Significant Slowdown when using Motion, why?

[Scot Walker]

Motion isn’t immune to limitations of what computers can do. Obviously, the more behaviors you use, the slower it gets.

That’s why there is RAM preview.

I’ve been using Motion for a project recently and it does slow down, especially when you have the timeline open (like on a second monitor). For some scenes I have, it’s real time. For others, it isn’t. For the scenes I have that won’t animate in real time, I end up doing what I do in AE — I render RAM previews.

Like I said, it helps if you don’t have your timeline open. That seems to slow it down when you have projects with a lot of layers, etc.

[Noah Kadner]

Also helps to have a screaming graphics card. I’m guessing you still have the stock card?

[Jonathan Eagan]

Yeah I still have the stock card.
I’ll try these things to help, but I can’t even manage to get it running smoothly in DVDSP once I bring it in, If it is choppy all the way through the process is it ever going to smooth out, once I print the whole thing to DVD, or will it forever be stuttering.
Thanks

[Noah Kadner]

It’s a very demanding program in terms of hardware. Here’s some info:

https://www.barefeats.com/motion.html

[Doyle Rockwell]

Hey Jonathan,

Remember, behaviors are calculated on the CPU. And many behaviors are simulations, and simulations can get very expensive, especially if you are at time > 0 and you make changes. For example, if you’re at frame 250 and you make a change to a simulation behavior, Motion will likely have to recalculate the whole simulation from frame 1 all the way to where (when?) you are, at frame 250. That’s the nature of simulations. They can get very CPU-intensive, and you may have to wait a moment while the entire simulation is reprocessed. Like Scot said, that’s where the RAM preview comes in handy.

[Philip Hodgetts]

[scot walker] “I’ve been using Motion for a project recently and it does slow down, especially when you have the timeline open (like on a second monitor).”

Running a second monitor is one of the unkindest things you can do for Motion performance. Unless you run it off an entirely separate (PCI) graphics card, otherwise it’s a real performance drain on the graphics card.

Cheers

Philip Hodgetts
https://www.proapps-hub.com
The ProApp-Hub: The convenient way to the best of what’s free and everything else you need to be productive and creative with Apple’s Professional audio and video Applications

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[Scot Walker]

Hey Philip,

So if I don’t have anything on that second monitor, it’s still a drain? Is it actually splitting my VRAM between the two monitors, so Motion is really only getting 128 megs?

If that’s the case, a new PCI card may be in order.

I always thought VRAM was dynamic and if your second monitor only had a grey background showing, for example, it wasn’t taking much VRAM. However, if I do go look at the System Profiler, I do notice that it says each monitor has 128 megs of VRAM. Hmmm.

I’ll do some testing Tuesday and I will unplug my monitor and work in this project and see what happens.

Thanks

[Philip Hodgetts]

[scot walker] “So if I don’t have anything on that second monitor, it’s still a drain? Is it actually splitting my VRAM between the two monitors, so Motion is really only getting 128 megs? “

As i understand it – yes, and yes. Simply plugging in the second monitor dramatically slows Motion.

I believe I heard it from someone I consider a reliable source at the time but since I can’t recall who that was so it can be double checked, I’ll allow for a degree of uncertainty. However, it’s in my brian as “pretty solid” 🙂

Cheers

Philip Hodgetts
https://www.proapps-hub.com
The ProApp-Hub: The convenient way to the best of what’s free and everything else you need to be productive and creative with Apple’s Professional audio and video Applications

Download Now proapps-hub

[Skip Hunt]

I had the same setup and noticed the same issues. I took the advice here and upgraded my card to the 9800SE with only one monitor hooked up to it. And, I used an old PCI card I had to run the second monitor. I also kicked up my RAM to 4.5GBs.

All of this helped significantly, but still not as “realtime” as implied. Maybe the new version with Tiger will eliminate these issues. For the moment, just try turning off layers your don’t have to see until you’re finished so that your CPU and current card has less to do until you’re finished.

[Scot Walker]

Yesterday, I unplugged my second monitor and put my main monitor at 1600 x 1200. My project is much faster now. I can scrub the timeline much more effecitvely now and playback is at a very nice rate without using RAM preview in most places.

Today I will add an old PCI video card. Hopefully, it will be as fast as it is with one monitor. I really need that second monitor for applications like Photoshop, Flash, After Effects. It’s wonderful how easy Motion is to work with in a single monitor, BTW.

Thanks for the info!