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Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame rate

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jhinden
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:15 pm

Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame rate

Post by jhinden »

Having a really strange issue where some folders of jpegs are suddenly played back at a very choppy frame rate when set to play. Other folders are playing back fine in the same module. I can't pin down the root cause of this though. They all played back fine before. I've tried resetting magic prefs and application support and no luck.

The only thing I've done recently to have caused something like this is clone the machine to another computer (using MacOS migration tool). The problem persists on both machines though. Some folders are ok, others are choppy. The folders were fine before. I realize this is a strange problem, but if anyone has any clues and has experienced something similar it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
jhinden
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:15 pm

Re: Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame r

Post by jhinden »

Here is a copy of a test project to illustrate the issue (which someone else confirmed to me using another machine):
https://www.odrive.com/s/ec2ce825-a056- ... 1-6049d046

Depending on the quality of your test machine, you can see that the first module plays back smoothly and the second module has a very poor frame rate. What's odd is that these folders played back fine previously (a few days ago).

The only thing I can imagine is that perhaps my virtual memory on the M1 is having issues do to lack of hard drive space so I'm going to try to test that out. If you can check the test project file though you should be able to see that module 1 is fine and module 2 plays back at a very low frame rate. Exporting these however as a .mov seems playback as expected.

Thanks in advance
Sadler
Posts: 1139
Joined: Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:10 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame r

Post by Sadler »

My guess would be your are, at times, trying to push 25MB frames at 30FPS = 750MB/sec. Is your HD fast enough? Not to mention overlapping these in your test comp - more bandwidth required. The best laid plans o' mice and men!
Magic
Site Admin
Posts: 3440
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:28 pm

Re: Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame r

Post by Magic »

Yeah, definitely sounds like a disk speed issue. The JpegFolder module can be pretty demanding. Maybe try using smaller files (higher compression or lower resolution) and see if the problem persists.
jhinden
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:15 pm

Re: Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame r

Post by jhinden »

Thanks for checking Eric. The two modules was just to A/B test working folder vs non-working folder (and both when played back together).

What's odd is that I can't playback a file properly that I was working on just the other (super fast fps) with a ton of other stuff going on.

So I'm guessing disk space decreased to a point that it began causing troubles or possibly I had some disk corruption/fragmentation occur before I migrated data from this computer to the other. The other computer had plenty of disk space and the same problem. Will continue there with the troubleshooting. Only other thing that occurred to me is that perhaps embedded meta data is also causing a problem.

The best laid plans are my mother's paintings. :)
jhinden
Posts: 48
Joined: Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:15 pm

Re: Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame r

Post by jhinden »

Just a follow up for anyone following along:

I pretty much tried everything on the disk side (reinstalling OS, freeing up 160gb of space etc.) and no luck with improving performance.
Reducing the file size, increasing compression and removing exif data definitely helps though, so I will just use proxies and get on with it.

In any case, I'm testing on an M1 and a MacBook Pro 16" 2019 which have these benchmarks in the event that something can be improved on the Magic side. Seems to me like they should be capable of performing a bit better.

M1 Disk Speed Test (Black Magic Test)
2656 MB/s write
2776 MB/s read

MacBook Pro 16 (Black Magic Test)"
2600 MB/s write
2656 MB/s read

Thanks again.
Magic
Site Admin
Posts: 3440
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:28 pm

Re: Some image folders suddenly playback with choppy frame r

Post by Magic »

Keep in mind that there is a lot of overhead with many separate smaller image files as opposed to one big video file. If you're mainly doing playback at higher frame rates (24, 30, etc) then I'd suggest using the VideoFile module. The JpegFolder module does have a playback option but it's best kept to much lower frame rates for a slideshow effect (such as each frame lasting a full audio beat, or maybe even several seconds, etc.)
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