Video Processor and GPU usage

[James HE]

From my limited observations, any sort of processing with the Video Processor plugin only utilizes the CPU and not the GPU at all.

Is my observation correct? Or is there maybe something I'm missing in my configuration?

Is there GPU utilization to be had anywhere in working with video in REAPER? rendering perhaps?

[JamesPeters]

I just realized you're right. Although it doesn't seem to take much CPU displaying video.

It seems plugins can call the GPU. I figured as much when some plugins I read about online said they could use OpenGL and it was an option to enable/disable in the plugin settings. I noticed Signalizer uses the GPU using OpenGL (its "software" rendering actually doesn't seem to work in Reaper at least for me, but the default OpenGL does work and I notice its impact on my GPU).

Actually it seems the video processor might call the GPU for some things (show motion / subtract last frame, equirectangular 360 panner). I notice the GPU sometimes registers use for some functions the video processor plugin does, although not nearly as much as running Signalizer which keeps it running constantly.

[James HE]

Originally Posted by JamesPeters

I just realized you're right. Although it doesn't seem to take much CPU displaying video.

playing back video is fine, even on my core2 quad dinosaur of a machine. doing any sort of heavier manipulation in real time will be very choppy and generally just crash my system if I get real aggro with adjusting most any parameter. Playing back with automation is fine. (i suppose this is due to buffering)

I can crash my system at will by loading up the "blitter feedback" and making repeated fast moves with the rotation parameter in real time, for example. Monitoring CPU usage, GPU usage, and memory usages while doing this shows a good increase in cpu usage only, but I'm still not pegging the cores here. Interesting.

I am overclocked quite a bit, as the Q9650 loves to take a beating, so I'm not that surprised I can bring everything to it's knees.

I have a sense, however, that what I'm attempting here isn't likely all that much better with some top of the line processor. In real time, without utilizing the GPU at all, sweeping the parameter knobs on some of these presets is probably quite choppy on even the beefiest of systems (surprise me here, and someone tell me that they have no problems with this)

Now, I'm NOT saying that REAPER needs to be super optimized for this, It's a DAW, not a video editor, but the fact that it seems to use 0% of the GPU for it's video effects is a bit unfortunate.

[lolilol1975]

I understand that video FX are written in JSFX, no ?
If yes, unless there are specific functions that use the GPU (unlikely), this may explain it.

[JamesPeters]

Originally Posted by James HE

playing back video is fine, even on my core2 quad dinosaur of a machine. doing any sort of heavier manipulation in real time will be very choppy and generally just crash my system if I get real aggro with adjusting most any parameter. Playing back with automation is fine. (i suppose this is due to buffering)

I can crash my system at will by loading up the "blitter feedback" and making repeated fast moves with the rotation parameter in real time, for example. Monitoring CPU usage, GPU usage, and memory usages while doing this shows a good increase in cpu usage only, but I'm still not pegging the cores here. Interesting.

I am overclocked quite a bit, as the Q9650 loves to take a beating, so I'm not that surprised I can bring everything to it's knees.

I have a sense, however, that what I'm attempting here isn't likely all that much better with some top of the line processor. In real time, without utilizing the GPU at all, sweeping the parameter knobs on some of these presets is probably quite choppy on even the beefiest of systems (surprise me here, and someone tell me that they have no problems with this)

Now, I'm NOT saying that REAPER needs to be super optimized for this, It's a DAW, not a video editor, but the fact that it seems to use 0% of the GPU for it's video effects is a bit unfortunate.

I just tried that on my system (Core i3 6300) and moving the knobs quickly in realtime does get choppy. Automating them however is smooth and it doesn't totally peg any threads (although sometimes one thread gets near 80%).