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Topic: Videos Loading very very sloooowly!

This topic is old and might contain outdated or incorrect information.

To anyone that is having problems with their videos and the loading time, there is a spot in the VDJ registry called "SpeedLoad" that is defaulted to "0". I was having this problem a while back and a VIP member told me to switch the setting to "1". He said that this would force VDJ to prioritize the loading of songs/videos....the only thing is...you will lose frames per second, until the video is fully loaded, but it increased the speed in my case from about 1 minute per file, to under 30 seconds.

Remember this is done through the Windows Registry, and if you are not familiar with changing registry settings I don't recommend it.

I can only believe that at this point, anyone who does NOT have a multithreading processor, is more than likely suffering from the slow loading problem. Also just because you have a 256MB AGP video card does not mean it will benefit you, if you are using a Pentium 4 2.0 ghz or slower. With 4.0, it seems that only a hyper-threading CPU or greater is beneficial, to any video card.

I'm actually hoping that this thread on slow videos will give DEV Team more input, to help many people that are having this problem.

JasonG
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 6:48 am

Do you have the decode while hidden option enabled?
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 7:23 am
I use two computers. My notebook is a Core Duo, and I don't have any problems at all with speed but because my video card is an Intel 945GM, I sometimes use a Dell Pentium 4-2.0ghz, with 1gb ram, and a nvidia 256MB video to video mix. But since this PC doesn't have hyperthreading, it has always loaded videos super slow. Once I put 4.0 on this machine, it was so slow that it would lock up because it wasn't reading the video into memory quick enough. Then I remembered the "speed Load" setting, I went back in and changed it... Now it loads them much faster.

I'm pretty certain that even though it's a Pentium 4-2ghz, it's way to slow to decode/load videos in an efficient manner. With or without the "decode while hidden" selected the speed doesn't seem to change much.

I figured if I started a new thread explaining this info, people who have slower computers may understand better that VDJ's minimum specs for Video's may be way higher then that for just Mp3's.

 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 8:53 am
"VDJ's minimum specs for Video's may be way higher then that for just Mp3"


Thats true ;)

A video file is much larger, has visual decoding and audio decoding, and require a lot more power.

Depending on how you code your video, and what format, load can take time.

I use about 150-250mb mpeg2 files, for testing purposes. They load pretty quick.
But decoded thats probably gigabyte of ram at least, needed for efficient ram load.

I havent tested bigger files, or VOBs, but guess that needs even more of a powerfull pc, with good amount of ram, both on motherboard and on graphic cards.

Hopefully we can post some hardware recommandations for different use and settings soon :)
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 9:08 am
elite1PRO InfinityMember since 2005
I run a pretty basic computer setup with a 2.6g processor and only 512 ram, but have a Radeon video card with 128 ram on it and things run very well. Yes, even with V.4.

I went to my friends show the other night where he had a nice machine built for VDJ with a 3.2g processor, 2gig ram, but here's where the difference is...an Nvidia video card. His videos load so slow it's crazy! There was one time when the video playing was only about 2:30 long and the upcoming video was still not fully loaded when the playing video was over. I noticed that his cpu indicator at the top stays lit up to about 2/3 way or more constantly. Mine runs from about 1/8 - 2/3 depending on if it's loading a video or just playing one back.

Could this issue be with the Nvidia card vs. the Radeon card? It seems strange being that his processor is faster than mine and he has a ton more ram than me, yet I can run circles around him on my machine mixing videos due to load and reaction times.
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 6:07 pm
hmm... not sure, but might be.. I've read some feedback on some cards from Nvidia working bad.

I have ATI card too, and can only say that the little video mixing I've done, all works very well
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 7:04 pm
Dj Norway, have you done any tesing with hi-res (720x480) .avi files..........My problem with video freezing and many others I have seen seem to be mostly with avi files.............I have Nvidia card in one computer and ati in the other 2 and that doesn't seem to matter and neither did going from a 128meg card to a 256meg card.......as I posted before for some reason upgrading to Quicktime 7.1 solved the freezing on my external monitors but the computer monitor still freezes (along with access to the computer) while the video is loading. I think you guys need to do more testing with the hi-res avi files to see what causes this (by the way my slowest computer is an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, my fastest is a pentium d dual core and all have 2 gigs ram and 128meg video cards).
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 10:36 pm
I've mostly used mpeg files..
But will try some bigger avi files too.

I'm no video dj, so we have Cyder, ACW and more testing that... And they seem to run most format fine, even DivX6 and Vobs.

But will try some too :)
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 10:41 pm
I run DivX avi files of res 720 x 480 and 720 x 576, the file sizes are around 90 to 110 megs and I don't have many problems with video, I run ATI cards in my machines, the speedload option works better for me though, occasionally theres a little stutter in the video in the VDJ preview window but it doesn't do it on the actual monitor I'm outputting to.
 

Posted Mon 04 Sep 06 @ 11:31 pm
I ran videos tonight using mostly divx encoded avi files, and using the "windows media video encoder"....didn't have any problems until 3 hours and 30 minutes into running them. I loaded a video to deck b and it showed the entry and outro marks, but did not load the song into the memory. I tried to load another video and the same thing. Tried an mp3 and same thing. Somehow someway, deck B just died on me....but the actual program was not locked up.

I was curious to wonder if VDJ may have a memory leak or maybe not be using RAM in an efficient manner. When this happened my CPU usage was at 10%. Only reason I wonder is because I know my CPU is a very fast duo core, and I have a sata drive, with 2 GB RAM. As mentioned, only Deck B stopped loading. Deck A would still load fully like normal. After I restarted, both worked fine again.
 

Posted Tue 05 Sep 06 @ 10:38 am


Can you look in your history file, and try loading the video in question again?

Just to rule out that its not related to the file you where loading..

Memory leaks can happen in programs, but noone have reported that with VDJ 4... .yet
 

Posted Tue 05 Sep 06 @ 5:01 pm
I'm using an NVIDIA card, but it is the 6800 XTreme card, videos load pretty quick. Other factors to consider are:

* Hard Drive Speed

* Hard Drive Fragmentation

* Paging file on same drive as your videos?

* Type of interface connecting your drives (Motherboard or PCI adapter card.)

* Other apps running in addition to VDJ

Lots of variables there.
 

Posted Wed 06 Sep 06 @ 1:59 am
djcelPRO InfinityModeratorMember since 2004
"decode while hidden" is only an optimisation for transition

Disable: the second video will be decoded during the transition so the video can hang but your CPU is optimised
Enable, your transition will be really better but you use your CPU much more
 

Posted Wed 06 Sep 06 @ 12:58 pm
DJ-IN-NORWAY-- Hey, I did reload, and that same night I tried to load other stuff in that deck, and it wouldn't take anything. It's the only time it has happened though, and it was gig number 8 since I installed 4.0. If it happens again, I will definately let you know and try to get more information on cpu usage, memory, etc. I'm assuming that something is memory leak related, would use up ALL the available RAM, then start using swap space, until it crashes?

JasonG
 

Posted Thu 07 Sep 06 @ 2:52 am

If there should be a memory leak with some video files (doubt it though), RAM would be eaten up, yes.

If there is a bug (more likely if you can reproduce it), it would eat up CPU power (rise to 100%), or simply just freeze.
 

Posted Thu 07 Sep 06 @ 7:52 am
I'm guessing 4.0 requires more video resources than 3.x. My system is a Pentium 3.0GHz, 1 gig Ram, and Nvidia GeForce 5500fx. In 3.x, all worked great. No hesitation, studder, nothing. Since 4.0, my video on my monitor is incredibly choppy while output remains smooth, but if I try to do too much mixing wise, I can get everything to hang. This is with video only. mp3s are fine. I also used to be able to anylize files while playing audio/video, but now, if it does it, it takes forever to do 1 file. Any ideas on this?

Am I right in assuming 4.0 requires more juice for video?
 

Posted Thu 07 Sep 06 @ 8:13 am
:( Tonight was the second occurence of what happened Monday night, where my one deck stopped reading the media into memory. But here's what I found:

Earlier in the night I started out mixing videos, so I had my video output w/ hardware accel turned on. About 3 hours into the night I started mixing just mp3's. At 3 hours and 30 minutes into the night, I loaded a track into Deck A (lasttime it was deck B) and the same exact thing happened. It wouldn't read the track into memory It again showed the intro and outro marks. I didn't have an audience tonight, so I decided to click play anyway. When I did, the whole program locked up and my audio just stuttered... I hit Control-Alt-Delete and this is what I found:

virtualdj.exe was using 366 MB Ram (again I only had Mp3's loaded)
my processor was at 10%
my pagefile was at 1 GB!!!!!!!! (I have 2GB ram, so I was quite alarmed to find out that virtual was using more pagefile then available RAM)
When I forced virtualdj.exe to close, my page file immediately dropped to 331MB.

I was not using auto-mix at the time, and I was only using mp3's.

Once I reloaded, I was able to spin the last hour with no problems. I don't know if it's just my pc or what, but WOW....I don't know why it needed so much ram and even more pagefile (swap space) for the little that I was doing. It almost appears like it's not using RAM the right way, so instead it uses swap space, and then when the size increases to a huge amount, it demands information quicker then it can get it, so it starts acting abnormal...

I hope this helps.

Thanks.
JasonG
 

Posted Thu 07 Sep 06 @ 10:53 am


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