Interface Lag and Slowdown w/ Full Screen

[gradek]

I'm experiencing a very strange issue with resolume 3.1.3

Every time I turn on the full screen display I experience a huge amount of lag with the R3 interface. Yes my FPS goes down from about 60fps to 30fpts, but that's not the issue.

The problem is that any parameter that I try to control with my mouse will lag and result in choppy performance. For example changing opacity on a layer or tweaking a nob on an Effect will be chunky and slow. I can tell the interface is lagging because of the way the knob jumps around and how the video is rendered. This makes it hard to slowly fade up the opacity when there is a lag, values will jump sporadically instead of gradually changing values.

Sometimes the lag gets so bad, the mouse seems to do nothing at all. Moving a knob won't even work. Then I wait a few seconds the computer will catch up with my clicks as I watch all of the moments happen super fast one after another. It is as if the computer stopped thinking for a few seconds then decided to execute all my actions at once.

In contract if I control the same parameter via MIDI the performance is smooth and the effect on the rendered video is equally smooth. When I control via midi the knob even moves smooth in the interface, something I can't do with my mouse.

This is very frustrating and I think it might have to do with the graphics card being bogged down, I don't really know what else would be related to turning on full screen. however why midi is smooth yet the mouse is chunky, makes no sense to me.

I don't really remember this being an issue before, so I did a test an reverted back to OSX 10.5.8 and indeed I noticed significant improvement, but still some noticeable lag. So I seems to be worse under snowleopard, but I'm not sure what about SL might be the issue.

Any help or insight would be much appreciated.

I'm using a MBP 1,1
Intel Core Duo - 2ghz
Ram: 2GB
Graphics: ATI Radeon X1600
HD: Internal SSD
OS: OSX 10.6.3

[gradek]

UPDATE: I tested Resolume 3.1.3 under Windows 7 on the very same MACbook pro and didn't have any interface slowdown problems when I turned on the full screen video. Although I did have some screen glitches that were odd.

Also very same 640x480 photo-jpeg Quicktime Movies play back faster under Windows 7. about 40-50fps as apposed to about 30fps. So my guess is that the interface lag seems to be an OS X issue.

I did a second test with a friends brand new Unibody Mac under OS X 10.5.8 and also noticed some interface slowdown and lag when using the mouse, but not nearly as bad as my laptop under 10.6.3, but about the same as my laptop running OS X 10.5.8 I guess a fast new computer/graphics card is not all that great after all when mixing 640x480.

The biggest problem is just moving the opacity slider or effects with the mouse. Only when full screen is on. Smooth under windows, slow on OS X. ahhh, this is driving me crazy. Any insight? I really don't want to use R3 under windows if I don't have too.

[Joris]

Hey GradeK

First of all, thanks for your message. We try to read every post, but sometimes one slips by the radar undetected :-/

Then thanks again for running Avenue on Windows on the same machine. Now we can rule out hardware issues and it's definitely an OSX thing. We are looking into some possibly related issues caused by fullscreen on some OSX machines. In the meantime, could you check your activity monitor to see if there's any processes running in the background that may cause the computer to get worked up?

Joris

[gradek]

Hello Joris,

Thanks for the reply. I'm glad to hear your looking into it. I checked my activity monitor when using resolume with this simple setup seen in the video below. MY CPU usage was around 65-70% when running full screen with the three clips and one/two effects. That number actually went up to 80% CPU usage when my full screen was turned off???? huh... you think it would be the other way around.

Now for the screen recording I did below, the screen recording software was using a lot of CPU usage, but I can assure you that my experience is just as bad when it was not running.

In the recording below three major things happen. There is a huge lag that happens right when I turn full screen on at 0:38 I can't even move the opacity slider for about 10 seconds. Once it kicks in, You can see the choppy movement of the opacity slider and knobs. Later the entire interface lags at 1:48 and everything is non-responsive for several seconds, then all of a sudden the computer catches up to itself and executes all the clicks at once.

[Joris]

Thanks for checking and the video. Just to rule this out: Activity monitor doesn't show any spikes for other processes when you experience these slowdowns and you're not running other apps (aside from the screen cap) in the background?

In the meantime, could you send the log file to support[at]resolume[dot]com so we have all the info at hand?

[gradek]

Hi Joris,

Yes I can confirm there are no other threads that are spiking in the background. In fact I notice that my CPU drops when I turn on fullscreen. So i'm very confused. From 80-90% to 60-70%. I have a dual core processor so I can have a theoretical 200% cpu usage. I'm not sure how much resolume utilities dual core, but I did see it go up to 105% once.

No other apps running, other then the normal background processes. I even stopped time machine and some other background apps.

I just sent the log file.

[gpvillamil]

Your comment on Windows 7 Quicktime performance is interesting, I have noticed that the built-in Quicktime (and other codecs) in Win 7 is very fast, seems to be using hardware acceleration. Can actually VJ with H.264 files, not possible under Vista or XP.

[gradek]

installed 10.5.8 on the same laptop, and performance does seem somewhat better, not sure if maybe quicktime X is the issue, or if maybe a clean OS install was all it needed. I'll know some day when I do a clean install of Snow Leopard.

[gradek]

I'm starting to suspect that the performance lag is due to an internal SSD that is too full, will test soon to confirm.

UPDATE: reformatted drive, and created more space. did not help. SSD performance is better, but resolume still lags. suspecting its a graphics card or OS X issue.

[VJsynC]

Hi there, i am also having exactly the same problem my interface gets very slow, and the loading of decks takes AGES, I am using a MBP unibody 4gb ram. using res 3.2.0 , all my loops are in dxv codec. unfortunately is becoming a painfully experience using res3.
i bought 5 keys to 5 machines for teaching resolume avenue but i think i will have to think twice.

I'v made everything i could to maximize resolume performance in my Macbook but resolume simply cant handle it.
very very strange.