MediaMaster latency test on the A10 Media Server
Apr/100
On the support, we sometimes have to answer questions about the latency between the live input and output on computers running MediaMaster. We know this a concern for most users but actually, there’s no straight answer since the amount of latency you will get will depend on a lot of different hardware and software parameters and therefore will vary depending on your own setup.
In a perfect world, we would have zero frame delay but unfortunately this is not possible with current computer hardware; the simple fact that a computer is processing video already adds one frame of input delay, that frame is needed for the computer to store the complete image before having it processed by the video card. Then you can add another frame of output delay, caused by the video card processing the image. Before or after that, each device that is added to the pipeline – such as a camera, a mixer, a LED controller or a projector – will add some delay into the processing. In the end, if the delay becomes too big you will notice that the sound and the video are out of sync, for example you will hear the voice of the speaker before his lips start moving on the screen.
If we cannot tell what the latency will be with your setup, we can however provide you with a point of comparison by measuring how many frames are needed to process a live input on an ideal setup: MediaMaster running on one of our A10 Media Servers that are specially built and configured to get the most out of our software.
Using the right decoder for your video content
Dec/090
One thing that appears obvious to us after more than 10 years of working with the various solutions that can be used on Mac and Windows to decompress video is that not all solutions are equal.
We believe that our users should be able to play almost any kind of media with the ArKaos software and at the same time we do everything a team of developer can to get the best performance on the platforms supported.
Practically the ArKaos software can play media files through the following decoders: QuickTime, FFmpeg, the Flash plugin, Quartz Composer and Windows Media Player. Currently (December 2009) we don’t allow the user to decide through which solution a media will be decoded, instead we try to make the best decision based on our many years of experience and tests. In the case where several video codecs (such as Mpeg4) can be played through different decoders like QuickTime, FFmpeg and Windows Media Player, we always prefer, no matter the platform, to first try to handle those codecs with FFmpeg as we have always had the best results with FFmpeg during our tests, and here’s why..
GrandVJ 1.2b1 supports Flash AS3, Quartz Composer, APC40 and more
Oct/0915
We just released a new beta version of GrandVJ, you can download it from our forums:
http://www.arkaos.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6828
This version has many new cool things which are detailed in the forum post, here is a recap:
- New ultra smooth engine
- Support for Akai APC40 & Generic midi feedback
(also for Behringer BCR2000/BCF2000, Livid OHM, ..) - Quartz composer player (Mac OS X)
- Support for Flash Actionscript 3
- Cell layer assignment
- Mixer state saving
- Added master blackout button
- New enhanced soft-edging algorithm
- Added vertical/horizontal position presets for TripleHead2Go
- Several Bug fixes.
- New fullscreen option (PC)
We plan to ship the final version at the end of this month so we encourage you to check if this new version is working fine and to report any problems or suggestions by creating a topic in the GrandVJ forum.
Happy testing, we hope you will have as much fun using this version as we had to code it!
Software performance analysis
Jun/095
When your frame rate goes down, and the video starts lagging, it is important to be able to analyse where it can come from. Today we’re going to look at some information we can use to troubleshoot this.
Roughly, the way our application works is the following: at each pass, we read a video frame from the disk if needed, decode it and then send it to the GPU (the Graphic card’s CPU) together with all blending and effect operations. Then we ask the graphic card to flush all operations (that is actually processing all pending graphical instructions) and present it to the display.
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