Graphics

Hi all,

I'm doing a gameshow with XPression where I have to load quite a few videos into the memory. When I go to another round where I don't need videos, I assign a small blank video to the material in an effort to reduce the performance level, but I'm under the impression that the load stays the same.

Is there a way to unload videos from the memory through the API?

And also, I've noticed a few settings in TOOLS > ADVANCED > FLUSH but I'm not really sure what they do. I assume these are used to flush data that is no longer assigned to any material however I'm not sure.

So any information on that would be great.

Thanks,

Kenneth

Hi Kenneth,

all I say is only my impression and not ross verified!

If the videoclips are on the timeline they are rendered and use performance, no matter if they are displayed or not.

To reduce the performance usage, I disable the scenedirector tracks where the videoclips are on.

Best regards

Spectro

#XPression

If you go to Tools->Debug->Video Cache Monitor; it will show you a list of video clips currently loaded into memory. You can also see if they are actually playing or decoding frames. If the clips aren't listed in the monitor, they are not using any memory currently.

The flushes are used for clearing some of the other caches, such as the texture cache which is a cache of still images currently loaded into memory. This can be useful when you overwrite a TGA file on disk for example and you need XPression to force a reload of it..

Flushing the "offline cache" deletes all the compiled shaders.. This won't really be useful for you.

#XPression

Thank you both for the info.

I'll have a look at the Video Cache Monitor.

However if I remember correctly that one shows numbers with a red background. Does the background indicate that it's too heavy?

Cheers,

Kenneth

#XPression

OK, this confirms my last post.

Just assigning an other material does not stop decoding frames from videoclips on the scenedirector. You have to disable the track to avoid decoding.

#XPression

When the time turns red, that means it has taken more than 1 frames worth of time to decode 1 frame from the video clip.

In general yes that means you are outside of the performance range. A single spike of red would be OK because there are several frames buffered but if they are consistently red then its a problem.

#XPression

@ Kenneth

Yes a red bar indicates too much decoding time.

The decoding time is also shown in the video cache monitor.

It gets critical if the "filled" buffers run down to 0.

With a red bar only for some milliseconds it may be ok.

#XPression