3.x Swap to FPP for output and no more stutters. Yea!

So I was getting terrible stops when playing back on my laptop.

Changed to new i7 PC w/ 16GB RAM & SSD and still getting occasion stutters with large/multiple nutcracker effects.

Exported to FPP, fired up the RasPi and no more stutters.

I only have 17k channels, some of the videos I've seen already look much bigger, so I'm going to assume none of them are output directly from Vixen3.

Anyway, that's my experience for this year.

Cheers,
Rowan

 

I only have just under 9K channels and playback is woeful using Vixen3
No probs with the FPP though

 

I too just swapped to FPP. I found that when I videoed the show, the video playback ran slower than the actual music track. This was a problem when overlaying the music on top of the video for youtube. As soon as I swapped to FPP the video synched perfectly to the actual track.

 

I assume that when you export a Vixen3 show FFP it generates/calculates the show. So FFP is just sending E.131 at the schedule time.

Vixen 3, as far as I am away creates/calculates the show (e.131.) as you are playing it.

 

I think everyone that went vixen3 an used over 8k worth of channels,
had no choice but to go over to the fpp to play it..
but then again thats a good thing, as you still have your show computer to edit an make more sequences

 

My Pi is on order, hopefully arriving on Monday (unless Aus Post delivers Saturdays now?!)

 

I think I heard Aust post will be doing Sat deliveries through to Xmas

 

One od my songs still has a slowdown spot in it. I'm converting at 25ms, so I'm gonna try 50ms for that song and see if that helps. Think I just have too many nutcracker effects all at once.

I do like being able to edit on my PC using the preview with output turned off. Then just convert and push it out to the Pi. I even did it in the middle of the show and it just used the new file and never missed a beat.

Cheers,
Rowan

 

I have used 50ms intervals for all my sequences and haven't noticed any slowdowns or stutters.
I have noticed a couple of spots in the sequence where all the lights flash on for no reason - they are not programmed that way. Might have to try re-exporting from Vixen 3 and uploading to the Pi to see if that fixes the problem.
I haven't tried 25ms intervals. I might give it a go when I am trying to fix this random flash problem.

 

At present there are three things that I can think of that would give the appearance of a slowdown. I have experienced all three myself at one time or the other.


1. The effects being compiled require a finer resolution to render correctly. An example of this is to set an alternate effect, and have the alternate occur at 25ms while the export resolution is set to 50ms. It will export fine, but when you play it back the alternating effect will appear to be "stuck" in the first position because it had transitioned to the second color and back in between 50ms sampling intervals of the export. When this occurs you will notice the same behavior, no matter how many times you play the sequence. Very consistent.


2. Other traffic on the network is causing slowdowns. - Pretty much explanatory, other computers traffic, or the PI doing something unintentional network wise. Mainly this is targeted at E1.31 type setups. However, I have had one instance where I witnessed weird behavior on the Pi when a certain DMX Pro dongle was being used.


3. If Vixen3 has experienced some type of internal crash but did not shutdown, this could cause an corrupted export. I have had this happen one time, I was able to correlate the fseq file timestamps with entries in the Vixen3 log and concluded that Vixen3 was in an inconsistent state when the export occurred. Closing down Vixen completely, restarting, and exporting again corrected the issue.


Ed