G'day from Australia.
I am unfortunately having major problems with SA version 5 for Windows 10.
Here is what I am doing.
1. Load Cubist Frizzle filter.
2. Load Geisha image 720 X 480
3. Click on first step SetCanvas-course
3. Click on last step AutoPaint-3 Stucco step.
4. Initially absolutely nothing happens for about 5 seconds and I then get (Not Responding), which lasts for about 15 or more seconds. Then the step completes.
5. Move the mouse around the screen and then click on the screen, and I get (Not Responding again)
The above problem is repeatable.
I tried rendering some movies overnight, but the computer only completed about a 10th of the movies.
The computer has only recently come back from the shop as I had them do a fresh System 10 reinstall.
My computer is quite a powerful one. I have had the computer for just over a year. I have two monitors. Attached are the specs.
I have asked tech support and answered some questions. But now I haven't heard from them since Wednesday.
I personally do not believe that the problem is SA, but I am not technically minded at all. Have any of the users here had a similar problem?
What can be done to resolve the problem?
Thank you in advance for your help. SA is an awesome program.
Seeya.
Paul.
Replies
If you look at the effect that last Autopaint - Stucco 3 action step has on the overall output image from the Cubist Frizzle PASeq preset, it's really subtle. And i think you could just mute it if you want to use that particular PASeq for movie processing and not even notice the change in the overall effect. So if you want to process a movie file with that PASeq, that is what i would suggest for right now.
You can mute a PASeq preset by clicking the Mute checkbox right to the right of the action step name in the PAseq action step list.
As far as your tech support request for this issue, we are aware of it, but haven't completed our investigation into it. We're having trouble duplicating your problem here. I'll spend some time today looking into it for you and pass that information back to Peter in tech support, who is handling your tech support incident.
The Autopaint - Stucco 3 action step is using an embedded MSG preset to add a small amount of stucco noise texture to the rendered PASeq effect. I'm not sure why the person who made the preset used a paint synthesizer preset to do this, since you can just run the MSG preset by itself to add the noise texture, which would be way simpler and also less computationally intensive. The paint synthesizer part of the preset isn't really adding anything else visually to the MSG effect.
It looks like the problem you are having (on windows) is associated with the particular MSG preset that is being used in that action step. It seems to take much longer to run on windows than it takes to run on the mac, and when it is embedded in that particular paint synthesizer preset, which basically renders it into a full canvas size auto-region fill as brush pen mode brush nib before painting it into the canvas, it slows down even more.
If i mute the original stucco action step, and use just the MSG effect as a new action step in it's place, i don't get the 'not responding' issue, but the MSG action step takes a fairly long time to run (way longer than on a mac). So i will look into what is going on with that.
As far as adding a small amount of stucco like visual noise texture to an image, there are many other ways to do that in Studio Artist without using that particular MSG effect. So the particular issue you ran into on windows isn't really anything that would prevent you from getting to where you want to get artistically. I can talk about that more if that is unclear. Using the Background Texture part of the paint synthesizer, or using the Simple Texture ip op are 2 quick ways i can think of it to do it.
And again, adding that kind of canvas like noise texture is going to be more effective when it is applied to a still image as opposed to movie frames in a movie render (in my opinion). Whatever video compression algorithm you use for your final rendered movie file is probably going to eat most of that texture anyway as a part of it's compression process. And the noise texture is probably going to be perceived in a movie file as some increased visual flicker.
Some visual flourishes that are put into PASeqs (like this subtle stucco texturing) make more sense for processing still images than for processing movie file. Whenever you are using some factory PASeq preset that is generic (not specifically made for processing movie files), its always worth looking at what the individual action steps do to the overall effect to see if you can get rid of any of them (for faster processing, or for better looking final movie render).
The slowdown on windows seems to be associated with the 1st MSG processor in the embedded MSG effect ( the GenAdvTurb processor ). And by adjusting some of the parameters associated with that particular processor, i can get it to run much fast on windows without really changing the visual appearance of the effect.
I'm still pinning that down, but you can get a visually equivalent noise effect without all of the extraneous things going on with the particular parameter settings used in that MSG processor. An easy way to reinitialize all of the parameters in the processor is to select it in the processor chain editor, then use the Init Selected Processor contextural menu (control click it on mac, right click it on windows to bring up the contextural menu options). The reinitialized processor runs much faster on windows. We'll probably just perform this edit to the original PASeq preset you are using, and then update it in the Preset folder for future updates.
I think the MSG canvas noise preset originally came from one of our beta testers, who probably used the MSG Evolution Editor to randomly mutate the MSG preset parameter settings to generate some visually interesting textures he liked.
Hello.
Thank you for your advice.
Peter from support has provided me with a Paseq which works perfectly. It is attached.
I have an 8 core Intel I7 CPU, and I have been told that because it is 8 core and your program addresses one core, then this will actually slow down the processing speed. That is just what I have been told. I have absolutely no idea if this is true.
I will try and render some videos tonight and see how I go, and of course I will keep you informed.
Thank you.
Paul.
CubistFrizzle - test1
The modified PASeq preset Peter sent you was edited using the instructions i provided above. The first GenAdvTurb processor in the embedded MSG effect was re-initialized. It doesn't really change the visual appearance of the noise being generated by the overall MSG processing, but runs much faster on windows. The original parameter settings were using some floating point math processing that seems to run slowly on windows (not an issue on the mac).
Regarding multi-processing. Studio Artist has thousands of different internal image processing routines that are combined together in different ways to build up different processing effects. Some of them use multi-processing (splitting to use multiple processing cores). Others run on a single processing core.
Some high level effects (like the paint synthesizer) may run in a single core. But they might be using internal processing modules that do multi-thread.
All other high level operation modes run in a separate thread from the main user interface thread. Inside of that second thread, different internal modules may split and run multi-treaded in additional threads. So how many cores are used for processing is a function of what you are specifically doing. And because most effects use a number of different internal processing modules, what is going on from moment to moment may change as the different internal processing modules are used to generate the final effect.
Hello.
Thank you for your explanation.
Best wishes to the team of course and keep up the great work.
seeya.
Paul.