Deck switching is sluggish

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uproden
Met Resolume in a bar the other day
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Deck switching is sluggish

Post by uproden »

Does anyone know any tricks to speed up switching decks? I tend to switch around quite allot during a show and what seems to happen is that Resolume has to build out things like the audio waveforms, thumbnails, etc every time I change a deck, is there anyway to pre-cache all of that work so it's not slowing me down as I'm changing decks?

In case it matters my laptop is not anything ground breaking but it does have an i7, SSD and NVIDIA graphics it does not really seem to struggle to play many 1080p videos simultaneously.

TIA!

Zoltán
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Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by Zoltán »

Resolume caches the thumbnails for clips. The clips themselves need to be opened as file however every time the deck is loaded.
With lots of video clips, this can take some time even with a fast SSD. Keeping the deck with a fewer number of clips could speed things up.

Having many effect on clips or effect clips in decks can also slow deck switch down considerably, as the effects need to be reloaded for every instance.
If you have lots of these, placing the effects on the layers directly would keep the effect instances loaded on deck switch.
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firstodd
Met Resolume in a bar the other day
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Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by firstodd »

Zoltan,

Do you know what exactly the clips are "loaded"/cached into?

When we switch decks, we see our super fast SSD RAID with all the media spike up in data transfer while the program's playback struggles a bit/lags, but both GPU RAM and physical RAM seem to stay about the same regardless.

Also, it seems to keep a certain amount of decks or clips total "loaded"/cached, like if we are only working in 2 or 3 decks, the pages flip back and forth seamlessly. It's only when you load up a deck that hasn't been touched in a while does it lag up. There's no indication that any memory is filled up or other resources maxed out, so I can't figure out exactly what triggers Resolume to unload/unarm a clip, because it doesn't necessarily seem to be when you switch out of a deck. If it's going to gpu memory which is what I imagine is happening although it hard to detect, it would be nice to have some settings as to set what amount of system resources Resolume is allowed to take up before unarming ready clips.

We're just trying to optimize the hardware and figure out where the bottlenecks are.

Any and all thoughts/questions welcome.

Thx! :ugeek: Wes
Last edited by firstodd on Thu Nov 26, 2020 04:04, edited 1 time in total.

Zoltán
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Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by Zoltán »

Resolume opens all the files in the new deck, creating file handles, and closes the handles form the deck you switched from.
If the files are accessed the first time on the machine, clip thumbnails are created too. That requires decoding the clips.

Resolume keeps the files of a deck loaded, they are only released when switching a deck. Your OS will do file caching on it's own, But also your SSD might do domething like this for frequently accessed files.

If loading a deck makes the UI or playback lag for you, try disabling DMA textures in the Resolume Video preferences.
Software developer, Sound Engineer,
Control Your show with ”Enter” - multiple Resolume servers at once - SMPTE/MTC column launch
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firstodd
Met Resolume in a bar the other day
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Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 03:32

Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by firstodd »

The files are "loaded" into what? GPU RAM? Or is it writing "handles" into a cache folder on the system drive somewhere?

Thanks for the info. I'll look into the DMA tip.

cdelguercio
Is taking Resolume on a second date
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Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by cdelguercio »

If you guys open sourced Resolume I would submit this PR in a heartbeat.

Zoltán
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Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by Zoltán »

The file handles are in RAM, but I guess the OS also writes flags onto the disk.
Resolume does't write temporary files to disks for media files. The thumbnails for clips are created when the files are first opened though, so that will take some time.
If you guys open sourced Resolume I would submit this PR in a heartbeat.
We have no plans to open source Resolume currently ;)
Software developer, Sound Engineer,
Control Your show with ”Enter” - multiple Resolume servers at once - SMPTE/MTC column launch
try for free: http://programs.palffyzoltan.hu

firstodd
Met Resolume in a bar the other day
Posts: 12
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 03:32

Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by firstodd »

Cool, thanks for the input Zoltan. And just to clarify it's cpu RAM, not GPU memory?

What's interesting is if I monitor system resources while these hiccups happen, I don't see any big hits to either types of memory. Resolume barely seems to touch the RAM even on very populous decks; maybe the caps could be lifted so that more files/decks could be locked & loaded at once if the system has a ton of RAM available.

vectorfuton
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Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by vectorfuton »

firstodd wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 18:15 maybe the caps could be lifted so that more files/decks could be locked & loaded at once if the system has a ton of RAM available.
Echoing the general sentiment in this thread. Sluggish deck switching has been slowing me down and if there's any way to bypass the reloading each time, would def be into that feature!

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cosmowe
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Re: Deck switching is sluggish

Post by cosmowe »

A workaround which I uses some time when I have time critical work to do.

- I only use one deck and fill it up with 1000+ clips organized in blocks

- Each clipblock has a textinput thumbnail with the category name in front and at the end of it. For easier identifying.

- I use a midi/osc controller which sends values for the midi/osc mappable scrollbar in Resolume. Now I can jump instantly to any "clipdeck".


Yes, the initial loading of Resolume takes longer...but that's it ;)


Best wishes
cosmowe
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