Playback performance problem on Mac

[Soom]

Hi
I'm on MacBook Pro OS 10.5
Intel core 2 Duo 2.6 Ghz,
4 Gb Ram

We use TVPaint 9.5 at work.
While working on a Windows PC (before moving to my Mac), I had problems with playing the files inside TVPaint - the Proxy rendering took too much time and the performance was not good. I was advised to remove the 2 first options in the Preview Settings - the "Background Proxy Render" and the "Force Proxy Render". And it worked perfectly - even the huge double HD resolution files played well without any need to render them separately to QuickTime.

Today I have moved to work on my MacBook Pro. I never tried TVPaint on a Mac before, so I don't know how is the performance on other machines. But on mine, the playback performance is terrible. Removing the two options in the Preview Settings panel doesn't help at all. Nothing actually changes... Even worse - if I keep both options on, TVPaint renders the clip (very slow, even if the quality is on 1%), but doesn't play it smooth at all anyway. I still manage to use the Flip-Book feature pretty well, but I can't see the whole scene like that. I've tried to turn off the OpenGL support - it looks like the performance got a bit better, but I cannot tell for sure, and I don't yet know how turning OpenGL off will affect my workflow.

I cannot switch back to PC again - I work often outside the studio, and have to carry my MBP with me with all the work I do. I would be really happy if this problem could be solved.

I still didn't try to run TVPaint on Parralels Windows on Mac - I will try this week...

[Eric Scholl]

Hi Soom,

Maybe did you create a too big project, so to load a single image the software will have too work harder. Please can you verify your project resolution.
The other way I see to resolve this, is to verify if you don't have too much application running. An application which take very much memory or CPU will reduce the performance of TVPaint.

[ematecki]

Here you have a harddrive speed problem.
A HD from a laptop (especially an older one) is nowhere as fast as a desktop HD.

An HD movie needs : 1920x1080x4 = 8Mb per frame, at 25 fps that's 200 Mb/s .
TVP compresses somewhat that (adjustable in the proxy settings), but your laptop HD probably won't go over 20Mb/s.
So you have to compress the proxy much more (and loose preview quality), or buy a faster HD/SSD.

Flipping works well because all the images needed fit into memory.

If you have an external firewire HD, try puttting the temp dir there and see if it makes a difference.

A+

[Soom]

Before I post other replies, looks like disabling OpenGL has solved the issue. Probably it has something to do with the graphic card. Though, it has been only a couple of hours work without OpenGL, so I don't know what other problems might occur later.

...Maybe did you create a too big project, so to load a single image the software will have too work harder. Please can you verify your project resolution.
The other way I see to resolve this, is to verify if you don't have too much application running. An application which take very much memory or CPU will reduce the performance of TVPaint...

Hi Eric
The project resolution is indeed huge - it's double HD (about 4000x2500 px), unfortunately this resolution is set by our partner studio that is directing the project, and we cannot change it - all their project is configured with this resolution - don't ask me why. But - the same files with the same resolution run smooth on a PC with similar settings that my Mac, so I believe it would not be the main issue...

...TVP compresses somewhat that (adjustable in the proxy settings), but your laptop HD probably won't go over 20Mb/s. So you have to compress the proxy much more (and loose preview quality), or buy a faster HD/SSD...

Hi Ematecki
I tried setting the proxy to 1% - the preview quality was low of course, but it still ran not smooth enough, like it was on a PC.
As for HDD - MacBook Pro has a very good and fast system, I do a lot of hi-res editing, graphic and animation work on it - usually it runs better than most computers I ever used. I'm not a technician, but as far as I understand TVPaint doesn't run as good as it should on this machine... I should try to run it on a stationary Mac, but we don't have one here now... Any users working on a MAC?

Flipping works well because all the images needed fit into memory.

I noticed that flipping skips sound to compensate timing, nevertheless it plays every instance of animation, which is exactly what I need - looks like regular playback always tries to play every frame, which is unnecessary

If you have an external firewire HD, try puttting the temp dir there and see if it makes a difference.

I will try it tomorrow - I do have a firewire 800 HD at home.

[D.T. Nethery]

Before I post other replies, looks like disabling OpenGL has solved the issue. Probably it has something to do with the graphic card. Though, it has been only a couple of hours work without OpenGL, so I don't know what other problems might occur later.

Apparently disabling OpenGL also helps to make Photoshop CS5 run snappier , according to this article I found while Googling for "disable OpenGL on Mac" after I read your post -

http://macperformanceguide.com/blog/201 ... oshop.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I don't technically understand precisely what OpenGL is supposed to do , but I will make sure I have disabled it in TVP from now on (I am also on a Macbook).

If you have an external firewire HD, try puttting the temp dir there and see if it makes a difference.

Well, that suggestion is very interesting to me because at one time it was my understanding that putting the temp directory on an external firewire HD was supposed to help with performance , but then sometime later on this very forum I was told that it made no difference to use an external HD and that the temp directory should just be set to the main HD. Is this a laptop vs. desktop computer issue ? For a laptop does it in fact boost performance to set the temp directory to an external firewire HD ?

(my specs: Macbook Pro , running Mac OS 10.6.8 , 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo , 4 GB of memory, 500 GB hard drive , currently using 248.69 GB, available space = 251.08 GB )

[ematecki]

Basically, yes, its a laptop/desktop issue.

You should always put your temp dir on the fastest drive.
On a desktop it is without doubt the internal drive (on any recent computer).
On a laptop the internal drive is much slower, and an external FW drive MAY be faster.
Obviously if you have a SSD as internal drive it will beat the FW drive by far.
But with a "standard" 2.5" or 1.8" drive it isn't that obvious which of that drive or the FW 3.5" will be the fastest.

[D.T. Nethery]

Just to add a bit more to this conversation about performance on the Macbook Pro -

On my Macbook Pro I have often experienced the same kind of performance issues that Soom describes when working with very large, non-standard size images loaded into TVP , even if the scene is not long. For example , as a test a few minutes ago I loaded up a small image sequence of 48 drawings (2 seconds) , image size = 4961 x 3424 (size of original scans) . At that size , with Proxy Render set to 20% Quality the proxy render takes 60 seconds or longer to render the scene and to begin playback , and then the playback never achieves full 24 fps playback speed (it is very choppy) . And remember: this is only 48 frames .

I realize part of the problem is not only the large size , but also perhaps the non-standard size of the project (4961 x 3424) so I modified the project size to the pre-set size 'Film 4K Full Aperture' (4096 x 3112 ) from the standard project sizes available in the TVP menu. That did not help much . At 4K Film size (4096 x 3112) the 48 frame scene still runs slow and image quality is low (at 20% on the render) . Next I tried running the Scan Cleaner on the images to reduce the amount of information on each image that needs to be rendered. That helped a bit . Rendering only takes 20 seconds now instead of a minute or more , but playback is still not true 24 fps. (playback is still too slow) .

Finally I created a new project, at 2K Full Aperture (2048 x 1556) and imported the scans (4961 x 3424) into the 2K project size. Now the preview renders in 40 seconds and plays back at the correct running speed of 24 fps. But now I have lost a lot of resolution from my originals, down from 4961 w to 2048 w . 2048 is still very high-resolution , but 2K seems to be the limit for TVP on my Macbook Pro . Further modification of this scene by cropping it to 1920 x 1080 makes it render in a snappy 7 seconds and it plays back at the correct running speed of 24 fps. Furthermore, running Scan Cleaner on the drawings makes the preview movie render in only 4 seconds ( cropped to 1920 x 1080 I lost some of the original scanned image at top and bottom, but that part of the image was outside of my "safe area" anyway, so nothing important on the drawings was lost ) .

So using resolutions of 1920 w or max. 2048 w works , but going up to 4K resolution or nearly 5K resolution (my original scan sizes 4961 w) does not work well on the Macbook Pro in my experience. Switching the temp directory to the external firewire drive seemed to have no noticeable effect. Maybe it was a little bit faster , but not much.

[Soom]

Just an update, I've connected an external Firewire 800 HDD, set the Temp directory on it, and tried to render a Proxy - it was slower. Not a surprise though - my MacBook Pro has a 7200 Rpm HDD with a speed of 1.5 Gb/s (compared to 800 Mb/s FW drive.) So internal HDD is the best option here.
A funny thing is that rendering a Proxy is always slower than playing the animation without it. Even on the lowest quality, on big files the playback is choppy and the proxy renders very slow.
But with OpenGL and Proxy rendering disabled, the playback runs quite smooth. Sometimes it needs to play once before getting into the right speed, but even this is much faster than rendering a proxy.
I think it has something to do with Proxy compression that TVPaint uses - probably not the best one. It looks like without rendering the Proxy, TVPaint only reads the instances, while rendered proxy tries to read every single frame. Fix me if I'm wrong.
And of course - disabling OpenGL is the main solution for Mac users, as far as I see it. Overall performance is just much better without it.

[Paul Fierlinger]

The Proxy has never done much of anything for me either and also even played slower -- until I switched to a 64-bit OS (PC with i7 chip and 8 GB of RAM).

Wow, what a difference! In the 32-bit mode the Proxy makes suddenly a lot of sense and only once did it not help a particularly large project run at full speed. It was actually so slow that even frame to frame advancing took a couple of seconds for each tap. So I opened this project in the 64-bit format and a double Wow-Wow! There was no need for even Proxy and this multi, multi layered, double 1080p x 24 FPS project of almost 20 seconds duration ran as if I were back at the pencil drawing stage.

I can't always work in the 64-bit mode because none of the many plugins I have become addicted to work there, but as I just described, it's worth having for the occasional monster clips.

I occasionally work on an Asus laptop when I take my work to classes, but I make sure to work on something that is either just in the development stage or something simple enough (but always 1080p) that the laptop can handle it. But to expect TVPaint to live and work only in a laptop is unthinkable for me, if only for the extreme limitations of monitor space. Recently, and as school days are looming, I've been thinking of getting one of the 2 or 3 existing double monitor laptops. Does anyone here have any experience with one of those?

[ematecki]

Just an update, I've connected an external Firewire 800 HDD, set the Temp directory on it, and tried to render a Proxy - it was slower. Not a surprise though - my MacBook Pro has a 7200 Rpm HDD with a speed of 1.5 Gb/s (compared to 800 Mb/s FW drive.) So internal HDD is the best option here.
A funny thing is that rendering a Proxy is always slower than playing the animation without it. Even on the lowest quality, on big files the playback is choppy and the proxy renders very slow.
But with OpenGL and Proxy rendering disabled, the playback runs quite smooth. Sometimes it needs to play once before getting into the right speed, but even this is much faster than rendering a proxy.
I think it has something to do with Proxy compression that TVPaint uses - probably not the best one. It looks like without rendering the Proxy, TVPaint only reads the instances, while rendered proxy tries to read every single frame. Fix me if I'm wrong.
And of course - disabling OpenGL is the main solution for Mac users, as far as I see it. Overall performance is just much better without it.

1.5Gb/s is a marketing thing... thats the absolute maximum transfer speed of the bus, just the time to fill the about 16MB of cache in the disk, then it will drop.
800Mb/s for the FW is the same, just the maximum speed.
What counts here is the SUSTAINED speed the drive can handle, and usually 3.5" disks are better at that than 2.5" or 1.8", *if* they are from the same generation.
3.5" disks from two years ago are slower then today's 2.5"... but today's 3.5" still beats today's 2.5" disks.

I guess you only have line drawings for now.
These TVPaint compresses much better than the proxy (the proxy uses jpeg).
But once you get coloring and textures in your drawings, that won't be the case any more.

OpenGL has problems mainly with nVidia video chips.
It works really well with ATI chips (but there are problems on dual-screen setups...).

[Soom]

Eric
Thanks for thorough insite.
My external HDD is also 2.5" portable, so in any way it will not make a difference I suppose. But actually, I'm now a bit confused - I didn't see anything in the Temp dir all along - I checked it immediately after rendering a proxy, and a few times while working, but the Temp dir was always empty. What does it mean?
As for drawings - yes, we got only line drawings now, but thats as far as we go - coloring will be done by another studio. So for now I'm Ok.
Indeed MacBook Pro has NVidia GeForce card, so that's probably the problem with OpenGL.
Anyway , I think in the future TVPaint should improve the way playback works, fix compression issues on Proxys etc (like for example in some editing programs like Premiere or Final Cut, appropriate codec can be selected in project settings)

[ematecki]

TVPaint creates hidden files in the temp dir.
If you check the free space on your disk, you will see it will decrease slowly as you work, and suddenly everything is back when you quit TVPaint.

[Soom]

TVPaint creates hidden files in the temp dir.
If you check the free space on your disk, you will see it will decrease slowly as you work, and suddenly everything is back when you quit TVPaint.

Eric
I enabled "view invisible files" in the Finder, worked on TVP for several days without closing, and I still didn't see anything in this Temp directory. Several times I checked the size of the directory and it was 0.
The amount of free space changed on the harddisk though, but this Temp directory was always 0...
Not that it concerns me much now, but just curious.

[ematecki]

What I mean by 'hidden file" is somewhat technical.

In Unix a 'file' is totally independant from its 'name'.

TVPA opens the temp file, with a random unique name, then that NAME is deleted.
But because the file is still open in TVPaint, it still has a reference to it. and it continue to exist until it it closed.
Then, because it has no more references, the file 'itself' is destroyed.

This is the reason you cannot see the file.

[slowtiger]

What happens to these hidden files after TVP crashes? Are they detected next time TVP starts? Do I have to delete them manually, and where do I find them?

Not that TVP crashes often during work. But yesterday I was browsing through a lot (~100) of old files, and since there were no preview pics I had to open one after another to the the content. In that process TVP crashed several times.