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Ph0en1x  
#1 Posted : Monday, October 26, 2015 3:31:54 PM(UTC)
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Hi,

I currently have this setup:

Intel Core i7-4790 Boxed
Nvidia GT650
ASRock B85M Pro4
Cooler Master N300 (KKN1, closed)
8GB DDR3 Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU
be quiet! System Power 7 300W
Crucial MX100 128GB

In my productions i'm livestreaming a single camera 1080p25 feed at 1080p25. I'm simultaneously recording that stream to my SSD and also have video delay running. The CPU usage doesn't get above 40%, but render times fluctuate between 5ms and 20-25ms. The image sequence stinger i use for replays most of the time doesn't behave as it should (starts too late or cuts away too soon) and i'm seeing framedrops, mostly in FMLE.

Which part of the system is bottlenecking my performance and should be upgraded, and by how much (i.e. which part do i need for smooth performance)?

Secondary question: which feature is more taxing on my system: Instant Replay or Video Delay?
r@wisla  
#2 Posted : Tuesday, October 27, 2015 3:32:19 PM(UTC)
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I'm not sure, but 300w power supply looks too small to me. Maybe the graphic card is a little underpowered?
IceStream  
#3 Posted : Tuesday, October 27, 2015 5:08:31 PM(UTC)
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@ Ph0en1x

What is your budget?
Which OS are you running?
My first observations on your system, in addition to the smaller power supply, was the size of your SSD, is that your only drive?
How much 'room' are you actually working with?
Next would be Memory usage, are you able to document how 'taxed' your system is under load?
Image sequence stingers are loaded into memory, so there shouldn't be an issue there unless your memory is insufficient or possibly your framerates don't match.
'Instant Replay' for multiple cameras will likely require more and better hardware to get the full benefit from the software but I don't think there is not too much difference between 'Video Delay' and 'Instant Replay' for a one camera operation from a performance standpoint AFAIK.
How are you capturing your camera? Not that it is a big concern, but CPU usage seems a little high for what appears to be a fairly simple stream and record set-up, so whatever additional info you can provide might help to diagnose possible bottlenecks with your system.


Ice
Ittaidv  
#4 Posted : Tuesday, October 27, 2015 8:25:00 PM(UTC)
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Ph0en1x wrote:
Hi,

I currently have this setup:

Intel Core i7-4790 Boxed
Nvidia GT650
ASRock B85M Pro4
Cooler Master N300 (KKN1, closed)
8GB DDR3 Crucial Ballistix Tactical BLT2C4G3D1608ET3LX0CEU
be quiet! System Power 7 300W
Crucial MX100 128GB

In my productions i'm livestreaming a single camera 1080p25 feed at 1080p25. I'm simultaneously recording that stream to my SSD and also have video delay running. The CPU usage doesn't get above 40%, but render times fluctuate between 5ms and 20-25ms. The image sequence stinger i use for replays most of the time doesn't behave as it should (starts too late or cuts away too soon) and i'm seeing framedrops, mostly in FMLE.

Which part of the system is bottlenecking my performance and should be upgraded, and by how much (i.e. which part do i need for smooth performance)?

Secondary question: which feature is more taxing on my system: Instant Replay or Video Delay?




Bottleneck could be FMLE, have you tried FFMPEG already? It's a huge cpu saver compared to streaming over FMLE.

Also, the videocard could be easily upgraded, it shouldn't be anything fancy, but with a gtx950 or something you could be using hardware encoding and getting better performance.

300W looks a little bit light for a setup like this. We have 850 watt in our systems, so nothing is ever underpowered.
Ph0en1x  
#5 Posted : Wednesday, October 28, 2015 3:05:00 AM(UTC)
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Ittaidv wrote:

Bottleneck could be FMLE, have you tried FFMPEG already? It's a huge cpu saver compared to streaming over FMLE.

But my CPU usage doesn't even top 50%? Why would you think that is the bottleneck?

Quote:
Also, the videocard could be easily upgraded, it shouldn't be anything fancy, but with a gtx950 or something you could be using hardware encoding and getting better performance.

Okay, i'm also reading that the GPU is what mostly responsible for higher render times and thus dropped frames. I'll be looking around for a nice bang-for-buck GPU or that gtx950.

Quote:
300W looks a little bit light for a setup like this. We have 850 watt in our systems, so nothing is ever underpowered.

Online power supply calculators put me at 260W recommended.
IceStream wrote:
@ Ph0en1x

What is your budget?

I just want a nice cost-value upgrade to smooth performance.
Quote:

Which OS are you running?

8.1
Quote:
My first observations on your system, in addition to the smaller power supply, was the size of your SSD, is that your only drive?

Yes, it's not meant for storage. Just a few input videofiles and room for the recordings.
Quote:

How much 'room' are you actually working with?

What do you mean, in the case or...?
Quote:
Next would be Memory usage, are you able to document how 'taxed' your system is under load?
Image sequence stingers are loaded into memory, so there shouldn't be an issue there unless your memory is insufficient or possibly your framerates don't match.

Interesting, i'll look into memory usage. What determines the framerate of the stinger? It's just a row of images right (30, in my case). By the way, if i either stop recording, streaming or using video delay, performance with the stinger appears flawless.
Quote:
'Instant Replay' for multiple cameras will likely require more and better hardware to get the full benefit from the software but I don't think there is not too much difference between 'Video Delay' and 'Instant Replay' for a one camera operation from a performance standpoint AFAIK.

That's what i thought too. I switched from Instant Replay to Video Delay but didn't seem to do any better.
Quote:
How are you capturing your camera? Not that it is a big concern, but CPU usage seems a little high for what appears to be a fairly simple stream and record set-up, so whatever additional info you can provide might help to diagnose possible bottlenecks with your system.

Through HDMI with a Decklink Mini Recorder. I capture 1080p25 and output the same.

SportsNetUSA.net  
#6 Posted : Wednesday, October 28, 2015 4:16:21 AM(UTC)
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You should consider using FFMPEG. The system I used for a football game over the weekend was an i7 2600K 3.4 Ghz, 8GB RAM with a GeForce GT 610 (2GB). It was one camera at 1080x720p, using video delay, recording and streaming. The CPU usage was about 10 percent.

Also, as the others have commented, when you have the money, upgrade to a more powerful power supply.
Slaver  
#7 Posted : Wednesday, October 28, 2015 6:22:21 AM(UTC)
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Why you all using video delay in 1 camera streams?
IceStream  
#8 Posted : Wednesday, October 28, 2015 9:46:53 AM(UTC)
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@ Slaver

'Video Delay' is available in all versions of vMix,
'Instant Replay' is an upgrade feature and maybe not accessible to everyone.

@ Ph0en1x

I'm not a 'Power Supply' expert, but when I did my build, I was told that 450W would be the minimum recommendation, I went with 850W...
By 'room' I mean space on your hard drive. (I personally don't like working with a single drive) If your hard drive is constantly working at multiple tasks and having to "allocate" space, it may be 'overtaxing' your overall resources including memory and struggling to keep up which could be part of your issue with the 'Stinger'.
If your 'Master Frame Rate' is PAL 25p then your 'Stinger' should play back in 1.167 seconds (30 frames @ 25 frames per second), the fact that it appears to play flawless when not streaming or recording indicates to me that your CPU might be struggling with multitasking when asked to do everything you need it to do.
Recording and Streaming are both CPU intensive, what format are you recording in?
Again, your system, on paper, appears to be adequate enough to do a single camera vMix record and stream, but as indicated, is not as smooth as you would like.
Perhaps dropping to 720p and using FFMPEG will help, but the question remains, where is the bottleneck?
Are you able to document and monitor in 'Task Manager' what processes and/or resources are putting the biggest strain on your system?


Ice
Ph0en1x  
#9 Posted : Wednesday, October 28, 2015 1:06:09 PM(UTC)
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IceStream wrote:
I'm not a 'Power Supply' expert, but when I did my build, I was told that 450W would be the minimum recommendation, I went with 850W...

Heh, okay. But do components draw more power once they are pushed to their limits? Since the performance only decreased when doing everything simultaneously.
Quote:

By 'room' I mean space on your hard drive. (I personally don't like working with a single drive) If your hard drive is constantly working at multiple tasks and having to "allocate" space, it may be 'overtaxing' your overall resources including memory and struggling to keep up which could be part of your issue with the 'Stinger'.

Mmm, i was planning to record to a separate storage anyway (SD Card or USB Stick), so that would solve that then.
Quote:
If your 'Master Frame Rate' is PAL 25p then your 'Stinger' should play back in 1.167 seconds (30 frames @ 25 frames per second)

Correct, everything after the 1s mark is for fade-out.
Quote:

The fact that it appears to play flawless when not streaming or recording indicates to me that your CPU might be struggling with multitasking when asked to do everything you need it to do. Recording and Streaming are both CPU intensive, what format are you recording in?

Mmm, mp4 in 1080p25 at 5mbit/s i think.
Again, your system, on paper, appears to be adequate enough to do a single camera vMix record and stream, but as indicated, is not as smooth as you would like.
Perhaps dropping to 720p and using FFMPEG will help, but the question remains, where is the bottleneck?
Are you able to document and monitor in 'Task Manager' what processes and/or resources are putting the biggest strain on your system?

I will, but i'm still curious why vMix says my CPU load is only at max. 50% if the CPU is capping the entire system.
Ittaidv  
#10 Posted : Wednesday, October 28, 2015 3:02:07 PM(UTC)
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Recording to a usb drive or an SD card, even over usb3 is asking for troubles. A 60 GB SSD drive is cheap as chips now, and will for sure perform a lot better and more stable.

Vmix is only displaying the amount of CPU the program itself is using. Just press ctrl + alt + del and select the task manager, there you will see the amount of cpu FMLE and VMIX plus all other background tasks are using together.

In every case I think having some headroom on all your components is not a luxury, but a must. You can easily say component X or Y is 'just enough', but you will see that when you push things to their limit, you get little weird issues that should be 'theoretically' impossible.

Ph0en1x  
#11 Posted : Thursday, October 29, 2015 3:09:35 AM(UTC)
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Ittaidv wrote:
Recording to a usb drive or an SD card, even over usb3 is asking for troubles. A 60 GB SSD drive is cheap as chips now, and will for sure perform a lot better and more stable.

Noted!
Quote:
Vmix is only displaying the amount of CPU the program itself is using. Just press ctrl + alt + del and select the task manager, there you will see the amount of cpu FMLE and VMIX plus all other background tasks are using together.

Ah, that is new information. I was under the assumption that the percentage displayed in vMix would be vMix including FMLE. I'll check on that too, then.
Quote:
In every case I think having some headroom on all your components is not a luxury, but a must. You can easily say component X or Y is 'just enough', but you will see that when you push things to their limit, you get little weird issues that should be 'theoretically' impossible.

Of course, but since i saw CPU at max 50% i thought there would be more than enough 'headroom'.
Ittaidv  
#12 Posted : Thursday, October 29, 2015 7:10:27 PM(UTC)
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Something else: you replied you stream at 5 mbit, i hope the 5 mbit is not for recording full HD footage.

We previously had a lot of trouble because we recorded back in the days on a 60GB drive and used mp4 10 mbit or less. We had crashes and performance troubles all over the place. On this forum I found out you can't over compress your footage. Apparently it's just too much compression and especially in complicated scenes (fast moving lights for example) it's too heavy to handle, even for a beefy computer.

Now the minimum is 50 mbit mp4 or prores/avi, depending on the gig, and those work a lot better. Off course it required to buy a bigger drive, but since we stopped over compressing we had no more performance issues. Actually i'under impression that we used less cpu when compressing to a higher bitrate. Later we replaced an older nvidia card by a gtx 950 in one setup, and hardware encoding is running supersweet, we almost don't use any cpu at all anymore :)
Slaver  
#13 Posted : Saturday, October 31, 2015 8:26:36 AM(UTC)
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@IceStream

means that you are using the delay for replay?

How is that working?
IceStream  
#14 Posted : Saturday, October 31, 2015 9:00:25 AM(UTC)
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@ Slaver

I've been using the 'Video Delay' feature from the beginning.
In many ways, it's not much different than "Instant Replay" for 'immediate' playback of an event, but therein lies the caveat, it's all about timing.
For hockey, I find a 12 or 13 second delay works well.


Ice
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