not playing back smoothly

[ronald_a]

One more thing I saw here was that when removing interface elements (e.g. layerproperties, timeline, etc) the framerate increased. But even when the framerate was high enough it felt like the playback was not 100% smooth.

[yolov]

The interface elements are part of the problem, yes.
Can you check if the entire sequence was in cache? The only reason would be if some frames are not cached when hitting them.
This line here on the layer indicates which frames are in cache


You can also check this option - it specifies how much of the available memory is kept free for other processes. For example, if you have it on 40%, try setting it to 10% and see if that helps.

[yolov]

Hi guys,

We've been working on improving the performance in playback. Our internal tests show improvements, but it will be very helpful if you could give it a spin and let us know if things have gotten better.

You can download this experimental build and give it a try: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mdq...ew?usp=sharing

The build is Windows-only and uses OpenGL, so you'll need a decent graphics card.
So far we've tried a few different approaches and using OpenGL is the only one that showed promise.

ronald_a, it would be very useful to get your feedback on this.

Alex

[ronald_a]

yolov Hi, I had a look at that build and there is certainly improvment. As far as I can tell it doesn't make a difference now if the layer properties panel is visible or not and also the size of the window is irrelavant now. Saying that, there still seems to be a slight framerate issue that makes the video not playback a 100% smoothly. on a 25 fps clip, the framerate is shown as 25fp 99.9% percent of the time but "flickers" to a different value constantly (Its so quick I can't even read the value). Playing back the same clip in rv or even in vlc does play back smoother, though (I suppose with a more constant framerate).

two other observation I made are:

- I am unable to play back clips at 50 fps (HD, does work in RV)
- when playing back a clip and removing the focus (clicking another application, clicking on the desktop) playback sometimes gets really jerky. Also, when not playing back and removing the focus, the framerate drops massively (to around 4 fps). This might be intentional to save processing power, but if there is a chance that this mechanism somehow influences playback performance it might be good to look into it or get rid of it (I might be totally wrong here).

when I find the time, I will test this build on a single, non hdpi screen to see if there is anything difference there.

[yolov]

Hey, ronald_a , thanks for the extensive feedback.

A few questions:
- when you say "clip" - what file format do you mean exactly? Now that you mention VLC it hints a video file to me. (VLC works in a completely different way, and also video file playback is expected to be slightly slower in performance compared to image sequences in Chaos Player).
- when you change the focus to another application - do you expect the player to pause the playback instead?
- no playback + changing focus = fps drop - yes, there is some code that does that. If you're not playback while doing so, would it matter if the mechanism works or not ? I'm trying to understand why this concerns you.
- and lastly - can you check if you have RV set to 'play all frames' (basically it will skip frames if 'play all frames' is OFF, which is the default. The option is in Control > Play All Frames, the equvalent in Chaos Player is to right click on the FPS counter and select the mode from there).

[ronald_a]

Hey, ronald_a , thanks for the extensive feedback.

A few questions:
- when you say "clip" - what file format do you mean exactly? Now that you mention VLC it hints a video file to me. (VLC works in a completely different way, and also video file playback is expected to be slightly slower in performance compared to image sequences in Chaos Player).
- when you change the focus to another application - do you expect the player to pause the playback instead?
- no playback + changing focus = fps drop - yes, there is some code that does that. If you're not playback while doing so, would it matter if the mechanism works or not ? I'm trying to understand why this concerns you.
- and lastly - can you check if you have RV set to 'play all frames' (basically it will skip frames if 'play all frames' is OFF, which is the default. The option is in Control > Play All Frames, the equvalent in Chaos Player is to right click on the FPS counter and select the mode from there).

- I am playing back prores movs but this also happens with exr sequences etc. Isn't the container format irrelevant once it's cached into memory (no matter if it was a video file or a sequence?
- no, I would just expect it to continue playing back as smoothly as it would with the focus on the player. The jerky playback doesn't happen all the time and also not right away. It's a little difficult to trace to be honest.
- no concern here. if you are 100% sure that this is not interfering with non focus playback performance this is all good (see point above).
- play all frames is on in rv (and also in chaos player via "do not allow skipping frames")

just to be clear, my two remarks about higher framerate (50 fps) and non focus playback where just things I also found, they are not as important as smooth playback (with at least 25fps).



I did continue to do more tests (on the same machine) and it seems the player does have more issue playing back 4k footage (this was prores mov as well) - my previous tests were HD. Playback gets really jerky.

[ronald_a]

yolov I just did a test on another machine which has only one none hi-dpi monitor and the playback seems to be jerkier than on the first machine I'm afraid.

[yolov]

If you roll back to another build, does it work better on the machine, where our experimental build runs jerkier?

[ronald_a]

yolov I rolled back to the latest stable build and it works very good (at least on that none High dpi monitor machine).

the only thing I noticed is when turning up the framerate to 50 or 60 fps (which seems to playback at that framerate) I can see severe frame tearing with some weird blocky artifacts.

I don‘t suspect that this build will do any better on the high dpi monitors machine but I can try that as well. I“ll also try and see if I can get you a screengrab or capture the tearing by filming the screen.

If you need me to do any other tests, just let me know.

[yolov]

A screen capture would be very helpful.

[ronald_a]

yolov Here you go. I had to take a photo of the screen as a normal screenshot would hold the image for a short moment and the issue was not visible.

[yolov]

Thanks, ronald_a . Just to confirm - this is the experimental build, right?

[ronald_a]

yolov sorry for the late reply. No, this is the latest stable on a none UHD monitor. the experimental build did not have that but had general jerky playback (jerkier than the experimental on the UHD machine).

to sum it up:

latest stable: on UHD machine has framerate issue especially when showing interface elements. on none UHD machine works fine with „normal“ framerates (25-30 fps), has screentearing at higher framerates (50-60 fps). UHD machine can‘t reach those higher framerates.

experimental build:

much better on UHD system but play is still not 100% smooth. Seems to have high frequeny fluctuation in framerate.

[yolov]

Thanks for the details, ronald_a .
We'll probably push the experimental changes to the code soon and make an official release, so these changes are available on the website. And then we'll keep trying to further improve the playback from there.

[yolov]

Thanks for the help ronald_a . We just released a hotfix where we included the performance boost. You can check what else is new here: https://forums.chaos.com/forum/chaos...-now-available