Old 08-23-2019, 10:20 PM   #1
1111Eugene
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Default Hardware Acceleration in Reaper

hi.
ok. WHYYYY?Z?Z???Z??Z???///??!??!?!?!?
it is not possible to get a smooth and not tearing GUI in Reaper?
Because there's no "code" for it to understand hardware?
can it be just copied and pasted from smth other?
let it be 1gb
2
a 100gigabytes in size afterwards
why not?
is it possible? it can't be impossible, right?
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Old 08-23-2019, 10:34 PM   #2
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There have been lots of discussions on requesting the devs to re-build the Reaper GUI from ground up to improve the look in that way.

Very obviously this is a huge task - and needs to apply to all three OS platforms Reaper runs on.

The priority decision (happily) is completely up to the devs.

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Old 08-24-2019, 06:12 AM   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 1111Eugene View Post
it is not possible to get a smooth and not tearing GUI in Reaper?
If GUI smoothness is your main pain point about Reaper, it might be a good idea to start looking at other DAW softwares. I don't see the Reaper developers fixing those issues anytime soon. It would be a massive undertaking for example to use GPU acceleration. Almost all of their graphics code is currently based on raster graphics rendered on the CPU, so almost all the graphics code would have to be rewritten. To make the GPU acceleration really worth it, they'd need to implement it separately for all platforms they support, using the best technology options available. (OpenGL is basically obsolete at this point, it isn't worth it trying to use that anymore.)

There may be some low hanging fruits with algorithmic complexity that can be fixed, but fixing those will probably never be enough to fix all the GUI lag issues. Ultimately it comes down to how many pixels on the screen have to updated. For example with 4K or better screens, that is just a lot of pixels to deal with and if the graphics is rendered on the CPU in the GUI thread, response to mouse and keyboard input will inevitably suffer.

Using existing code libraries wouldn't immediately help, those would need to be adapted to work with Reaper's existing code.
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Old 08-24-2019, 07:57 AM   #4
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The future belongs to vector based GUIs (FL Studio, Ableton, Bitwig).
Within DAWs we would have quite a lot of vector elements, which in turn tend to flicker when resizing is applied (mixer, editor's windows, general zooming in arrangement or event views, etc.). Quality though, after the scaling has been applied, is preserved. Size is generally very small (compared to raster images).

Raster images will get HUGE with 4k and in a few years with 8K. They do not like compression, especially at those resolutions. Hence with pads and mobile screens (which will get denser pixels - higher resolution) raster images will look either too small or their size will have to be HUGE + ppi will have to go higher.

Of course vector GUI lacks the "realism" raster images can deliver, especially with good image editing skills being applied to them, but the raster images' size will definitely go up. Problem? Maybe not for todays hard drives, but still...

Raster images are generally more difficult to edit properly (requires skills, not just treating them in MS Paint).

Vector is the sh¡t!

REAPER - raster or vector GUI topic - link

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Old 08-24-2019, 08:11 AM   #5
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OK.
Right now this isnt preventing me from making music with reaper and I can think of quite a few other things I would like to see improved or changed long before what appears to be a massive overhaul of the existing system by a two or three man development team, two of whom will also being taking care of every other aspect of reaper, including bugs, etc.

I suppose if Justin felt like it, he could factor in hiring a GFX gguy who excels on the code side in the same way White Tie seems to on the interface side, but I am left wondering how much that would still dilute the OTHER side of Reaper.

Y`know the part where we record stuff, mix stuff, master stuff?
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Old 08-24-2019, 08:20 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adXok View Post
The future belongs to vector based GUIs (FL Studio, Ableton, Bitwig).
Vector graphics still needs to be rendered efficiently by something. Just checked that Ableton Live (10.1, Lite version) uses the GPU on Windows. (About 10-15% usage of my NVIDIA graphics card. Reaper doesn't even show up by name in the GPU utilization chart of Process Explorer.)
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Old 08-24-2019, 08:30 AM   #7
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Xenakios,
are you telling us that you will be using reaper and playing the latest hyper-moded version of Skyrim at the same time?
Or maybe rendering that CGI scene for the last Marvel movie?

GPUs are for that - to render graphics and other realted video elements.
One reason why I have Xeon and not i7.

Ok, I understand that maybe there has to be some kind of sync or whatever, but i think it is not going to be a real pain. FL Studio is doing perfectly fine and I do not care if it takes 50% of my GPU.

With PotPlayer and madshi-vr + some other cool stuff for 10 bit (per-channel) renders, watching 4K videos sucks up to 90% of that GTX1060.
That is why I have it - to use it. To the rim!
* and no, I do not use them while in Reaper (or any DAW in that scenario)
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Old 08-24-2019, 08:33 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adXok View Post
Xenakios,
are you telling us that you will be using reaper and playing the latest hyper-moded version of Skyrim at the same time?
My point was that Reaper uses 0% of the GPU (which means there is currently no GPU acceleration at all done by it) and Ableton Live does use the GPU.
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Old 08-24-2019, 08:36 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by ivansc View Post
I suppose if Justin felt like it, he could factor in hiring a GFX gguy who excels on the code side in the same way White Tie seems to on the interface side, but I am left wondering how much that would still dilute the OTHER side of Reaper.

Y`know the part where we record stuff, mix stuff, master stuff?
So, are you that hipster producer who uses Reaper with the Default classic 1.xx theme?

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Old 08-24-2019, 10:23 AM   #10
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Lol. Even in your joke example, that could benefit from GPU especially because there is a video track.
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Old 09-01-2019, 11:22 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by adXok View Post
The future belongs to vector based GUIs (FL Studio, Ableton, Bitwig).
Within DAWs we would have quite a lot of vector elements, which in turn tend to flicker when resizing is applied (mixer, editor's windows, general zooming in arrangement or event views, etc.). Quality though, after the scaling has been applied, is preserved. Size is generally very small (compared to raster images).

Raster images will get HUGE with 4k and in a few years with 8K. They do not like compression, especially at those resolutions. Hence with pads and mobile screens (which will get denser pixels - higher resolution) raster images will look either too small or their size will have to be HUGE + ppi will have to go higher.

Of course vector GUI lacks the "realism" raster images can deliver, especially with good image editing skills being applied to them, but the raster images' size will definitely go up. Problem? Maybe not for todays hard drives, but still...

Raster images are generally more difficult to edit properly (requires skills, not just treating them in MS Paint).

Vector is the sh¡t!

REAPER - raster or vector GUI topic - link
This is totally right. And if I recall, vector graphics were how it was originally done right up until Windows XP. Which coincidentally, was slower than Windows 2000.
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Old 09-02-2019, 06:02 AM   #12
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@adxok: (sp?)

easiest way out o fany argument - ridicule the person with a different opinion.
I currently use the default version 5 theme fwiw, plus a few customisations I have found helped my workflow over the years.
I use Reaper 90% of the time fr straight multitrack audion and MIDI recording & have never caught myself thinking: "gosh I wish the gfx would update faster in Reaper."
That is the only reason I posted what I did.
Maybe you are using Reaper to do something significantly harder on the GFX side.

As far as the future belonging to FL Ableton Bitwig etc., only if those applications are also capable of doing everything Reaper can as far as I am concerned. Suspect I would not be alone in this.
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Old 09-02-2019, 06:24 AM   #13
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Gotta love the good old times of Beige!
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Old 11-10-2019, 01:54 PM   #14
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Hum , i believe there is something wrong info around here guys, correct me please if i´m wrong. for real !

My Reaper is using GPU:

https://ibb.co/tCsj9fS


This is one of those cases where Justin could give us a good explanation on How this really works!
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Old 11-10-2019, 02:24 PM   #15
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pepe44 View Post
Hum , i believe there is something wrong info around here guys, correct me please if i´m wrong. for real !

My Reaper is using GPU:

https://ibb.co/tCsj9fS


This is one of those cases where Justin could give us a good explanation on How this really works!
Having plugins in that project which use GPU perhaps (e.g. Waves, FabFilter afaik)?
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Old 11-10-2019, 04:54 PM   #16
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Yes fabfilter uses hardware acceleration. But explain me, wh would i need in reaper GPU for the audio tasks, free the pipeline of audio and video in the CPU ? sound legit.
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Old 11-10-2019, 04:58 PM   #17
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Quote:
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Yes fabfilter uses hardware acceleration. But explain me, wh would i need in reaper GPU for the audio tasks, free the pipeline of audio and video in the CPU ? sound legit.
This thread has not been about accelerating audio processing with GPUs (which is a bad idea anyway) but about making Reaper's GUI accelerated by the GPU. Reaper itself does not currently use the GPU for drawing the graphics. (It doesn't prevent 3rd party plugins from using the GPU for their GUIs, either, though.)
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Old 11-10-2019, 05:22 PM   #18
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Hey xenakios, Thanks. I understood that. My question is more about on how could Reaper benefit of the GPU, is it because it frees the CPU from doing GPU tasks ? If so in some way that would help the audio tasks , right ? Audio one CPU side, graphics all in te GPU side , correct ?
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Old 11-10-2019, 05:38 PM   #19
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There was this CUDA thing 10 years ago, talking about processing stuff on the GPU, but from what i read , it ended up being slightly laggy for audio, since it has some extra roundtrip.
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Old 11-10-2019, 07:09 PM   #20
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pepe44 View Post
My question is more about on how could Reaper benefit of the GPU, is it because it frees the CPU from doing GPU tasks ? If so in some way that would help the audio tasks , right ? Audio one CPU side, graphics all in te GPU side , correct ?
Some people are experiencing even severe GUI lags in Reaper, so they are hoping using the GPU for the graphics would help that issue. It's not at all straightforward if that would even really help, though. And it would be very expensive for Cockos in terms of development time to try that. They would need to rewrite pretty much all of the graphics code in Reaper.

Even when the GUI is drawn on the CPU, it doesn't necessarily affect the audio processing very much because the GUI thread is run at a lower priority than the time sensitive audio threads.
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Old 11-10-2019, 08:10 PM   #21
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Quote:
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Lol. Even in your joke example, that could benefit from GPU especially because there is a video track.
Exactly.

I still use Reaper for a LOT of projects, and its my "desert island DAW", but for my post-production work, I've had to switch to Nuendo almost entirely because the performance of the GUI.

I love the living shit out of Reaper, but I can't deal with second guessing video sync because of GUI lag issues, with Nuendo, I can't do half the shit that i can do in Reaper, but at least i can trust that everything i do is in sync and plays exactly the way I need it to.
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Old 11-11-2019, 03:52 AM   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Xenakios View Post
Some people are experiencing even severe GUI lags in Reaper, so they are hoping using the GPU for the graphics would help that issue. It's not at all straightforward if that would even really help, though. And it would be very expensive for Cockos in terms of development time to try that. They would need to rewrite pretty much all of the graphics code in Reaper.

Even when the GUI is drawn on the CPU, it doesn't necessarily affect the audio processing very much because the GUI thread is run at a lower priority than the time sensitive audio threads.
Thanks!
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Old 11-11-2019, 04:12 AM   #23
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Is there any way we could tell reaper on how to give more or less priority to the GUI threads ? Or is it a matter of [(plugin developer + reaper + OS) / User] = Not possible ! :P
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Old 11-11-2019, 09:02 AM   #24
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Let's see what the Devs will come up with version 6.
I highly doubt it will be any different than what it is now. Maybe some addition for icons and buttons with respect to 4k monitors and that will be it.

I highly doubt Reaper will ever go into vector GUI such as FL Studio, Ableton, BitWig, some plugins.
There is still this old-school trend that plugins, DAWs should have to resemble some kind of "vintage" analogue equipment, mixers, faders, knobs, etc. which might be good on the eyes of the older generation like me (30+), but doesn't really mean anything to younger guys who have seen a mixing console only on YouTube or have some kind of controller.

I would love compact looking vector interface without the need to take space for fancy worn looking panel ala Nomad Factory or anything.

A good example would be FabFilter, Valhalla, Abelton\BitWig plugins, maybe Studio One...

A bad example would be Reason, Samplitude, Cakewalk.

And yes, I am aware that the latter have the smallest footprint in terms of RAM usage upon first start, and I love Reaper, Samplitude and Cakewalk (have bought them as well).
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