Magic Music Visuals

Hello!
My words can't describe the awesome program that you guys put together! I had my first full blown visual performance last week and it was pure awesomeness :) People really liked it!

But I did have some little problems, let me try to explain them.

Ok first let me describe the machine - laptop:
Windows 8.1 with all the latest updates, and official drivers from laptop manufacturer
Intel i7-4702MQ
32GB RAM
240GB SSD
GeForce GTX 760M - 2GB dedicated VRAM, latest drivers

While performing wifi is off, airplane mode on, all the other programs closed.

I have a MIDI controller connected to Magic - it's Korg NanoKontrol v1 - official drivers installed


So the first problem is with the MIDI controller - or something with the MIDI signal to Magic, I don't know. But when I add some additional modules after some time using the same project and link them with MIDI attributes - learning function, sometimes Magic doesn't react to MIDI inputs, I cannot change the parameters with the MIDI slider or button for example. But if I save the project, close the program and open it again, the newly added MIDI link will work.
That happened in the middle of my performance, I had to add some modules and link them, and all the input commands and MIDI links stopped working, and I had to save and reopen the project. Do you maybe have a debug mode so I can send you some debug info what happened when MIDI input freeze?
Also I cannot reproduce this problem all the time, it just happens from time to time (mostly between performance :P)
And this also happens even more frequently if I have 2 Korg NanoKontrol v1 devices connected to Magic, so for now, I stick with 1 controller, but would be very good if this was stable.



The second thing is not a Magic problem, but my non optimization :P For example, I have 3 blend modules and I had to set them up like this:
When I want to put the blend mode 1 onto the screen I do that with the transparency module. And I power on the blend mode 1 when the transparency is about 5% - so when transparency is down, the blend module is off, when transparency is above 5%, the blend module is on (linked MIDI parameter - slider to 2 modules). That is because I can't have all the blend modes powered on, otherwise I have less then 10 FPS. When I do this "technique" the FPS is around 25-30 - so still ok. But when I mix 2 blend modes on screen, so from first blend module to the second blend module, again FPS drops to around 16-20.
I tried with multiple scenes and then connecting then into one scene, but that doesn't help with FPS, just organizing, which is also very good, i'm trying to optimize as much as possible.
Do you suggest something else for optimizing Magic projects and achieving higher FPS?


The third problem is probably related to above non optimization. After 1h of performing FPS drop from normal 25-30 (in my case this is normal :P ) to around 20, and then to 12. Then I have to clean the memory graphics memory with Ctrl + Shift + C, there is of course little interruption (I did that when DJ mixed tracks and when the mix had a pause so it was not that noticeable), and then I have normal 25-30 FPS again.

I tried with "Load all the modules in memory" on and off but after some time is the same. FPS drop to very noticeable low number.

Is there anything I can do? Optimization of course. Do I need a stronger graphics card?

I can also send the project file, if it helps, maybe you guys can analyze it better. But of course this takes time and energy from you, so I wont bother you much with this.

I maybe explained the above problems strangely and not clear enough, so if there are some questions about above problems, please ask me. :)

Thank you very much for your help and your answer!
Keep up the good work
Greetings from Slovenia!

Love and light!
Tom

Hi Tom, I think all your issues might be related. Specifically, your MIDI issue might be related to the frame rate. If your frame rate is very low, some of the MIDI messages might not get detected correctly. I can't be sure about this, but does it happen when you have a very simple project with only a few modules?

It seems like you have a good computer, so when your frame rate is low, is it because you have a lot of modules in your scene?

The problem with the Transparency module is that it doesn't stop rendering its input even when the parameter is set to 0 (although maybe I should make it behave that way). For better optimization you can try one of the following things:
- Use MIDI to control the module's Power and Bypass parameters, which completely turn rendering on and off (see https://magicmusicvisuals.com/downloads ... passParams)
- Use the InputSelector or MultiMix modules, which only render the active inputs

Also, you should definitely *disable* "Load All Scenes Into Graphics Memory". It will help keep your memory as clean as possible.

Let me know if any of those things help?

Eric

Hello Eric,
thank you very much for answering me so fast

Yes, the MIDI problems are present just when I have a big project, just like with the FPS drop.

With a clean project and few modules, there is no problems with the MIDI (well, I have been more time inside a big project) and the FPS is 60.

Yes, that's exactly what I did. I control the power parameter of the blend module with MIDI and simultaneously change the parameter for Transparency module. So when Transparency is 0, blend module is off, and when Transparency is above 0, blend module is on.

But still when I mix 2 blend modules with the MultiMix or simply with Transparency module, there is still a big FPS drop, but I will try to optimize it a little bit more....

And I will disable the Load All to Memory....

Thank you for all the suggestions!
I will definitely use and support the project in the future Keep up the good work!

Thank you very much again for all the help!
Greetings from Slovenia
Tom

Yeah, unfortunately there's not much you can do about low fps in complex scenes. You can try optimizing your module flow a bit, or another thing you can try is lowering the overall graphics resolution (Window > Magic Window Options > Graphics Resolution), which will make the rendering go faster at the cost of a slightly more pixelated image.

The issue with the MIDI processing is that if a bunch of messages are received between video frames, only the last one will have an effect. There's really no way around it. For example, at 30fps, each frame takes 1/30 of a second to display (approximately 33 milliseconds), so something like this could happen:

New frame displayed at time 0 -> a few MIDI messages are received that control the same parameter -> next frame displayed (at time .033)

In that case, only the last MIDI message received (right before the new frame is shown) would affect the parameter value.

So you can see that if your fps was very low, like 10fps, each frame would last 100ms, and a lot of MIDI messages could be received in that time.

Does that make sense? I'm not sure if it's exactly what's going on with your projects, but it could be a part of it at least.