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Exported video looks different

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strainborm
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Dec 21, 2014 9:31 pm

Exported video looks different

Post by strainborm »

So far, this program has been amazing :D But I bumped into some issues that I found somewhat ruining the experience for me. Every video that i have exported looked very different (usually worse) compared to the preview in Magic window. Here are some things that were different:

- the trail power ends up being much lower. It is much more noticeable at high blur radius values (>20)
- waveform sometimes leaves a 'bounding box' artifact with trails and radial blur (visible in preview)
- antialiasing makes waveform look pixelated and also removes/corrupts any other 2D effect (also visible in the preview) also, instead of running at ~250 fps, fps drops down as low as 10 fsp

Trail power screenshots (taken roughly at the same bit of the track):
First screen is the preview, the second is exported video
http://imgur.com/a/8pYg4

The 'bounding box' screenshots (minor and extreme examples):
http://imgur.com/a/B5PJ8

Waveform w/ trails and antialiasing:
http://imgur.com/UGpMsTh

I have pretty good and compatible hardware, more than capable at handling OpenGL and also pretty good sound card, so I don't think that it is the issue. I am mostly concerned about the trails looking different on exports, but the other things were quite problematic as well. Are there any fixes to these nuisances? If any more information/screenshots are needed, please tell me. Any help is greatly appreciated :) Thank you very much!
Magic
Site Admin
Posts: 3440
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:28 pm

Re: Exported video looks different

Post by Magic »

- the trail power ends up being much lower. It is much more noticeable at high blur radius values (>20)
Unfortunately the Trails module is time-dependent, so it does work differently at different frame rates. There is a small comment about it in the User's Guide; see the last sentence in this section: http://magicmusicvisuals.com/downloads/ ... eFrameRate.

Also, did you disable vertical sync and double buffering? I ask because you mentioned 250fps. Vertical sync and double buffering will keep your frame rate at 60 so it will look exactly the same if you export a movie at 60fps. You can also use the Frame Rate option (see above link) to change your frame rate to other settings if you want. That way you can match it to your desired fps when exporting.
- waveform sometimes leaves a 'bounding box' artifact with trails and radial blur (visible in preview)
That's odd -- I've never seen that before. But usually that kind of thing happens when you are running out of graphics memory. Do you know how much you have?
- antialiasing makes waveform look pixelated and also removes/corrupts any other 2D effect (also visible in the preview) also, instead of running at ~250 fps, fps drops down as low as 10 fsp
The pixelation is coming from the fact that your graphics resolution is set to 1920x1080, but you are viewing the output in a much smaller window so it's scaling the graphics to fit. What does it look like in fullscreen mode? Or have you tried setting the graphics resolution to the Magic Window size?

The drop in fps is also likely due to low graphics memory. The Antialias module renders the scene at 2x resolution, so it requires 4x memory. And it also makes everything go slow because 4x as many pixels are being processed.
I have pretty good and compatible hardware, more than capable at handling OpenGL
Magic's graphics requirements are actually on the higher end. The best kind of system is a gaming-quality system. What kind of graphics card do you have?

You might want to try lowering your graphics resolution (Window > Magic Window Options > Graphics Resolution) to see if any of the above things behave better. Let me know if it helps.
strainborm
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Dec 21, 2014 9:31 pm

Re: Exported video looks different

Post by strainborm »

Thank you very much Eric for your quick reply! :)
Unfortunately the Trails module is time-dependent, so it does work differently at different frame rates.
Vertical sync and double buffering will keep your frame rate at 60 so it will look exactly the same if you export a movie at 60fps.
I did eventually figure out that Trails are frame dependent, so what I decided to do is to keep double buffering and Vsync on and export the video at 60 fps. ;)
That's odd -- I've never seen that before. But usually that kind of thing happens when you are running out of graphics memory. Do you know how much you have?
I have GeForce GT 650M , which has 2GB of memory. Monitoring the memory usage, Magic usually uses about 5-10%, at times 15%. So no, memory shortage is not an issue. :|
The pixelation is coming from the fact that your graphics resolution is set to 1920x1080, but you are viewing the output in a much smaller window so it's scaling the graphics to fit. What does it look like in fullscreen mode? Or have you tried setting the graphics resolution to the Magic Window size?
I did some further testing and experimentation, and turning on double buffering and Vsync fixed it. Seems like the resolution was not the issue :roll: Also fixed the 10fps issue, which btw also used to appear when going full screen.

But thank you very much for your help! I very much appreciate it! :D
Although the 'bounding box' is still unresolved :roll:

One more quick question! Is there any way to make Magic use GPU + CPU when rendering, and not just CPU?
Magic
Site Admin
Posts: 3440
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 9:28 pm

Re: Exported video looks different

Post by Magic »

Although the 'bounding box' is still unresolved :roll:
Hmm, I'll have to investigate this further. It could be a bug. You should definitely have enough memory with your graphics card.
One more quick question! Is there any way to make Magic use GPU + CPU when rendering, and not just CPU?
The GPU is used pretty heavily for the graphics actually. The things that use only the CPU are the audio and the user interface.
But thank you very much for your help! I very much appreciate it! :D
You're very welcome :).
hazardman
Posts: 74
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 1:33 am

Re: Exported video looks different

Post by hazardman »

i too had some "rendering" issues with the trail module...i was creating some shooting stars and the only way to get the "trail" to look acceptably smooth was to render the video or image sequences at 120 fps--60 wasn't cutting it for me ;)...with such a high frame rate, expect your files to be large as well....
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