Capturing video content, improve performance

[Jools]

None of those codecs are close to anything professional. Is there any possibility of encoding it with vbr (2 pass) and h.264?

[abma]

for vbr/2 pass i guess you have to encode it a second time, as it requires the whole file to encode.

[Jools]

Maybe vbr is not so relevant for a computer game where the amount of effects is quite constant over time

[Sereiya]

Because I had no time to realy begin making the video yet, I cobbled some wallpapers together.

[Beherith]

Sweet screenies Sereiya, I especially liked the fighters one!

[Sereiya]

Hello there again,

I tried to capture some footage of BAR so far, but I got in trouble with the framerate again. I tried capturing with dxtory or Mirillis Action, but the footage always was stuttering (Fraps isn't an option). I just got 22fps in 1080p, ~30fps with 900p and 44fps with 720p - but even in 720, the footage stutters. I always had fluid 60fps and more ingame while capturing the stuff, so I think it's a software problem.

In case of doubt, this is my computer I work with:
GPU: nVidia GTX 780 (Palit)
CPU: Intel i7-4770S @ 4x 3,4ghz
RAM: Mushkin 16gb DDR3-1600
HDD: Western Digital 2TB SATA3 7200rpm

Also tried to capture on my SSD to exclude HD problems, no luck. Spring is installed on that SSD for fast access.
Because it will be a Trailer I try to capture on highest settings (like I actually play with) to show the game in its full glory.

In case nobody have an idea how to fix the problem I'll buy a video grabber like "Elgato Game Capture HD" or "AVerMedia Game Capture II". But that will take time again...

edit: Ah, I forgot to notice. /createvideo also doesn't work properly. Seems like he's skipping frames, no matter what codec I choose.

[Beherith]

That is a pretty impressive system. I would love to help you get a bit more perf, so could you please post the springsettings.cfg you used to capture?
Out of curiosity, why isnt fraps an option? Doesnt nVidia have some kind of tool for doing capture?

[Sereiya]

There's a tool from nvidia named "ShadowPlay", but it doesn't support Spring (apparently it needs a setup for every game manually by nvidia).
Fraps isn't an option because its performance is worst than dxtory.

To be honest, I just clicked on that "ultra" button in my NOTA Lobby settings. There isn't the normal springsettings.exe I used to know in the installed NOTA package and I was too lazy to decipher the settings in the txt manually. (SpringLobby doesn't work for me)

A question I had recently: Is it still better to deactivate the "threaded optimizations" in the nvidia system settings, or is this info obsolete since the engine perfectly runs multithreaded?

[Beherith]

For me (GTX 560ti) turning threaded opt off helps a bit.
I have GPU-Z installed to check gpu load (and to identify wether spring is cpu or gpu bound at any given moment). For me, the more units visible on screen, the less the GPU load is. Enabling fraps almost doubles the GPU load, but I dont get much of an FPS drop, since the gpu was not fully loaded anyway.
Is your gpu fully loaded while showing heavy BAR scenes?

Just a few things that may be useful to change in your settings:

Code: Select all

DynamicSun = 0
GroundDetail = 100
MaxDynamicMapLights = 0
MaxDynamicModelLights = 0
ShadowMapSize = 4096
UsePBO = 1
UnitIconDist = 1000
UnitLodDist = 4000

[Sereiya]

I just applied your suggestments on my settings and noticed a new problem. Regardless of what I set as Shadowmapsize, the shadows always looking like a bunch of moving blocks (see attachment), even with the standard setting of 4096 (new Reloaded Core test-2779).
That must be new, in my wallpapers the shadows are okay.

[smoth]

I take it the blockiness reduces based on the angle of the camera and the amount of the map that is visible?

[Sereiya]

...oh. Yes, that's it. That even make sense.
Anyway, it's really bad for my purposes. Especially when I'm planing close up shots.

[smoth]

unless you feel like implementing cascading shadow maps we are stuck this way until a devs decides that it is worth fixing. It wasn't always this way, some optimization or other changed it.

[Beherith]

You can change shadowmap resolution ingame with /shadows 1 4096 and /shadows 1 8192.
Get GPU-Z from here: http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/

Shadow rendering was updated because Spring previously used non-linear shadow maps, and that did not work well with ROAM.

[Sereiya]

You can change shadowmap resolution ingame with /shadows 1 4096 and /shadows 1 8192.

Thanks to that tip, I noticed I'm able to set it to even more than 8192. I now use up to 50.000 to capture some scenes or take screenshots.

I just watched a 1v2 replay (BAR Core test-2707) with 2x speed. The CPU load was between 30 and 40% all the time, evenly distributed an all 8 logical cores. The GPU was under heavy load at the beginning, but seems to be less stressed later (like you said - the more units, the less GPU load).

[Beherith]

Could you please post the replay or the link to it if it is on springreplays?
Excellent screenies! Is the noise on the from the LOS/radar shader or post FX?

[Sereiya]

I added the noise in Photoshop.
Didn't asked yet: what's the command to enable LuaShaders? It seems like they're off for me, can't activate them via F11, also can't find the command in my springsettings.txt.

[Beherith]

Luashaders are on if you can see the following: pulsing lights on units, normal maps on units, desaturated and noisy LOS, lights under laser beams that illuminate everything and bloom. It seemed from your springsetting.cfg that luashaders were enabled, and LuaShaders = 1 in the settings does this.

[Funkencool]

There's a tool from nvidia named "ShadowPlay", but it doesn't support Spring (apparently it needs a setup for every game manually by nvidia).

Shadowplay supports desktop capture ( a setting in the nVidia geforce experience preferences ), which works with spring. I just tested, and can confirm it works.

[Sereiya]

There's a tool from nvidia named "ShadowPlay", but it doesn't support Spring (apparently it needs a setup for every game manually by nvidia).

Shadowplay supports desktop capture ( a setting in the nVidia geforce experience preferences ), which works with spring. I just tested, and can confirm it works.

Thank you for that advice! It works just perfect, I can capture 1920x1200px with 60fps and a good bitrate fluidly on highest settings without any problem! I never recognized that little checkbox there for desktop capturing.
Now I can finally begin to work.

Luashaders are on if you can see the following: pulsing lights on units, normal maps on units, desaturated and noisy LOS, lights under laser beams that illuminate everything and bloom. It seemed from your springsetting.cfg that luashaders were enabled, and LuaShaders = 1 in the settings does this.

So it's on, I can see the pulsing lights. But since I deactivated bloom in an earlier version, I can't activate it again. Also, I never saw noisy LOS in BAR.