Graphics

I'm currently working on a couple different scenes and am running into a new problem. On my designer PC, when I render to a virtual output, my performance only shows 10-20% usage per scene. When I then take these to my on-air PCs and take the scenes online through the matrox SDI output card, I'm seeing over 200% performance usage per scene. With two scenes, close to 350%. This obviously causes the frame rate to drop significantly, which I don't want (for obvious reasons...).

The videos I'm using are 1080i .avi that were rendered in After Effects CC. The render settings were "Based on Lossless," using the XPression format option. Color 4:4:4, 80% quality (default). I've even tried playing with the bitrate to see if that helps. I've gone from CBR @ 35Mb/s, down to VBR 2-pass, @ target 12 Mb/s, and I get the same regardless.

I'm wondering what differences I should be looking between my designer PC and the on-air PCs, since that's the biggest possibility, and if there's any way I can change the videos to render more efficiently on the on-air PCs.

Hi Dan,

The virtual framebuffer will always use signifcantly less performance than a matrox output, since the scene doesn't need to be transferred off of the nvidia card back into the main host ram and then out to the matrox board.

However 200% is excessive for a scene. What is in the scene? Is it just a single video clip or are there lots of objects and layers? You're not playing the video clip over a network drive are you?

Can you upload the video/scene?

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Not much is in the scene. One HD background looping video, then a few image objects and two alpha masks.

I have uploaded the scene to our production ftp site:

host: ftp2.qni.biz

user: wrexprod

pass: POST EDITED

The project is already deployed and is in the "Olympics GFX Build" folder.

EDIT: I'm having this problem with two scenes, the double boxes, and the OTS.

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Hi Dan,

I've downloaded the project. You might want to edit your post to remove the ftp password..

I'll let you know what I can see in the project.

Thanks

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Post edited. Thanks, let me know if you see anything strange.

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Hi Dan,

I see the project is in 1080p/59.94. I pressume you actually output 1080i/29.97.

If you go into the Project->Convert Project Mode you can try changing it to 1080i/29.97. Sometimes this may affect the timing of animations etc, and it may be better to start a new project in 1080i and import the scenes into it.

I also notice the OLY_BKG bkgd video is rendered at 25.00 frames per second. You should re-render/convert this to 29.97 fps.

I suspect that fixing both of the above issues will solve your performance issue. If not, let us know.

Thanks

Brian

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I have changed the project settings to 29.97 (nice catch, btw), and changed the video to 29.97. Had my AE project set up weird.

It's better now, but still not perfect. The OTS is fine. The boxes scenes still land around 110% performance, and I'd like to see that more around 50-70%, since I'll have another channel of CGs I use on this machine.

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I have put an .xpp on the same ftp I posted earlier called OLY_GFX_TEST_012814v2.xpp. If you are able to take a look and see if there's anything else I'm missing, that would be awesome.

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I tried your XPP and the Double Box is running at 32% performance on my XPression turnkey machine (Matrox output). The OTS is running at 30% performance. This is on the 2nd Generation XPression platform with a GTX570 card.

When you compare this to other scenes in your projects (like your regular Double Box), what do those scenes use for performance?

I did notice you converted the project to 1080p/29.97 instead of 1080i/29.97 but I don't think that will affect it too much. For correctness though you should indeed switch to 1080i (interlaced, not progressive).

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If you look at the Tools->Debug->Video Cache Monitor, when the double box is online, what does the "Decode (ms)" column have in it?

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Upon converting to 1080i instead of 1080p, all problems were fixed. The boxes are now running at 40%, the OTS is running at 35%, and combined I'm seeing about 80%. When I added a video animation to the quad in the OTS (where there will normally be an image or video), I was seeing 85-90%. Right where I want it to be.

Thanks for the help, guys! Sometimes it's the little details that someone else sees that you miss because you're drugged out on cold medicine and caffiene, you know what I'm saying? :)

#XPression