Optimizing for Real-Time
Playback
SynthEyes can be used as a RAM player for real-time playback of source
sequences, source with temporary inserts, or final renders. This section will
discuss how to best configure SynthEyes for this purpose.
Image Storage
First, you want to get the shot into RAM. Clearly, having a lot of RAM
will help. If you are using a 32-bit system (XP/Vista-32 or OS X), you can only
cache about 2.5 GB of imagery in RAM at a time, regardless of how much RAM is
in your system, due to the nature of 32-bit addressing. In SynthEyes-64,
running on XP/Vista-64, you can use your entire RAM, except for about 1.5
GB.
If your shot does not fit, you have two primary options: using the small
playback-range markers on the SynthEyes time bar to play back a limited range
of the shot at a time, or to reduce the amount of memory by down-sampling the
images in the SynthEyes image preprocessor (or maybe drop to black/white). If
you have 4K film or RED scans and are playing back on a 2K monitor, you might
as well down-sample by 2x anyway.
If you have a RAID array on your computer, SynthEyes's sophisticated image
prefetch system should let you pull large sequences rapidly from disk.
Refresh Rate Optimization
You want SynthEyes to play back the images at as rapid a rate as possible.
On a PC, that usually means the Camera view, in normal mode, not OpenGL. On a
Mac, use the Camera View in OpenGL mode.
All the other items being displayed also take up time and affect the
display rate. From the
Window
menu, turn off “Show Top Time bar” and select “No Panel.” On the View menu,
adjust Show Trackers and Show 3-D points depending on the situation.
Select the Camera view. It will now fill the entire viewport area, with
only the menu and toolbar at top, the status line showing playback rate at the
bottom, and a small margin on the left and right. You can further reduce the
items displayed by selecting Window/Floating Camera. (There is no margin-less
“full-screen” mode)
Actual-Speed Playback
Once you have your shot playing back as rapidly as possible, you probably
want it to play at the desired rate, typically 24, 25, or 29.97 fps.
You can tell SynthEyes to play back at full speed, half speed, quarter
speed, or double actual speed using the items on the
View
menu.
SynthEyes does not change your monitor display rate. It achieves your
desired frame rate by playing frames as rapidly as possible, duplicating or
dropping frames as appropriate (much like a film projector double-exposes
frames). The faster the display rate, the more accurately the target frame rate
can be achieved, with less jitter.
With the control panel hidden, you should use the space bar to start and
stop playback, and shift-A to rewind to the beginning of the shot.
Safe Areas
You can enable one or more safe-area overlays from the safe area submenu
of the View menu.
