Vixen VS XLights midlife crisis

shanebou24

shanebou24

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Dec 9, 2015
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Hello Im looking for some guidance.
I have bean using Vixen for the last 4years and this past year it was quite slow ( I assume its relative to the number of pixels i have now)
Is there some thing I should be doing to Vixen to help optimize performance or Should i just move on to Xlights ?

Im now running a lenovo y545 sequencing and i export the files to The Falcon Pi that run the show.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!!
 
How many Pixels do you have, Vixen should be good now for around 80,000 or more depending on machine speed and memory. Thanks about what I have and have no issues what so ever.

You haven't accidentally turned Version control on, in the settings of the main page as this can slow it down.

Also, are you running the latest version, as Vixen has made some big changes over the past year that has further increased performance.

Most Aussies use Xlights but there are still some of us that prefer Vixen there are many more in the USA that also use Vixen.
 
I found it to be very slow when running with the preview display running, after upgrading computer hardware it seems to be running smooth again.
Pretty sure it ran just fine with the scheduler as all it was doing was outputting data and not trying to do a visual output as well.
 
I have never had an issue with Vixen at all, runs fine on my laptop with an external display plugged in, I always have the preview on one screen and Vixen on the other screen.

I don't have a huge display but I can't see myself having any issues even when I increase my light count
 
Vixen hated me doing the DIY Arduino route with communication over USB. At first I blamed the software but came to terms that it's not best having 3 controllers and audio card on a USB hub running off a very old computer.
Vixen would just freeze up and not respond (without 'not responding' in the corner) and had to force quit via task manager.

On my new PC it runs like a dream.

Not related to performance; I chuckled a bit when I saw a feature suggestion on bugs.vixenlights.com to automatically upload code to an Arduino. As the response was, 'Out of the scope for this software'.
 
My old computer was sluggish when sequencing with Vixen but I replaced it last year with a i5-4690 processor and 16GB of ram and it is fine now.
Show runs off a Pi 3B
 
Vixen tends to need a lot of ram. If you do not have a lot of ram then your computer tries to emulate ram using your hard drive. This makes the preview choppy and makes vixen appear to be running slow. There are other factors that the Vixen team have been cleaning up but the ram issue is one that is tough to get around.

Someone mentioned congestion on a usb hub.The transfer speeds on the older USB ports was actually pretty slow. If you had multiple devices connected, they shared that slow bandwidth. USB 3 has much higher speeds on the USB interfaces making it seem better. It is still not a great idea to put too many devices on a single USB interface out of the computer.
 
I have always used a couple of tricks to speed things up while sequencing.

Turn Version control off.
Turn All controllers off. I leave them all off all the time unless i need to test output. Vixen renders on the fly so as soon as you place an effect you can test it.
Also make sure you do not have stray or unconnected elements in your element groups. That played havoc for me last year.

By the looks of it, your computer is a bit better than the one I use, so have a look at those couple of things and see how you go. Also make sure you have the latest version. I know the work that the developers have done over the last year has drastically sped things up. It helped me massively and stopped me from having to redo my dodgy display set up to remove a hundred or so thousand unused channels.
 
bretheron said:
I have always used a couple of tricks to speed things up while sequencing.

Turn Version control off.
Turn All controllers off. I leave them all off all the time unless i need to test output. Vixen renders on the fly so as soon as you place an effect you can test it.
Also make sure you do not have stray or unconnected elements in your element groups. That played havoc for me last year.

By the looks of it, your computer is a bit better than the one I use, so have a look at those couple of things and see how you go. Also make sure you have the latest version. I know the work that the developers have done over the last year has drastically sped things up. It helped me massively and stopped me from having to redo my dodgy display set up to remove a hundred or so thousand unused channels.
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Thank you this is exactly what I'm looking for
 
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