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FPS variations

Posted: Sat Mar 16, 2019 00:34
by millimedia
Hi all
I'd appreciate inputs on something I'm not smart enough to figure out:

In the preview monitor, I keep an eye on FPS-variations. And I don't understand the reason why it varies so much - Same settings (I think) can give me from 20 to 55FPS. It comes and goes. Doing an orderly start up seems to help a little, but there must be more to it.
Normally I input 2 cameras, HD SDI 720/50P, via BM ingesters. And mess around with 5-6 layers on top of a live feed from the cameras.
I'm on a 2016 Macbook pro with a Radeon Pro 460 built in + a Sonnet Puck with a 570 in it. The puck works fine (I use the "set egpu" SW in Terminal)
- It seems that the FPS-variations I struggle with are only very little affected by using the eGPU or not.

Any inputs on this is highly appreciated (and don't tell me to just throw away the bloody Mac, I know;)

/i

Re: FPS variations

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 09:13
by Zoltán
FPS dips can be caused by various things, but they are always a bottleneck in the system.
If it happens with the combination of specific effects, and is a steady FPS value, then the effects are probably too heavy for your GPU to handle.
Or the machine could be thermal throttling.

If you see momentary dips, then it could be some background task, or another program eating up system resources for a short time. Disk read bursts, or CPU usage spikes at the same time as the dips, could be a sign of this.

Re: FPS variations

Posted: Thu Mar 21, 2019 18:45
by Menno
If it's a thermal issue then the composition setting's framerate setting may help you in stabilizing the fps. You'll have to figure out how much it can run without ever throttling but you could try setting it to 30 and then see if it still drops down to 20. If it does then you can set it to 20 and that should make it stable again.

Re: FPS variations

Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 02:26
by millimedia
Thanks to Zlotan and Menno for generous feedback!

Problem solved, it seems I've just been overloading, resulting in all kinds of capacity issues internally.
I've rigged the ingester/eGPU again, and now it seems to do the job far better.

Just for sharing, in case somebody should be interested:
I'm trying to find an all right solution for Mac, that I can tour with two decent cameras in hand luggage (about 10 kg's) for live input to projector image.

This is what I've come up with so far, and now things seems to be running nicely (8-9 layers in 1080/50P, doing 40-55fps):
2x Canon Legria GX10 cameras. Veeery nice form factor for touring. They have some lag, about 120ms. More if I keep the streadyshot on, of course. These are identical to the "pro" version XF405, except pro audio, SDI out and ethernet control. I tested.
I ingest with a Decklink mini 4K for now, in a Sonnet Echo Express SE1 (has ThB 3) It works fine, with around 50-60ms latency on my system, but I need two camera inputs, so I'm looking forward to getting the new Decklink Quad HDMI sometime next week. - It should fit in the box and get enough power (I hope)

Then I have a 2016 Macbook Pro, top spec's. It works fine, and Resolume Arena runs very stable. BUT the GPU sucks. Of course.
So I fell in love with the Sonnet Puck with the AMD 570 card eGPU card in it (also ThB3). But the power supply is big and heavy almost as a brick, I kid you not.

I monitor everything with the Activity Monitor (in utilities), bring up the "Show GPU history". The e-GPU works at 100% capacity in Resolume, it's amazing:) And the two internal cards support. (As an ugly contrast is Adobe Premiere Pro, which I make my living on - That one only uses 30-50%, argh)

A tip if you want to use the eGPU without external monitor. The little freeware program called "Set eGPU" will let you use the eGPU for rendering and other stuff internally https://egpu.io/forums/mac-setup/potent ... s-10-13-4/