ DESKTOP 8700k, 32gb RAM, GTX1080, BM Duo 2) - Both with Resolume arena 6 + 7. Latest versions.
I'm working a lot with NDI sources internally (Mainly from Adobe EA to Resolume and from Resolume to OBS) and externally (other pc with Vmix\Resolume\...).

Some times, When there is no other solution, in a gigs, i'm allowing myself to Connect to the Videowall System via NDI.

A month a go i got a BRAND NEW APPLE MAC BOOK PRO 16" - i9, 32gb RAM, 5500m pro 8gb vRAM. no doubt a beast. also with Resolume arena 6 + 7. Latest versions.

Yesterday i had one of those things NDI gigs. (resolution was approximately 4300x1008)
I connected My BRAND NEW APPLE MAC BOOK PRO 16" VIA 1gb Ethernet cable to the main PC, set our manual IP. and Walla, everything seems to be ok. Data Upload was around 80-100mbps.

SADLY. a few minutes later i realise that when the visuals have a lot of movement (high bitrate) i'm having a HUGE resolution degradation. like, F big pixels.

I had a lot of operating situation with a big resolution NDI connection on my two other windows machines. but i never saw that resolution problem.

It is some how related to NDI HX \ NDI TOOLS 4.1 pack \ ANY OTHER IDEA?

HELP!

Please let me know your thoughts
Thanks, Daniel.

[Zoltán]

1Gbps connection all the way between the two end points?

[Bassindaniel]

Yes. One 5m cat6 cable between two computers

[Zoltán]

Having a cat6 cable connecting doesn't necessarily mean the machines will connect with 1Gb.
Have you double checked the link status on both machines?
Is it 1Gb or 100M?

[Bassindaniel]

Yes I did. a solid 1gbps.

I also tested this situations at home with my desktop pc and I'm having the same issue. (macbook as NDI output)

[Zoltán]

Ok, it's possible that your macbook can't handle the encoding properly, so the library adjusts encoding quality to prevent dropouts.

You can check this by opening up Activity monitor and enabling the Processor usage window.
If the processor can't keep up, you'd see one of the cores running high.

What you can do to get some headroom, would be limiting the amount of data that needs encoding.
You can either lower the resolution of your output, or lower the frame rate of the composition.
You can limit the composition frame rate in the Resolume Composition menu - Settings.

[Bassindaniel]

I did opened the Activity Monitor and nothing looks to spiky.
also I did take my resolution back to 1080p and still the same issue.

[Zoltán]

Does limiting the composition frame rate to 25 help?

[Bassindaniel]

No

[Zoltán]

Hmm, ok, how fast are file transfers between the machines via the network?

If you run NDI monitor on the sender machine, does it receive a high resolution image?