Hi, I´m using a mac mini (2018) 3,2 GHz Intel Core i7 16GB of RAM. Also I using an eGPU( Razer Core X) with a AMD Radeon RX VEGA 64 (8GB). I have three screens, the main one resolution is 4k and the other two are 1080p. Ableton live is 11.0.6 and EboSuite 1.8
I have ableton in the main one but if i send the ebosuite window to the other two screens, the rendering is not smooth, i´m experiencing little stops of the video. In the main screen the rendering is perfect. The eGPU and the information of the status bar of ebosuite is very low, around 10%.
Is strange because if i change the resolution of the main monitor also change the quality of the rendering in the other monitors. Also if I put a resolution with this problem but i change the window of ableton to a smaller one the redering starts to work ok in the other monitors…
Related with this, yesterday I had a gig in a theater and the projector was to far from the stage so they used a device who transforms the hdmi to a ethernet cable then, near to the projector there is another one who transforms the ethernet signal again to hdmi for the projector. With this setup, I had a little delay and it´s normal, but the image was very very choppy so i decided to not use the visuals. I thought that it was not my fault because i just was sending the 1080p signal so we connected another computer and the delay was still there but the videos (youtube) were not choppy at all. Today i came home and made this tests so probably this is an ebosuite problem.
Sorry to hear you are having issues with your setup, let’s try to figure out what is going on.
Macs can be a little finicky with multiple displays, especially with eGPUs.
For example, if an app is using eGPU to render, but the output is shown on the display attached to mac mini directly, then macOS has to copy the image from eGPU back to CPU and then move it to the internal GPU. This copying can slow things down, especially with higher resolutions.
Live itself has grown so much that it can use significant amount of GPU just to render it’s UI.
So if it happens that both live and ebosuite are using eGPU to render their windows, but they are shown on the screen attached to internal GPU, system might get overloaded.
However, first step would be to verify if EboSuite is setup to render with eGPU:
With eGPU connected, and showing output on the external screen, add eOutput device and position the EboSuite on the eGPU display.
Then choose your rendering device through the View menu in EboSuite.
Let EboSuite restart.
Please make sure that the window doesn’t move to the display connected directly to mac mini.
Let us know what is the performance in this case.
Also, please let us know which macOS you are using.
Let’s see how this goes and then we can discuss next steps.
I´m using MacOS Mojave. Enabling the status bar of the eOutput plugin, the eGPU is rendering the EboSuite window. Also, with the cmd+4 in the Activity Monitor app i see the fluctuations of the eGPU performance. If I put the EboSuite window in the display connected directly to the MacMini, the CPU usage of the status bar is the double than the displays connected to the eGPU so i avoid that.
If ableton and the ebosuite window are in the same display works perfect.
In my experience, is strange, but I think that the display of the ebosuite window must have more resolution or size than the ableton window. I thought that it was beacause the resolution of the display where ableton is, but if i make the ableton window smaller the ebosuite window runs much better.
Also I notice that with ableton 11, some simple ISF shaders doesn´t work fine like this one: (strobe)
If i reduce the frequency of the shader to make a very fast strobe, the strobe is very jumpy. I didnt have this problem with ableton 10. This strobe shader in the browser (chrome) is rendered by the internal GPU of the mac mini and the GPU usage is very high but the strob works perfect at high frequencies.
Thanks for the info Vic, this behavior seems really strange.
What you described seems to strongly suggest that there is some texture copying around between GPUs, but it’s not gonna be so easy to figure out where and how to prevent it.
It could also happen on the Ableton Live side, in that case only thing we could do is file a bug report with them.
Good idea about ISF strobe fx!
Let’s see what happens when EboSuite is running without Live.
Setup the live/ebo windows in the “slow” arrangement.
Let the strobe fx running, then switch to Activity Monitor, select Live process and click on the (X) icon in the Activity Monitor toolbar.
This will quit Live but keep EboSuite running - please let us know how this affects the rendering.
Another question: are there any of these devices in your set:
eSyphonIn
eSyphonOut
eVideoIn
eText2Syphon
I don´t have any of those plugins running in my Ableton project. I just tried your test. I closed ableton abruptly to get the EboSuite window still running and when ableton is closed, the strobe shader works perfect, with no lag at all.
Thank you for your support!! I´m happy to help to improve this amazing software!
Would it be possible to do one more step in addition to what you already did? That way we know if the Live itself causes these issues, or one of the M4L devices.
So same as before, open you set with strobe ISF, move both windows to “slow” configuration and use Activity Monitor to force-quit Live.
Additional step would be to open Live again, but without any set loaded - and move it to display that causes slowdown.
Please let us know if it affects the strobing.
After this test, could you let us know what is the status of the “Automatic Graphics Switching” setting in System Preferences/Power?
In the video, because of the recording process there is minor lag in the strobe when ableton window is smaller or is close, but with no recording, when i reduce the size of the ableton window the strobe runs perfect at high speed.
The behaviour is the same whatever display is the EboSuite screen (Here is in the main screen)
Ok, i made a few more test and i missed one thing. The main display was connected to the egpu using the display port instead of the hdmi. With the hdmi port the strobe works almost perfect, like 95% perfect Anyway… in my last gig i used only hdmi ports and i was having a very bad quality image using the hdmi to lan converter and an analog proyector.
I have two more gigs this month and i will try to recover more info.
we’re still curious to find out what was causing the slowdown, also - nice find about hdmi vs displayport!
Would it be possible to do another test, same as before - force-quit Live during strobing, then reopen Live but please don’t open any set - just make the Live window big.
We need to narrow down where is the slowdown(software wise): is it basic Live, m4l device or EboSuite device - but it’s hard because we couldn’t reproduce the issue with our setup.
Ebosuite works much better with the hdmi cable. The slowdown of the performance was because the use of the displayport. Using the hdmi cable it doesnt matter the size of the ableton window.
Also, I had a gig last weekend and when I connect the projector to the eGPU I had a very glitchy image and i solved this downgrading the update frequency in the “screen settings” to 24hz. I don´t know if it was because of this setup, but i had delay on the visuals.
In my performance i´m using a pair of dmx bars with the DMXIS device so the sync between the audio, the lights and the visuals are so tight that i detect easily this delay. I can fix this applying some delay to the master track and to the lights automations track but this is no ideal because for some reason the delay of the tracks are different so depending the master bpm the sync is not perfect. But of course this is an ableton issue. Do you think that this setting of the “update frequency” could affect the delay of the visuals.
Anyway… in my last gig i used only hdmi ports and i was having a very bad quality image using the hdmi to lan converter and an analog proyector.