garageCube

[vgem]

My clips are taking between 1 and 10 seconds to load in the layer window... not looking great at gigs.

I'm on 2.5.2, Macbook pro, 1Gig RAM.

Modul running perfectly before the last couple of gigs. Have tried De-fragging my drive but no difference.

Does anyone have a list of actions to take to improve Modul8 performance?

Cheers

[deepvisual]

keep the number of layers being used down - I only use 3 layers for my shows.
and try not to use massive movies - using the right codec helps too.
I'd try photojpeg or H264

[spongemonkey]

the biggest thing to help me recently in this area was getting an external drive. i just found that the drive that comes with the MacBook Pro is too slow. So i got a LaCie 500 GB 7200 rpm drive and am connecting thru FW 400
(the drive also does FW 800 and eSATA).
Moving my projects and clips to that has vastly improved performance for me.

[moonbase]

Hi - If you think this may be more something to do with your system slowing down rather than the way you
compress clips or the speed of your external hard drive then these pointers may help.
I reckon you should be able to manage way more than 3 layers on a MacBook Pro with 1gb.

1/ Open the 'Disk Utility' application, select your system hard drive, select 'Repair Permissions', let it run.
If you regularly install and uninstall apps for instance, this may help, it's a bit of general housekeeping.
Some people swear by it, others don't think it helps.
I think it helps my system run better.

Also try App Delete http://reggie.ashworth.googlepages.com/appdelete
or
App Trap http://konstochvanligasaker.se/apptrap/
for completely deleting applications and all associated folders and files.

2/ Open the 'Terminal' application, when the blocky vertical black cursor appears type in exactly the following text which I have shown here in bold:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
You will be prompted for you password.
Enter password.
If this is your first visit to Terminal there may be a dire warning.
Accept or decline as you feel comfortable.
Check you have the above typed in correctly, nothing more, nothing less, a few times before hitting enter.
(Beware that mistakes here can mess stuff up so do a back-up - you do back-up of course?)
Wait and wait, even though nothing much seems to be happening until the blocky vertical black cursor re-appears, this means you are done.
Don't noodle with the computer or click stuff until Terminal is ready, leave it alone and make tea.
This applies to most critical stuff.
Quit Terminal.

Your Mac is designed to do some automatic housekeeping every day, week and month at 3am in the morning or some such.
It's no big deal but if you never leave your machine on overnight then running this may help as it will run all the daily, weekly and monthly housekeeping that may not get done all at once.
Again some people swear by it, others don't think it helps.
I think it helps my system run better.

3/ Buy Disk Warrior app.
I do swear by this. Totally worth the money.
Install as advised.
When things slow down, run Disk Warrior as advised, which for your system drive means booting from your dvd drive at a re-start or start-up.
There are full but ever so slightly confusing instructions with Disk Warrior. Read and follow them.


Also you might think of the following:

Set-up a Live Performance Network specifically for using when you perform.
Go to System Preferences then Network, then click on 'Location' and 'New Location' and give it a name, I call mine "Live Performance'.
Now for 'Live Performance' turn off Bluetooth, Modem, Wireless & Ethernet etc etc so your system can concentrate during a gig, this can help hugely.
After a gig remember to apply the standard network or stuff like the internet may not work because something is turned off!

Remember to turn off the 'Auto Check for updates' option in all programmes. But you did that already right.

Make sure there is plenty of space on your system drive, it needs space to breathe.
Try 'What Size' to find out what is taking up all your space: http://www.id-design.com/software/whatsize/

Hope some of that helps.
These are all things that work well for me.
if in doubt do some www'ing, there are lots of sites with more info on sudo periodic and repairing permissions.

[VJ Fry]

WOW (but not in Gates style )

I love you moonbase. I´ll try all those things. However there were a couple of things I already knew such as the repairing permissions procedure and Disk Warrior, which I find too expensive...

[moonbase]

No worries Fry

If I was to do any of those it would be a Live Performance Network
very closely followed by Disk Warrior.
Disk Warrior is worth the money.
I got used to it on my iBook G4 and one of the first things I wanted
to update to on my MacBook Pro was Disk Warrior.
Your sluggish performance (only on the computer!) will almost certainly be resolved by using it.

[boris]

Also check your modules and your preferences...

[gigimatique]

Hello,
I was wondering how people organize backups of their clips. Because if I ever I will need to switch external hard drives (in case of whatever problem), the file organization access doesn't point to the same directories and the project doesn't see the clips. The project file remains on my internal hard drive, and I make backups of that on a USB key. What's a good solution?
Many thanks.

[VjKg]

I have 2 drives that are identical. Same brand, same name, same directory structure. So far the backup drive only get used when I update my clip collection. That whole UNIX disk name thing gets me sometimes but it work almost every time I test it.

Also I have a gig user setup. I only us that user login for gigs. It is striped down completely.

[mowgli_uk]

keep your project files in a folder where all your media are kept (in subsequent folders in necessary) this way modul8 always find the media even if you move things about.

[gigimatique]

thank you VjKg and mowgli! very good advice!

I also have another question :
-- running on MacBook Pro core duo 2.33, 4gb ram, external firewire 800 disks, with matrox tripeheadtogo --

I work one project file with several scenes - group A fading into group B and so on. When I reach, let's say the 3rd scene, there are quite a lot of temporary freezes as the clips load. All the time, the clips are a bit jumpy, jerky, I can see the 'steps'.

I reassigned most of the access as 'direct to disk' in the early scenes, and as I advance through the scenes, I use 'ram preload'. I rarely use 'ram uncompressed', I find the RAM is saturated very quickly, as I leave system's activity window open. All clips are different, some long, some short, photo-Jpg 75%. It varies from scene to scene, but I do some layering, keying, text, drawing, particles.

Any suggestions for how to organize the clips for smoother onscreen appearance and access ?

Thank you.

[vanakaru]

Disk Warrior, which I find too expensive...

when you HDD goes wrong(like accidentally disconnecting external HD while copying) and disk utilities will not able to repair and recommends to format and reinstall and you get that hot-cold feeling in your spine, but after running DW everything is back to normal you do not find it too expensive. trust me