Graphics

My latest project pushes the meter to 1100%! I can't understand what is wrong. Playback is choppy. The prepare time takes many seconds. I only use two short movies in 4:4:2 XPression codec. Maybe I need to lower the quality to 4:1:1. What causes realtime problems for the XPression? Any ideas?

Okay I had 6 movies in the project and wanted to pick one at random each time. It seems the XPression even suffers when movies aren't played! So if a movie is a material, then having it in the material tab will immediately slow down the XPression.
Can I use visual logic to pick a random number and then load a material video from disc? So not having them all in the project but use them on demand?
#XPression

Gvane,

Can you open Video Cache Monitor under "Tools -> Debug -> Video Cache Monitor"; when XPression is struggling can you take a screenshot of the window and upload it?

Also under Edit -> Preferences -> Hardware Renderer; can you verify that this is set to your dedicated GPU and what the GPU model is?
#XPression

Gvane - this is not normal or expected behavior. There is definitely something wrong with your system. Have you reached out to Tech Support?
#XPression

dberry I made a screenshot of the OLDER project with 7 movies of 4:4:4 quality placed upon unused materials. Two were converted to 4:1:1 and used on screen. So it is lighter than before but still heavy enough to make things bleep. Not 1100% but stil 130% or more. I must add, this is a designer station and not the real broadcast XPression! But still, even that machine is preparing for a second or so before playing the heavy project. I fear we will move out of sync on air like this.

I since dropped the option to have six random variations to make the project more beautiful. I went down to 4:1:1 and only use two small movies. Now it works instantly.

My card is a GTX 780 but like I said, it's just the designer station. The broadcast machine must have a better card I think.

garner, the problem lies mainly in the designer station like I said, but still the broadcast machine must prepare too, if I use 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 footage. I think I must drop to 4:1:1 and leave out the variations for the movies I designed. :( Back to boring 2 movies. Normally the XPression sort of works. It must be the project.
#XPression

Okay I had 6 movies in the project and wanted to pick one at random each time. It seems the XPression even suffers when movies aren't played! So if a movie is a material, then having it in the material tab will immediately slow down the XPression.
Can I use visual logic to pick a random number and then load a material video from disc? So not having them all in the project but use them on demand?

Having many video materials in the materials manager will not affect a specific scene. Having them on a scene director though, or assigned to an object in the scene, even if they are on a track that is disabled, or a hidden object will cause them to load/cache even if they are not currently playing. This is because at any moment an animation or script may enable that track or object and the video needs to already be loaded/cued so that it can play frame accurately without waiting for it to load.

Changing between 4:4:4 and 4:1:1 should make almost no difference to the playback performance. The biggest difference is the quality setting that you choose in the Video Coder; make sure you are not setting the quality to 100%, just leave it at the default of 80%.

If the performance is really poor, you can always share the project and we can look at the scene to see why it's 1100%..
#XPression

Thanks dford. It absolutely is due to having the movies on a scene director AND assigned. My trick would be a Visual Logic to semi-random change visibility.
It would be better if visual logic could switch the used movie without assigning them all. Is that possible? So have them in the material manager and somehow logic a movie on a quad that I want...

Oh and maybe the forum auto log off time can be extended substantially: I get kicked off before my text is done sometimes.
#XPression