Low framerate in 4.0

[vdmidia]

Hey guys.
I'm testing and migrating some of my stations to the new version 4.0 of the players.
To my surprise, the videos are getting slower, with lower framerates.
Please see what is missing there, because the player is getting worse.

I am installing on Windows XP sp3 / Intel Core i3 2100 / 4GB Memory / VGA Nvidia.

That should not happen. Besides the frames were lower, I see several white screens that do not occur in 3.0 with the same player campaign.

Another thing: every time we have a layer that is transparent in version 3.0, as a PNG image on top of another, or a layer using the catalog player over another layer, this top layer loses transparency and makes the screen all white .

I am available to  :'(help in testing, we need this new version very quickly.

I await you.

Let me know.

[GRAFIXMEDIA]

Hi

I'm not noticing any slow downs but seeing lots of white screen & transparent issues.
And yes the catalog player is also showing white screen when second layer is added.

[admin]

are you using the Advertising engine?
I don't have any reports of any slow down videos.
what kind of hardware are you using?

Regards

[vdmidia]

I am installing on Windows XP sp3 / Intel Core i3 2100 / 4GB Memory / VGA Nvidia.
No. not use the advertising engime.
"And yes the catalog player is also showing white screen when second layer is added."

[GRAFIXMEDIA]

Ok this is the issue with catalog player
Catalog player will not play on web or desktop player 4.0
Zone defined to catalog player will remain white
Under stations tab caching will rest to 0 and stay to 0

When catalog is removed the caching starts again e.g. 12 of 17 caching
Start same player with catalog component and note caching has rest to 0 of 17 and will stay. No catalog content just pure white zone.

[vdmidia]

Exactly that, FIX ME

[GRAFIXMEDIA]

There was update today which has fixed the catalog player issue on the desktop player.  on-line player the bug remains.

vitrinedtv have you sorted your slow frame rate issue?

I am running on Intel G860 3.0GHz and video playback is smooth I also have live TV on it without any problems.

[vdmidia]

That happens on all computers that replaces the palyers to 4.0. (including core I5)
And where I use more than one simultaneous output on the same player: two or four screens. (2 = 2560 x 768px and 4096 x 4 = 768) than with the 3.0 player works fine, but with 4.0 everything is very slow.
And another thing, I hate when people ask what configuration I'm using ... I know that setting works. I'm in for 4 years.

Only displeases me to see that more and more players are creating heavier and making deployment more expensive here at the point of use.
Should create a simple player (co-existing with each other) that was lighter, with the most important resources as the advertising engine , for example.

I'm having trouble expanding my affiliates here. I mean, I can not bring other users of digital signage systems to our platform.

On other platforms, have entire networks running with ATOM DUAL CORE 1.6 GHZ at 1280x768 in works very well.
When I say to clients who need to exchange computers, they prefer not to migrate the system. This has been here everyday ... I'm really frustrated.

He hoped that the new version became lighter, and could be used in the most common and inexpensive computers. But that's not what's happening.

I am right now with a network of 260 players, using another platform, they are testing our player. Are studying migrate. But computers are showing LAGS. The same computers that work well on another platform they use there. I do not know what else to do. I think I'll end up switching platform too. Not to mention that without videos placement proof I've lost several advertisers and various sales here.

It was just a rant .. lol

[admin]

Hi vitrinedtv,
From all the tests we performed we noticed an improvement in performance of 4.0 over 3.0
Now I do believe you, so we need to figure out why are you seeing a slow down.

A few things I definitely recommend checking is:

1. Running latest Adobe AIR 3.4
2. Making sure your video drivers are up to date as Adobe did ease GPU hardware acceleration given you update the drivers.
3. If running multiple outputs, I definitely recommend using i3 or i5 processor.

Regards,

Sean.

[globalimages69]

Hi,

I'm also weirded out with the lack of performance under some circunstances, namely multi-screen output.

The system in use is an AMD X3 (2.1Ghz, triple core A6) processor, fast-ish RAM (4GB PC1600 DDR3 low latency) and AMD 65xx family GPU(s)/APU.

When used with just 1 screen output, framerates (360p on h264 flv's scaled to fit a screen area aprox. 720x400) are acceptable (say 20+fps). Plus animations etc on the rest of the screen (sometimes 1 of them can be simple SWF, but really not much going on).

Still, not superfluid, but OK when all the content is played in one output (even at 2560x1440).

The other output, when played by itself, also acceptable.

Checking CPU utilization and GPU (using benchmarking software, etc), it shows that the 3 CPU's peak at aprox. 63% of fairly constant usage and GPU 1 is at 0% usage and GPU 2 is at 37% MAX (about 10% average) usage.

So plenty of CPU still to spare and almost no GPU used.

When I output through both GPU's at the same time, the performance goes downhill tremendously, more than with the 3.x line of players, to the point of just one 360p video (+animations etc) goes to about 12fps.

What's worse is that CPU GPU utilization remain the same, very low, with near 50% of CPU unused, one GPU not used at all and near 80% of the other still available.

I thought of memory bandwith/PCIe bottlenecks, but the GPU's don't share PCIe, one has 1GB of local RAM, the other shares 256MB with the motherboard (but only ouputs a 720p screen and is recent gen APU), etc.

In other words, I think AIR (latest version, win7x64, been trying AMD beta-and-what-not driver releases for 6 months) is not using all the "CPU/GPU" it could. Not sure this is something particular to digital signage, and I guess you're already setting all AIR flags to maximun performance on the players, but well, this is what's happening to my systems.

If you wanna build experimental players with say GPU acceleration disabled on AIR or something to see if that improves anything, I'll be happy to try them.

I've been trying to profile what's going on but as far as I can tell the AIR platform is being very little agressive when it comes to using resources available even when it needs them.

Perhaps the stage is getting set to too few fps somehow?

[globalimages69]

OK, been running tests all day and there's definitely something weird here.

There is plenty of both, CPU and GPU available and still video framerates are way too low. Even if memory/PCIe bandwidth was a bottleneck, I think the fps should be far greater.

To better diagnose this, is there any setting anywhere I can use to disable video playback GPU acceleration in the players? If not, what video formats are compatible with the player but guaranteed not to receive (sustancial) GPU acceleration?

Thx.

[admin]

Today we will release none debug version of Studio and Player, expect x2 performance increase in some cases

Also we added (due to your requests) a performance tab under Stations so you can control quality, FPS and more.

Enjoy!

[ANOOP]

Under the Performance tab, there is a field called transition, what do u mean by that? How is it going to different if i uncheck them?

[admin]

Unchecking the transitions option should remove the transitions in between resources in the timeline, the fade in fade out effect, Which should boost performance considerably.