pbattersby.
pbattersbyI’m using Podium Free 2.40 on Windows XP.
PROBLEM 1: 100% processor usage while idle
I’m using 23 instances of the SFZ plugin. I’ve collected the various tracks into groups and I’ve sent each group (not the individual tracks) to the Podium reverb effect through an effects Bus.
The issue is that even when no music is playing, and I’m not doing anything, I can still reach 100% of my processor usage. By bouncing some of the groups I can reduce that but I’m puzzled as to why the processor should be at 100% when no tracks are playing.
I’ve seen another post discussing high processor usage but I don’t know if this is related.
PROBLEM 2: Bounced groups stop using reverb [solved]
Related to my problem above, I bounce a group of tracks to ease the processor burden but I find that during playback of the bounced group, the reverb (Podium provided reverb) is no longer in use.
PROBLEM 3: Ghost events upon export to sound file [solved]
While messing around with my project, I created some events far off the end of the song in the time line. I later deleted those events. When I create a master bounce, and playback that master bounce within Podium, all is well. When I export the master bounce, those deleted events, which are nowhere to be found in the timeline, play after the song was supposed to be over. This happens every time I perform a master bounce and export. I have to use an external editor to remove the unwanted music at the end of my song.
kingtubby@pbattersby wrote:
I’m using Podium Free 4.20 on Windows XP.
wow! are you returning from the future dude? has Podium got midi plug support yet?…..sorry – couldn’t resist. carry on…;)
pbattersby@kingtubby wrote:
@pbattersby wrote:
I’m using Podium Free 4.20 on Windows XP.
wow! are you returning from the future dude? has Podium got midi plug support yet?…..sorry – couldn’t resist. carry on…;)
PROBLEM 4: I have to uncross my eyes
It should of course be version 2.40 not 4.20. I’ll go back in time and correct the original post.
druidIn the past, at least, I have seen such extreme CPU usage due to denormals. The following suggestion only applies if you’re using other VST effects that you didn’t mention below (I’m not sure if denormals occur with Zynewave Reverb, but you could try anyway).
First thing I would do is try adding a very very quiet noise to each track, I think it should go before all effects? And see if that solves the problem. If so, you’re using a plugin that is causing the issue, and you should remove the noise from one track at a time to see when this occurs.
Another sign of this is if you’re playing the song and it seems to actually balance out and perform better, but when you stop, the usage zooms up to 100% and slows everything down.
You may also be using CPU-intensive plugins that keep processing regardless of whether the song has stopped or not. Finding this out would mean disabling each effect one at a time to see which ones have an effect.
If it is only the VST that you have mentioned, then it may also depend on what your computer specifications are. What kind of CPU power, and RAM, do you have? How many USB devices do you use? Most configurations should be fine, but much older configurations can have issues.
sfz is also quite an intensive plugin (though I would’ve thought it should only cause slowness if active, not while idle). What quality settings are you using on this?
In regards to your reverb issue, perhaps your bounce is not being directed to the reverb as well? That could be the first place you look, though you may have already tried this.
Problem 3 can be worked around by exporting a loop, so that it doesn’t get to that part. That’s not a solution though, only a workaround. Were those events split from another event? And if so, did you add the notes at the end of a long event? Because then it’s possible, I think, that they’re being played from an existing event, although I’d expect events to only play notes inside the boundaries of their visible portion. It might still be something to look at. Also, were there any ghost copies of this event put on other tracks, possibly ones you don’t display?
You could try rendering each track separately and see which one it is that has these “ghost notes”.
I hope that this can be of some help. It’ll be good to hear how you go with these issues.
pbattersby@druid wrote:
First thing I would do is try adding a very very quiet noise to each track, I think it should go before all effects?
I’m not sure exactly how I would do that. I only have 2 audio tracks. All the rest are midi, plus how do I add noise to a track before the effect? The effects apply to the entire track.
@druid wrote:
Another sign of this is if you’re playing the song and it seems to actually balance out and perform better, but when you stop, the usage zooms up to 100% and slows everything down.
Nope. It stays around 100% all the time.
@druid wrote:
You may also be using CPU-intensive plugins that keep processing regardless of whether the song has stopped or not.
I tried deleting the only 2 effects I was using (no other plugins are being used besides SFZ). It made a small difference. Instead of my CPU usage sitting at 100%, it dropped down to about 75% with the deleting of the Podium reverb having the smallest effect so it is contributing to the problem the least.
@druid wrote:
If it is only the VST that you have mentioned, then it may also depend on what your computer specifications are. What kind of CPU power, and RAM, do you have? How many USB devices do you use?
I have a 3.2 GHz Pentium 4, with 2Gig of RAM. I’m using 1 USB device connected to a backup drive that is currently turned off. I would think that my processor speed would explain why the CPU usage is 100% as opposed to some some lower number, but not why the CPU is so busy in the first place while Podium is idle.
@druid wrote:
sfz is also quite an intensive plugin (though I would’ve thought it should only cause slowness if active, not while idle).
I’ve found just the opposite to be true. When I add a new SFZ track, it barely registers on the CPU meter at all when Podium is idle unless perhaps I’ve crossed some threshold of too many SFZ instances.
@druid wrote:
What quality settings are you using on this?
It’s set to draft.
@druid wrote:
In regards to your reverb issue, perhaps your bounce is not being directed to the reverb as well?
I discovered the cause of the problem. I’m using a single reverb bus for all tracks . Each music track in the group was being sent individually to the effects bus for reverb. When I instead send the group track to the effects bus, bouncing the group includes the reverb. Problem solved.
@druid wrote:
Problem 3 can be worked around by exporting a loop, so that it doesn’t get to that part. That’s not a solution though, only a workaround. Were those events split from another event?
No.
@druid wrote:
And if so, did you add the notes at the end of a long event?
No. The extra events belong to my drum track. Each event in the drum track is about 2 bars long.
@druid wrote:
Also, were there any ghost copies of this event put on other tracks, possibly ones you don’t display?
No.
My best guess (without knowing how Podium works internally) is that the ghost notes in the drum track are currently sitting in an output buffer the length of which is not being reset when the song becomes shorter. This would explain why I can play the master bounce within Podium and the song ends when it should but when I export, I get the ghost notes (from the buffer) that are no longer part of any track. This would represent a memory leak if I’m right.
Zynewave@pbattersby wrote:
My best guess (without knowing how Podium works internally) is that the ghost notes in the drum track are currently sitting in an output buffer the length of which is not being reset when the song becomes shorter. This would explain why I can play the master bounce within Podium and the song ends when it should but when I export, I get the ghost notes (from the buffer) that are no longer part of any track. This would represent a memory leak if I’m right.
It’s not a memory leak. It’s because the wave file used to store the bounced audio does not get cropped when you shorten the arrangement. It’s on my todo-list, that a new bounce should crop the existing bounce wave file to the new arrangement length.
thcilnnahojIt can be worked around by right-clicking the “Bounce” selector on the master track, disabling “Hide Track Lane”, and resizing the master bounce sequence manually. 😉
PROBLEM 2: Bounced groups stop using reverb
Related to my problem above, I bounce a group of tracks to ease the processor burden but I find that during playback of the bounced group, the reverb (Podium provided reverb) is no longer in use.
This is because, as the group track is set to bounce playback, the individual tracks inside the group are automatically muted – thus, they can’t send to your reverb track anymore. If you want the reverb to be frozen too, the only way I can think of is to place the return track inside the group. Of course, that’d mean it won’t respond to tracks sending to it from outside of that particular group once the group is bounced… :-k
I wonder how other sequencers manage this… though I doubt there’s anything more elaborate going on.
Imagine a “post-send-group-render” mode, which would solo and render the needed return tracks along with the group track. For it to become just one bounce file, though, it’d have to mix the resulting bounces, or pretty much render at the master track’s hierarchy level, no? 😕
pbattersby@thcilnnahoj wrote:
It can be worked around by right-clicking the “Bounce” selector on the master track, disabling “Hide Track Lane”, and resizing the master bounce sequence manually.
That didn’t work. The ghost events still do not appear when I do that.
@thcilnnahoj wrote:
This is because, as the group track is set to bounce playback, the individual tracks inside the group are automatically muted – thus, they can’t send to your reverb track anymore. If you want the reverb to be frozen too, the only way I can think of is to place the return track inside the group.
Or, as I discovered, send the entire group to the reverb instead of the individual tracks within the group.
thcilnnahoj@pbattersby wrote:
@thcilnnahoj wrote:
It can be worked around by right-clicking the “Bounce” selector on the master track, disabling “Hide Track Lane”, and resizing the master bounce sequence manually.
That didn’t work. The ghost events still do not appear when I do that.
Whoops, you’re right – you have to crop the master bounce sequence as well after resizing! If you only resize it, Podium will write the newly rendered data to the file upon bouncing again, but will leave everything beyond the (new) end of the arrangement untouched. It might be invisible in the arrangement, but of course this remaining data will still be there when you choose to export it. Sorry about that. 😉
@pbattersby wrote:
@thcilnnahoj wrote:
This is because, as the group track is set to bounce playback, the individual tracks inside the group are automatically muted – thus, they can’t send to your reverb track anymore. If you want the reverb to be frozen too, the only way I can think of is to place the return track inside the group.
Or, as I discovered, send the entire group to the reverb instead of the individual tracks within the group.
Sure, as long as you want each individual track’s send level to be the same, this works just as well.
pbattersby@thcilnnahoj wrote:
Whoops, you’re right – you have to crop the master bounce sequence as well after resizing!
Success at last. Yes, that worked.
PROBLEM 3: Ghost events upon export to sound file [solved]