Use optimisation tools to accelerate a composition

It is running fast? Could be faster.

Here is a topic that will help you making your content faster!

Check performance indicators

You can read at any time how much graphics card memory is used thanks to the GPU Memory Meter and how fast Smode computes video frames thanks to the FPS Meter .

The GPU Memory Meter which should always remain green and the FPS Meter must be greater or equal to your display device frequency in order to avoid frame drop stuttering, the % is is the maximum consumption of GPU/CPU resource that Smode needed in the last 100 frames, it’s should stay bellow 100% to have a stable output.

Profile

The first thing to do to optimize Smode content is to use the Profiling button in order to identify costly layers and effects in your composition. It’s often the case that the least useful effects take the most performance budget!

Go ON-AIR

Use the ON-AIR button: this will disable the Viewport , which in some cases can be very costly (especially when dealing with a high number of layers and on-screen helpers). If you want to keep the viewport, note that it’s also possible to just disable the helpers with the “Show Helpers” button in its right toolbar.

Lock your content

By default, every parameter of every element in Smode is editable and automatable at any time. This is very flexible but forces Smode to assume that all parameters can be updated and sent to graphics card. To indicate to Smode that you wont animate an element, you can disable edit-ability of an element by clicking on it’s locker icon.

When doing this, Smode will create a new shader chain (this can cause a small lag) and optimize the parameters which are number and choices (those that are in combo-boxes and check-boxes).

Note that for the moment only theses kind of parameters are optimized all other aren’t (vector), see below in green the optimized parameter when locking a Noise Mask and in red the parameter that aren’t:

Note that locking doesn’t disable linked animation the variables concerned by animations, which are not optimized in any case.

The User Interface Lock is a useful shortcut to fully lock the current compo.

Video Profiler

When you have a Video File you can check on the streamer tab what can go wrong. If you go down in this tab to the profiler section a enable it (and optionally turn the advanced mode), you can now see precisely if anything is going wrong with the streaming of your video (and point if the issue come from disk access, buffer or else).

Some tips:

• the direct read access should mostly stay flat
• the obtained image Delta should be flat

You can find more info here Issues with video Playback