Non-smooth playback of Beeple clips

djjoemoore

I'm experiencing issues with some clips I've downloaded from Beeple's Vimeo page (https://vimeo.com/channels/beeple). Playback is not smooth with some of the clips, sometimes it will freeze for a second then come back. I've been using the HD 1080p MP4 versions, not the MOV versions. Looping is not always seamless either, sometimes there's a visible pause when it loops back to the beginning of the clip. Is there something I can do to remedy this? Is anyone else experiencing this?

djjoemoore

I'm using MixEmergency 3.0.2 on a mid-2012 MacBook Pro Cache set to 300 MB (recommended) 1024 MB of video RAM on my NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M GPU-accelerated video decoding enabled

Nick

Are you playing them from an internal or external drive? What is the CPU usage doing when this happens? Perhaps you could try disabling GPU-accelerated video decoding and see if there is any change? (and restart MixEmergency after you've enabled/disabled this setting)

djjoemoore

My MacBook Pro has an internal SSD for the OS and software, and an internal HDD for media, including music and videos. I will track the CPU usage, try playing videos from the SSD, and disable GPU acceleration, and get back to you with the results. Thank you Nick.

djjoemoore

Ok I moved the video loop to the SSD, turned off GPU accelerating, restarted ME, and monitored CPU activity. Still saw a gap between the end and beginning of the loop. I'm using the STRT loop from Beeple:

https://vimeo.com/144855113

Any chance there's an issue with the file itself? CPU usage was steady, between 65-75%, no spikes.

Nick

Thanks - I'll try it myself. I think it would be best to re-enable the GPU acceleration.

Nick

It may be that I have to change the way that the buffering works a little - in quick tests I get almost no gap (every-so-often it's visible), but I suspect that this depends on a number of factors.

djjoemoore

Thanks Nick. I also notice that when loading Beeple clips, the Messages window warns that the distance between keyframes is greater than recommended. Could that be a factor?

Nick

It's not such a big problem in this case, as the first frame is a keyframe - but it means they won't be so efficient if you're playing them backwards, seeking, or scratching.

djjoemoore

So what else can I do to get these clips to loop seamlessly? Forgot to mention above that I have 16GB of RAM and my processor is 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7

Nick

In theory, if you're playing it from the SSD then it should be able to read the file fairly quickly. It may work a little better if you encode it in the Hap video format.

djjoemoore

Thanks. I'm going to experiment a little tonight - I'll download the original MOV file of a Beeple clip, use MPEG Streamclip to convert to both H.264 and HAP, copy to both the SSD and HDD, and see what has the best results. I'll post the results here. There may be something else going on with my system, I used ME 3.0.2 with Scratch Live 2.5 yesterday and noticed that even other videos were freezing for a second or two during playback (no scratching or video effects applied).

djjoemoore

To clarify, those videos that froze momentarily were not Beeple clips, they were music videos downloaded from SmashVision and ClubKillers.

Nick

That's odd - they're freezing with both GPU-accelerationg turned on and off? Can you also check the About box of MixEmergency, just to be 100% certain that it is MixEmergency 3.0.2 that is installed, and not one of the earlier versions?

djjoemoore

I am running MixEmergency 3.0.2 (3.0.2.02) on OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 Will test with GPU-accelerating on and off, and play from the SSD and HDD, and let you know what happens. Thanks for the tip spotter, I'll be trying that as well.

Nick

Oops, my apologies to spotter - I mistakenly marked your account as spam (there was a lot of spam to clean out this morning). You'll need to sign up again.

auralcandynet

@djjoemoore Please report your test results, I would be interested in them. I too use Beeple clips regularly and have noticed similar chopping and freezing, and I also have a recent MacBook Pro with SSD. I've encoded the original MOV files with Handbrake. It seems rather irregular which clips play smoothly and which don't, so my first idea too was that if it is an keyframe issue.

djjoemoore

Sorry for the delayed response. After trying several different combinations of encoding settings and file locations, I found that I had the best results by downloading the original MOV from Beeple's Vimeo, then re-encode with MPEG Streamclip as a HAP video. GPU-accelerating is enabled. File location (SSD vs HDD) didn't make a difference. Re-encoding the original as an H.264 video was OK, but it is not as reliable as HAP. Sometimes there is still a slight hesitation when the clip loops back to the beginning. The obvious downside to using HAP is the file size (18 MB H.264 vs 518 MB HAP). In any case, downloading the original MOV file from Vimeo and re-encoding to something else performs significantly better than downloading the HD MP4 file. Hope this helps you guys.

dj_marv

Just wondering how you use the beeple files. If I download from the vimeo page it comes with audio and I'm guessing the video BPM is tied to that audio. Say I want to put the visual on another song by having it in my media bank to be used when playing just audio tracks with a different BPM does it respond to the new BPM or does it use the BPM of the song that beeple encoded it with.