Hi,
I'm working on a patch that has 16 [pix_film]s each one playing back a short loop of video; videos are approx 400x700 size, encoded with Animation and have an alpha channel.
On a PC with a 2.5GHz dual core (T9300) and Windows, it _almost_ works smoothly: with 10-12 videos it is just fine.
On a MacBook Pro which has a 2.4GHz dual core it is _much_ slower. Even with only 4 or 5 videos playing, it goes at less than half of the intended 25fps.
Can the hardware really explain that much difference in performance? Is an intel T9300 that much more powerful than the processor of a MacBook pro? (certainly not because of the 0.1GHz more)? Or the GPU (Nvidia GeForce 9500M GS)?
Or is there some "software" reason for such a huge performance penalty on Mac OS??
thanks m.
Maybe it's the codec?
-----Original Message----- From: pd-list-bounces@iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces@iem.at] On Behalf Of Matteo Sisti Sette Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 4:49 PM To: PD list Subject: [PD] GEM: abnormal performance difference PC/Mac?
Hi,
I'm working on a patch that has 16 [pix_film]s each one playing back a short loop of video; videos are approx 400x700 size, encoded with Animation and have an alpha channel.
On a PC with a 2.5GHz dual core (T9300) and Windows, it _almost_ works smoothly: with 10-12 videos it is just fine.
On a MacBook Pro which has a 2.4GHz dual core it is _much_ slower. Even with only 4 or 5 videos playing, it goes at less than half of the intended 25fps.
Can the hardware really explain that much difference in performance? Is an intel T9300 that much more powerful than the processor of a MacBook pro? (certainly not because of the 0.1GHz more)? Or the GPU (Nvidia GeForce 9500M GS)?
Or is there some "software" reason for such a huge performance penalty on Mac OS??
thanks m.
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Maybe it's the codec?
Maybe, but isn't it strange, being it a codec created by Apple, that it performs better on Windows than Mac OS?
Animation codec is notoriously unweidly Try them with photo jpeg codec That always seesm to work best for me on OSX
-----Original Message----- From: Matteo Sisti Sette [mailto:matteosistisette@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 1:49 PM To: Pagano, Patrick Cc: PD list Subject: Re: [PD] GEM: abnormal performance difference PC/Mac?
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Maybe it's the codec?
Maybe, but isn't it strange, being it a codec created by Apple, that it performs better on Windows than Mac OS?
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Animation codec is notoriously unweidly Try them with photo jpeg codec That always seesm to work best for me on OSX
But I need the alpha channel; jpeg doesn't support it, does it?
Is there codec supporting alpha channel faster than Animation?
thanks m.
PNG is a good candidate.
On Apr 9, 2010, at 1:59 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette wrote:
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Animation codec is notoriously unweidly Try them with photo jpeg codec That always seesm to work best for me on OSX
But I need the alpha channel; jpeg doesn't support it, does it?
Is there codec supporting alpha channel faster than Animation?
thanks m.
-- Matteo Sisti Sette matteosistisette@gmail.com http://www.matteosistisette.com
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Yes PNG has alpha
-----Original Message----- From: vade [mailto:doktorp@mac.com] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 2:06 PM To: Matteo Sisti Sette Cc: Pagano, Patrick; PD list Subject: Re: [PD] GEM: abnormal performance difference PC/Mac?
PNG is a good candidate.
On Apr 9, 2010, at 1:59 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette wrote:
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Animation codec is notoriously unweidly Try them with photo jpeg codec That always seesm to work best for me on OSX
But I need the alpha channel; jpeg doesn't support it, does it?
Is there codec supporting alpha channel faster than Animation?
thanks m.
-- Matteo Sisti Sette matteosistisette@gmail.com http://www.matteosistisette.com
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Yes PNG has alpha
From: vade [mailto:doktorp@mac.com]
PNG is a good candidate.
Is it possible to encode a video file (e.g. .mov) with PNG, or do you mean a sequence of PNG image files?
(forgive my ignorance)
You should be able to choose PNG when you export from Quicktime Pro
-----Original Message----- From: Matteo Sisti Sette [mailto:matteosistisette@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, April 09, 2010 2:38 PM To: Pagano, Patrick Cc: vade; PD list Subject: Re: [PD] GEM: abnormal performance difference PC/Mac?
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Yes PNG has alpha
From: vade [mailto:doktorp@mac.com]
PNG is a good candidate.
Is it possible to encode a video file (e.g. .mov) with PNG, or do you mean a sequence of PNG image files?
(forgive my ignorance)
Animation has a very high data rate, so the notebook drive will perform much worse than a desktop drive.
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:49 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette < matteosistisette@gmail.com> wrote:
Pagano, Patrick escribió:
Maybe it's the codec?
Maybe, but isn't it strange, being it a codec created by Apple, that it performs better on Windows than Mac OS?
-- Matteo Sisti Sette matteosistisette@gmail.com http://www.matteosistisette.com
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
chris clepper escribió:
Animation has a very high data rate, so the notebook drive will perform much worse than a desktop drive.
That's interesting. I compared two notebooks, PC and Mac. Is it possible that the performance of a MacBook Pro notebook drive is much worse than that of an Asus notebook?
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette < matteosistisette@gmail.com> wrote:
That's interesting. I compared two notebooks, PC and Mac. Is it possible that the performance of a MacBook Pro notebook drive is much worse than that of an Asus notebook?
Since you have the two computers in question, you will have to test for yourself. All of the responses so far have been 100% speculation since no one else has the machines. You have been given some things to investigate, so try those out.
chris clepper escribió:
Since you have the two computers in question, you will have to test for yourself. All of the responses so far have been 100% speculation since no one else has the machines. You have been given some things to investigate, so try those out.
Ok I apologize if I have asked too many questions. However don't think it is because I don't want or I am too lazy to investigate/try for myself. I don't have the two machines myself: one is mine and the other is of other people so I can only test when I am with them, and when I do I don't have plenty of time. So I just tried to get as much information as possible so as to restrict the field of testing.
I've tried PNG and JPEG codecs. Png gives no significant performance improvement over Animation, and Jpeg is even worse.
Now strangely enough I've found out (well a mac-owner friend of mine has found out actually) that closing and reopening the gemwin once before starting, results in a great performance increase. Isn't that crazy?
I am opening the gemwin at loadbang, may that be related?
However even after that, the performance is still hugely inferior to that of the Pc notebook with a comparable processor.
chris clepper escribió:
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette <matteosistisette@gmail.com mailto:matteosistisette@gmail.com> wrote:
That's interesting. I compared two notebooks, PC and Mac. Is it possible that the performance of a MacBook Pro notebook drive is much worse than that of an Asus notebook?Since you have the two computers in question, you will have to test for yourself. All of the responses so far have been 100% speculation since no one else has the machines. You have been given some things to investigate, so try those out.
Hi
Your method doesn't work with me, maybe I don't understand exactly how you do.
But I recently spoke about another method : before creating the window, if you pause your computer (you close it), wait 30 seconds, and open it, the CPU utilisation will be very lower. Then, you can create the window. The performances are really VERY different.
You can find the thread here : http://www.mail-archive.com/pd-list@iem.at/msg32466.html
The -nosleep option works too, but not as good as pausing the computer...
Anywoy, I guess that the best method is to install Linux...
Maybe that a Mac-OSX expert could help us?
t
Le 13/04/10 0:13, « Matteo Sisti Sette » matteosistisette@gmail.com a écrit :
I've tried PNG and JPEG codecs. Png gives no significant performance improvement over Animation, and Jpeg is even worse.
Now strangely enough I've found out (well a mac-owner friend of mine has found out actually) that closing and reopening the gemwin once before starting, results in a great performance increase. Isn't that crazy?
I am opening the gemwin at loadbang, may that be related?
However even after that, the performance is still hugely inferior to that of the Pc notebook with a comparable processor.
chris clepper escribió:
On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 3:14 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette <matteosistisette@gmail.com mailto:matteosistisette@gmail.com> wrote:
That's interesting. I compared two notebooks, PC and Mac. Is it possible that the performance of a MacBook Pro notebook drive is much worse than that of an Asus notebook?Since you have the two computers in question, you will have to test for yourself. All of the responses so far have been 100% speculation since no one else has the machines. You have been given some things to investigate, so try those out.
Thibault Walter escribió:
if you pause your computer (you close it), wait 30 seconds, and open it, the CPU utilisation will be very lower. Then, you can create the window. The performances are really VERY different.
That is really crazy. (that closing and reopening the gemwin helps isn't less crazy either)
Does your "method" work only with GEM or does that improve the performance of the computer in general?
I don't know. But it works with pd, not only GEM.
But I guess that the processor has a variable frequency, and that pd doesn't explain to the "macOSX-demon" what he needs, at the right time. So I don't think that it works with Microsoft Office, for example...
t
Le 13/04/10 15:16, « Matteo Sisti Sette » matteosistisette@gmail.com a écrit :
Thibault Walter escribió:
if you pause your computer (you close it), wait 30 seconds, and open it, the CPU utilisation will be very lower. Then, you can create the window. The performances are really VERY different.
That is really crazy. (that closing and reopening the gemwin helps isn't less crazy either)
Does your "method" work only with GEM or does that improve the performance of the computer in general?
According to the thread Thibault linked to, it has to do with the CPU scaling of your computer. In your System Preferences, under Energy Saver, check to see what "Processor Performance" says (on OSX 10.4 at least that is where I find it). If it reads "Automatic" or "Reduced" instead of "Highest", then you're not playing with a full deck of cards ;-)
D.
On 4/13/10 3:16 PM, Matteo Sisti Sette wrote:
Thibault Walter escribió:
if you pause your computer (you close it), wait 30 seconds, and open it, the CPU utilisation will be very lower. Then, you can create the window. The performances are really VERY different.
That is really crazy. (that closing and reopening the gemwin helps isn't less crazy either)
Does your "method" work only with GEM or does that improve the performance of the computer in general?
I dont know what the upload path is in GEM, but typically speaking in order to get very high performance video playback on OS X has to make sure to leverage :
proper pixel format for the GL textures, GL_UNSIGNED_INT_8888_REV with a BGRA format, make sure to use GL_CLIENT_STORAGE_APPLE and GL_TEXTURE_RANGE_APPLE to minimize unecessary copies of of texture data in the system. You can get large performance increases this way.
see : http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/samplecode/TextureRange/Introduction/...
Does your machine have an NVidia card in it? Issues have been reported on some developer lists I am on that if you do not supply a the proper format NVidia drivers swizzle the channels in software, not in hardware. There was a thread on the NVidia forums that had discussion about this but I am not sure if anything happened with it.
I personally noticed a ~30% performance decrease in applications playing video to GL on NVidia hardware (from my x1600 to a friends NV8600 mobile) using various apps.
Im not sure how windows handles this, but I think its safe to say both ATI and Nvidia devote more developer resources to tuning those drivers. Maybe thats part of the issue? Honestly, this is speculation.
Also, Animation is probably not the codec of choice. Its Run Length encoded, so any video that is not graphic (ie, no truly uniform color values ) will converge on being completely uncomrpessed RGB, which will hammer your hard drives.
Photo Jpeg or, these days, Apple Intermediate Codec is the tool of choice for slightly compressed, low bandwidth video.
Maybe this is helpful? Good luck!
On Apr 9, 2010, at 9:44 AM, Pagano, Patrick wrote:
Maybe it's the codec?
-----Original Message----- From: pd-list-bounces@iem.at [mailto:pd-list-bounces@iem.at] On Behalf Of Matteo Sisti Sette Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 4:49 PM To: PD list Subject: [PD] GEM: abnormal performance difference PC/Mac?
Hi,
I'm working on a patch that has 16 [pix_film]s each one playing back a short loop of video; videos are approx 400x700 size, encoded with Animation and have an alpha channel.
On a PC with a 2.5GHz dual core (T9300) and Windows, it _almost_ works smoothly: with 10-12 videos it is just fine.
On a MacBook Pro which has a 2.4GHz dual core it is _much_ slower. Even with only 4 or 5 videos playing, it goes at less than half of the intended 25fps.
Can the hardware really explain that much difference in performance? Is an intel T9300 that much more powerful than the processor of a MacBook pro? (certainly not because of the 0.1GHz more)? Or the GPU (Nvidia GeForce 9500M GS)?
Or is there some "software" reason for such a huge performance penalty on Mac OS??
thanks m.
-- Matteo Sisti Sette matteosistisette@gmail.com http://www.matteosistisette.com
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
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chris clepper -
Derek Holzer -
Matteo Sisti Sette -
Pagano, Patrick -
Thibault Walter -
vade