Trouble Displaying
Hi, all–
I’m sorry if I’m beating a dead horse even deader, but can you please tell me if on uber-zoomed in levels it takes several seconds for the waveforms’ baselines to be displayed? With my setup, it takes five (possibly more) seconds before the baseline is displayed.
Unless this is a problem unique to my system, I think Flavio should consider just having the baseline superimposed over the waveform, without requiring calculations (or whatever it is that’s delaying it from being displayed constantly). It’s too fundamental a part of editing to have to wait so long for it to appear, I reckon.
Under “Settings” -> “Waveform”, I’ve got Baseline and Outline activated.
Cheers!
Fuggle
Yes those are bells and whistles which, I myself turn off due to lag in the drawing times, even though I have a very fast system. I’m not sure how this is implemented but if I had to guess I’d say the rendering is being done by the CPU as apposed to the video card doing it. I would suggest you send Flavio a PM or fill out a feature request on the main web page and ask for direct GPU rendering of the wave forms and the graphic enhancements it has. I believe this would increase the rendering to a higher level and might free up more resources for even more fluid functionality within the program. I agree this is an issue and should be considered.
PACO
Thank you, Paco–
I’m glad it’s not just me.
F
Quote: (Fuggle_Hop @ Jun. 21 2010, 6:36 PM)
Hi, all--
I'm sorry if I'm beating a dead horse even deader, but can you please tell me if on uber-zoomed in levels it takes several seconds for the waveforms' baselines to be displayed? With my setup, it takes five (possibly more) seconds before the baseline is displayed.
Unless this is a problem unique to my system, I think Flavio should consider just having the baseline superimposed over the waveform, without requiring calculations (or whatever it is that's delaying it from being displayed constantly). It's too fundamental a part of editing to have to wait so long for it to appear, I reckon.
Under "Settings" -> "Waveform", I've got Baseline and Outline activated.
Cheers!
Fuggle
I'm not sure if I fully understand the issue. It's strange that it takes 5 seconds for any waveform to draw.
Is it significantly faster if you uncheck the 'baseline' option?
Perhaps what you're referring to is the fact that n-Track automatically degrades the quality of the waveforms when it detects that they are taking too long to draw, first removing anti-aliasing and then removing the outline/gradient options. After a few seconds of inactivity have expired n-Track then re-draws the waveforms at optimal quality. What may be happening is that the baseline is not shown at the lower quality levels.
The 'baseline' option is not actually equivalent to a straight line at 0 level. The line that 'baseline' draws can be at levels higher or lower than 0 so it's not a good reference, which I think is the reason you're referring to it as being a fundamental part of editing.
I can easily add a "draw 0 level" or similarly named option if that would solve the problem you're having, and that should be very fast to draw not requiring any computation.
Flavio.
Thank you, Flavio–
If you would add a “draw 0 level” line, that’d be extremely helpful.
Thanks!
F
To Flavio,
I suppose a question I would like to ask is, can the rendering of the wave form and it’s high end enhancements be handle specifically by the GPU (PhysX maybe?), moreover, how is the graphics end being handled by n-track, CPU intensive, CPU+GPU? Just wondering.
PACO
Fuggle_Hop, I’m uploading build 2599 which has a new “Centerline” Waveforms menu option, which draws a straight line below the waveform, which is useful when the waveform is set to be a line, as opposed to be an ‘area’ type graph. For example with Outline, Shadow and Gradient options off, or when the quality automatically degrades before a full quality redraw.
I’ve also added the “Auto-quality” option, which let you disable the auto degradation in case you want to keep the optimal quality at the expense of slower redraws.
If you try the new build please let me know if the new options fixes the problem for you.
Paco, n-Track currently uses GPU acceleration for some of the graphic primitives used to display waveforms. We have considering using more GPU acceleration for new versions of n-Track as there is increasingly more support for 2D uses of GPUs. The benefit is however likely to be only in increased speed in drawing, there’s not much in the way of enhancements that I can think of.
Flavio.
Flavio–
That’s brilliant.
Thank you for the excellent customer support.
F
Quote: (Flavio Antonioli @ Jun. 23 2010, 10:28 AM)
The benefit is however likely to be only in increased speed in drawing,
Thanks for the explanation, I hope to see the increased speed in drawing in future builds should you decide to implement it.
Thank you again for your dedication and hard work you put into n-Track.
PACO