I need help!

vvvv beta question
1

Hey everybody!

I’m currently making my live video system.
I’m using Ableton live, and VVVV.
They communicate by OSC, it work very well.

In my system, I have two Filestream nodes both playing a video chosen randomly in a folder. Then, I mix between them to have only the first, or the second or both.

When I want only the first video, the second filestream is disable, I do that with the node “<=”.

My problem: VVVV is crashing sometimes… In my opignon is Filestream the cause of crash.
My question: If filestream is enabled/disabled quickly, and repetitively, did VVVV can crash?

And generally, what are actions which might be a cause of crashes? Where can I have this information?

Thank you very much!

Guillaume

2

Hey
what you want to do is very easy with vvvv

im not a VVVV Pro but
the first thing you should
do is using a Renderer (TTY)
to get a verbose output of whats
happening.

Also post your patch, and
please explain how you disable
the node with <= ?

so you want either video 1 or
video 2 or both playing ?

Both like 50/50 ?

have a look at
Blend (EX9.Texture Mixer)
and Switch (Value Input)
for the Opacity Pin of Blend
Make a switch with 0, 0.5, 1
and you have your 3 states

3

Thank you for your response, I’m at work, I can’t send the patch, but I can explain.

I have two filestream.
I’m mixing between them with a mixer (texture) node.
The >= node is conected on the “enable” input pin of one of my filestream node.

when the value of the fader mixer is bigger on equal to 0 the filestream is enable.It’s the same for my second filestream (but inverse…)

This technique is just to save a little CPU. If I see one image on my renderer the other is disable…

Sorry for my bad english, and thank you!

4

sorry is just “>” and not “>=” .

5

i dont think you should be disabling filestream node, best way is to keep it running all the time (better dont fiddle with something that works :D) and just mix with blend texture/alpha channel of quad or something like that,

also its good to have latest version of VLC installed on system (i presume you use VLC filestrem nodes)

best way to ask for help is to attached mixing part of your patch btw

6

just two videos mixed
should not be
a big performance hit for vvvv afaik.

you can use PerfMeter (Debug)
to see how it impacts performance.

you could also add /showexceptions to args.txt
maybe it gives you a hint where the problem is
look here:
commandline parameters#showexceptions true or false

also try another filestream (there are 3 filestream nodes + nodes for streaming image sequences)

in puredata vlc had memory leak problem
i dont think thats the case in VVVV

7

Okay, thank you everybody, I was thinking, it was better to disable nodes when they are not used…

Because when a channel of a mixing video system is hide by alpha or blending effect, the computer is still calculating, no? I want to optimise a my system to have the best syncronisation possible… But maybe I’m wrong with that…
I’m not a professional…hehe!

When my patch will be finish, I will share it, I want advices!

8

afaik in the same patch
every video node should be
syncronised

in fact everything should be syncronised
if its in the same patch (or instance?)
vvvv is supposed to calculate every thing in
your patch before outputing a frame
or am i totaly wrong here ?

9

hi,
i agree with stix, it’s better to keep filestream running, also if it’s not used. and this is not only for stability in terms of crashing, but also because of more stable framerate. Anyway, you should also try yo use only one filestream (that is spreadable). so for example you can pass 2 strings to that, with different filenames, and you have 2 textures as output, that you can take with getslice and use in you mixer.

10

hoooo! thank you Screamer, I didn’t know filestream was spreadable!