Magic Music Visuals

Hi! I have a desktop computer at the office where I render the videos using Magic. I have set up the Remote Desktop to be able to start the renders of pre-made projects from my laptop from home. Remote Desktop works fine, however, when I open a Magic project it shows a very weird graphics, does not open the Input Sources window, which I need to be able to render with an audio file, and the Export Movie from File menu is not available. When I work on desktop directly everything works perfectly well. Do you have any suggestions? I don't need to create or edit projects remotely, my only goal is to be able to start rendering.

I may have tried this a long, long time ago and can't remember any problems - certainly I have monitored/started renders remotely.

My guess is (could be way off) that the remote desktop is running on your integrated GPU and Magic is running on the NVidia GPU and the remote desktop can't access the Magic interface. Does your laptop have optimus?

Sadler wrote:Does your laptop have optimus?

Thank you for the prompt reply! I don't think I know what Optimus is, so not sure if my laptop has it. BTW, I was using my laptop to render the videos with Magic too and there were no problem except slow speed and overheating, that's why I assembled a rendering PC (which I would like to have the control over via the laptop). Both Laptop and desktop have GeForce GPUs, however the laptop hardware shouldn't have anything to do with the remote rendering...

If the Export Movie command is not available, it means Magic isn't using your GPU, which basically means it won't work properly.

This is a common problem for GPU applications running on Windows 10 Remote Desktop, and you can fix it by following this article: https://community.esri.com/thread/22525 ... ows-10-rdp

Eric wrote:This is a common problem for GPU applications running on Windows 10 Remote Desktop, and you can fix it by following this article

Hi! Thank you for prompt reply. I have followed the instructions in the article, but nothing changed. I have tried enabling other graphics related option there, but still no luck. I have tried to connect from two different guest machines, still no luck.
I can run the audio now, but still have the basic geometric shapes instead of visuals and Export is disabled.
Hope you can advice how to proceed.
Thank you!

UPDATE: I have tested the GPU by going to fishgl.com through the Remote Desktop and monitored the activity with HWMonitor. It shower the GPU load up to 70% and a very slow GPU temperature rise, which seems to mean that GPU is working via Remote Desktop, while Magic isn't using it for some reason...

Can you please go to Help > OpenGL Info in Magic (on your remote desktop), and copy/paste the text here?

Here is the text:

"
Version: 1.1.0

Vendor: Microsoft Corporation

Maximum RGBA Texture Size: 1024x1024 pixels

Maximum Renderbuffer Size: 0x0 pixels

Extensions:
GL_WIN_swap_hint GL_EXT_bgra GL_EXT_paletted_texture
"

P.S.: It is getting more interesting. I have started the render on the host computer directly. Now I am home and I opened the remote desktop to start uploading the rendered file. Voila, the images were working and Export Movie was active. I even tried to export one minute to test. However, when I tried to run the composition using the Input Sources play button it started running at the very high speed, like one minute in one second, but the video seemed responding. When I closed the project and re-opened it - nothing worked again.

Ok that's what I thought. Something is telling Magic not to use the GPU when it's run remotely. I'm not sure what it is, but I will think about it. Other than that, you might want to try opening your Nvidia Control Panel and specifically telling it to use the GPU for Magic.

Just tried editing the Nvidia Control Panel. The only GPU related option I've found was "Use GPU for OpenGL rendering". I switched it on for Magic, didn't help. Then I switched it on in global settings, didn't helps either... Restarted the machine, still no luck. Hope you'll be able to come up with an idea... All the other applications seem to utilize the GPU with no problem.

What other applications are you referring to?

As I've mentioned above - fishgl.com, also VLC Player. At least HWMonitor shows the activity of GPU. Also, as I've written earlier - if I open the Magic project on the host PC directly and then access the machine via Remote Desktop - it also works until I re-load the project. When reloaded it doesn't work again.

Ok. Well, VLC doesn't necessarily use the GPU, and a web site running in the browser is not really the same as a dedicated GPU application. If you had some examples of apps that are similar to Magic and don't have the same problem, it would be helpful for my testing.

I was thinking what else can I test and realized that I have Cinebench R15. When I opened it via Remote Desktop there was the same story as with Magic - it didn't see the GPU, while when opened directly on the PC it works well. So, the situation looks similar to Magic...

Right, that's what I expected. So the problem isn't unique to Magic, which probably means it's something in the operating system (or graphics driver). I'm not sure what it could be, but I'll look into it, and if you come up with anything please post.

Thank you very much, Eric. I will try to look into drives and maybe test some other approaches. I will be checking this thread. If I have some new information I will report here. You have a great customer support and I am very much satisfied with the software!

UPDATE. I have made an experiment again. I opened the project on the host computer DIRECTLY. Then I went to another PC and connected via Remote Desktop. As I've written before, the visuals were OK. I couldn't play - when I clicked the play button it just fast-forwarded through the project. But the export worked. The next thing I tried - I opened another project by using Open function from the File menu - same thing, visuals were fine, I couldn't play, but could export. So such approach works until I close the Magic and re-open it. I think it can be a workaround for some time - I can leave an open project before leaving the office and then go through the projects I need to render from home without closing the program. I'll see how it goes and will write here. Best!

BUMP. I have checked the GPU drivers (Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti) and they seem to be up to date...

Unfortunately there isn't a simple solution to this problem. It affects all OpenGL applications. See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/517 ... ows-remote

Hi, Eric,

Thank you so much for the support!
I have read the info under the link you've provided.

The solution with creating a custom batch file that would disconnect the remote session and then launch Magic have helped!
However, the code was not as straight-forward as mentioned on the forum. After a bit of research I came up with such BAT file:

for /f "skip=1 tokens=3" %%s in ('query user %USERNAME%') do (
%windir%\System32\tscon.exe %%s /dest:console
)
cd "C:\Program Files\Magic"
start Magic.exe

After running this BAT file and re-connecting via Remote Desktop I have an open and working Magic.

Thanks again, your support is awesome!
Artur.