Performance question

[slaughtrhaus]

Greetings-
Longtime user, first time poster. I love this program to death and I use it in all my live streams. Thanks for making it so intuitive and effective.

So I'm wondering about how to squeeze the most (video)performance out of Magic in a particular and general way, but I'm not exactly sure how to set it up best with better performance in mind. I'm definitely curious for opinions on how to make this particular setup work better, but I'm really more interested in the theoretical knowledge of what project structure allows for the most bang for buck too, so all my projects can perform better.

In this scenario, I use Magic as an effects processor for a Logitech Streamcam (usb webcam). Right now, I have each effect on a separate scene and the camera input module on every single separate effects scene, so to change effects I change scenes. Changing scenes *can* trigger a bit of lag depending on the effect it's changing to.

Should I make a scene just for the cam input module and feed each effect scene a Scene input module?
Should I cram the whole thing into one scene and trigger effect changes via multimixer?

Thanks in advance!

[Sadler]

Things to consider:
Bottlenecks: video (drive speed), fx (gpu), webcam (usb speed)
Optimisations - keep in graphics memory, vertical sync, double buffering, throttling, resolution.
Some effects are light, some effects are very heavy on any system.
If using the playlist - transitions run both scenes together (same with multimix).
If you use the iterator keep all effects after the iterator!!!


Something to try - put your VideoCapture node in its own scene, have that scene keep in graphics memory, then use that scene instead of webcam nodes. Perhaps this is what you mean by "a scene just for the cam input module and feed each effect scene a Scene input module"?
Use task manager or afterburner to monitor your bottlenecks or the Magic status can be helpful to monitor frame-rate.
If your butting up against the top in a single scene or your scene has a lot of nodes, then changing scenes will lag.
Check out the benchmarks

All that said, the main way to keep visuals well within the limits of your hardware is to be sparing and avoid expensive fx and simplify your scenes.

You'd have to be more specific about when its lagging for more specific help.

[slaughtrhaus]

Things to consider:
Bottlenecks: video (drive speed), fx (gpu), webcam (usb speed)
Optimisations - keep in graphics memory, vertical sync, double buffering, throttling, resolution.
Some effects are light, some effects are very heavy on any system.
If using the playlist - transitions run both scenes together (same with multimix).
If you use the iterator keep all effects after the iterator!!!


Something to try - put your VideoCapture node in its own scene, have that scene keep in graphics memory, then use that scene instead of webcam nodes. Perhaps this is what you mean by "a scene just for the cam input module and feed each effect scene a Scene input module"?
Use task manager or afterburner to monitor your bottlenecks or the Magic status can be helpful to monitor frame-rate.
If your butting up against the top in a single scene or your scene has a lot of nodes, then changing scenes will lag.
Check out the benchmarks

All that said, the main way to keep visuals well within the limits of your hardware is to be sparing and avoid expensive fx and simplify your scenes.

You'd have to be more specific about when its lagging for more specific help.

Fantastic advice, thank you for taking the time to answer so thoroughly! This is the exact information I needed, and yes that is what I meant about the camera and scenes, perfect. I'll make some adjustments and report back with anything significant. Cheers.