3.x Vixen 3 Display Preview shows low frame rarte (FPS)

[ChristmasInKaralee]

All,

Just wondering how I could increase the frame rate so I can display the lights on the Preview screen. When there is a lot of activity the frame rate drops to around 2-6 FPS and therefore I miss seeing the lights come up.

I have 8371 lights to control.

Would the issue be with the PC? if so what part would be best to change? Video card, CPU or Memory.

I currently have a WIN7 64bit i7 860 2.8Ghz with 8Gb of RAM and a ATI Radeon HD 4800 with 1Gb of ram and WD Green HDD.

Thanks in advanced.

Geoff

 

[AAH]

Based on what adski has said about the vixen 3 development I don't think that there will be too much that you can do at the moment as it is a slowdown in the process once you get to a lot of channels. The word is that it is being worked on. The pc that you're using doesn't leave a real lot of room for improvement so you can either drop elements out of a given sequence so that you are doing part at a time or you can hurry up and wait for new sequencer releases to appear which is what lsp, lor and vixen users are all doing.

 

[SmartAlecLights]

have you turned off the outputs, as that can slow down the preview

 

[adski]

Yes, the issue would be with the PC, or more to the point, the fact that the current release of Vixen 3 is a bit of a resource hog.

Upgrading the PC would certainly make a difference, but you've already got a reasonable machine, and if you were to add another couple of thousand lights, you could easily end up back where you started. Adding another 8GB shouldn't be too expensive though, so I'd probably do that.

Something quick that you can try - it may help - from the main admin screen, click Tools >> Options and change the "Update Interval". The results can be a bit unpredictable, so try both higher and lower!

Otherwise, patience is the key - the dev team are working on efficiency improvements in the application core - the execution engine.

Dave

 

[ChristmasInKaralee]

Thanks, Silly question but how do you stop the output to lights?

 

[adski]

On the Display Configuration screen, select a controller and click on the Stop button (RH button in the "Selected Controller" panel).

Repeat for each controller

Dave

 

[battle79]

I agree with smartalec with stopping the output while sequencing, and also stopping the preview while outputting to lights.

I have about 18k channels and have only minor slowdowns when using lots of nutcracker effects at once in the preview. Haven't tested output to lights as yet, only partially with 30% at most connected.

Last year I ran 9k channels on a core2duo and had to switch off output and preview as appropriate also.

I do have a new PC with i7 4770k, 16Gb RAM, and fast SSD to get that performance for this year.

Regards,
Rowan

 

[scamper]

All I can say is I am glad that I am only new to this and doing a basic 200-300 dumb channels this year with an old laptop...
After all the money I have spent on hardware I can only imagine what the minister in charge of finance would say if I said I also need a new computer