ZynewaveBeta9 is up. This one only has a CPU speed optimization of the UI repainting. Zooming and scrolling should not show significant speed improvement, but in cases where only stuff like meters and play cursor is updating there should be huge speed improvements. Let me know if you see any noticeable changes for better or worse.
ZynewaveBug confirmed here as well 😮
I’ll fix that before 2.26 is released.
Frits, how does offline bouncing work, anyway? Does it interface at all with the audio device and/or its drivers (ASIO), or is it completely Podium and the plugins just working with data?
It doesn’t use the audio driver. It uses a buffer size of 128 samples (or the size set for the ASIO driver if it is smaller than 128 samples).
ZynewaveWhat display resolution do you use?
Maybe there is somewhere in the display control panel where you can define how much of the system memory the gfx controller allocates? I remember many years ago, this was something you could set in the BIOS.
If you have other programs running while running Podium, try closing them to see if that makes the Podium CPU usage jump down. Even having just an Internet Explorer open will use up some graphics memory.
ZynewaveAn explanation for these sudden jumps in UI CPU usage, could be because you’re on the edge of where the graphics card memory resources are being exhausted. Podium will create some of the often used bitmaps in native graphics card memory, if possible. This ensures that the gfx card hardware accelaration can be utilized. If there is not enough memory on the gfx card, then the PC CPU needs to kick in and do some of the rendering normally done on the gfx card. This is all handled by Windows.
The fact that you see a reduction when showing the track inspector, is likely because you then reduce the size of the timeline area. Please do this experiment to verify this:
When you see a high CPU usage, gradually size the Podium window smaller and check if there is a point where the CPU usage drops significantly.
Also, check your display control panel, and see what info is shown on the “Adapter” tab. There should be some info like “dedicated video memory”. Let me know what this is at.
Zynewave@Zynewave wrote:
Next I’m going to revise the way that tracks are drag-reordered. I think I figured out a simple way to allow a track to be dragged into a group track, even when it doesn’t have any child tracks yet.
😯 That turned out to be a tough job to implement, taking longer than I anticipated.
Check out the new beta8.
I think the revision of the track dragging is complete, including dragging when a tagged subset of tracks are shown. With the new method it is possible to drag any track into any group track, just by dragging vertically. When a track is dropped over the bottom half of a group track header, it will be added as the last child track.
Let me know if you find any problems with the new method of dragging tracks.
ZynewaveBtw. In case you have selected a track timeline image file in the project properties, you could try to remove this. This is one of the things that may take up some CPU if the graphics card does not have a lot of memory.
Zynewave@sam c wrote:
@Zynewave wrote:
So the problem can be described as a sluggish UI? Is there anything that you can’t do, or is it just slow to respond?
It actually is workable if I don’t see the play cursor. If I have to see it I keep the inspector open and it is only 32% CPU and it works fine.
Please describe in what way it is not workable at the higher CPU usage. Things like: Does anything in the UI freeze? Does menus take several seconds to open? etc.
Zynewave@sam c wrote:
Desktop.
This was not happening in 2.23. I might have missed it in 2.24 it is hard to tell. I only opened my task manager because I was hearing a drop off when I should not have. My Podium mix never shows higher than 30%. If it does I might bounce to conserve so I could have missed this for awhile.
Ok, then I assume it’s possible that it is only a slight UI CPU usage increase in the recent Podium versions that caused the occasional dropout. It is likely that your previous Podium versions also showed a high CPU usage in the task manager, only just not enough to cause a dropout.
Zynewave@sam c wrote:
Frits, I can play without audio glitches even at 66%. I just can’t do anything else.
Ok, that makes better sense to me. I thought you had audio glitches even when the Podium CPU indicator was low.
So the problem can be described as a sluggish UI? Is there anything that you can’t do, or is it just slow to respond?
The CPU made available to the UI will decrease when the audio processing needs more CPU. This will of course result in an increasingly sluggish UI as the Podium audio CPU meter grows towards 100%. To make the UI snappier, the fix is to find what particular UI feature is using so much CPU.
Zynewave@sam c wrote:
This is a few years old. Pent 4- 3.2gHz- 2 gig ram -on board video card-Sony Vaio.
Is it a desktop or laptop?
Frits, all other programs work as they should. So did Podium until recently and nothing has changed on the computer. It is XP, tweaked for audio, and really has been no problem.
Can you remember which Podium version was last working without problems? That can help me pinpoint what feature update may have caused this change in behaviour.
Zynewave@sam c wrote:
It seems to be the play cursor in the view window that makes my system spike. However, my processes shows Podium climb from 29000KB to over 900000 after a few minutes on play, even though CPU drops to 6 to 9% on task manager.
Ok, if it is a gradual climb up to 900000, then it is normal. It is the memory caching of the audio files that grows during playback. It will be flushed when the memory is needed for other purposes.
Zynewave@sam c wrote:
When the play cursor is changed from follow play cursor and the cursor leaves the view of the track window the task manager CPU drops down to 8%.
So my project starts at 62%, when the cursor leaves teh view it drops to 6%!?
How old is your PC?
What model/speed is your CPU?
Do you know if your PC has a separate graphics card, or is it an onboard graphics chip?
When the play cursor leaves the view, Podium no longer has to repaint the area around the animated cursor. For some reason that is using a lot of CPU on your PC.
Zynewave@sam c wrote:
Frits, that cut it to about 32% on my task manager.
Well, it did not. I went in and changed it in each view that has tracks and it is back to 62%. So I undid it all and it is 62%. Then I changed the one view of tracks to hide meters and it is still 62%.
Is there anything I can do to get this working?
Please double-check that the track meters are hidden. If in doubt, start with the “restore default editor profiles” command in the setup menu, and then select the “hide meters” option.
With the meters hidden (at 32% CPU), where you then able to play the arrangement without audio dropouts?
ZynewaveI tried your Podium.ini file, but there isn’t anything wrong there. I did however notice a higher than usual CPU usage during my test, and I located the issue to the meter drawing in the tracks region. Try to open the tracks region properties dialog and set the “audio meters” combobox to “hide meters”. Let me know how much this fixes the issue for you.
The meter update code has been optimized a long time ago, but it seems that some of the recent updates to the UI has disturbed this. I’ll profile the performance the next few days and hopefully fix this for the 2.26 release.
ZynewaveIf I keep the inspector open it drops from 60% on the task manager to 32%.
Sounds like there is something in the UI redrawing that is using more CPU than needed. If you during playback close the arrangement editor by going back to the project start page, what does the task manager CPU say?
If you have other plugin editor or Podium windows open, try closing them and see if it changes the CPU.