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Old 03-21-2018, 06:36 AM   #1
psarahtonen
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Default Recording Multi-track while Presenting PowerPoint Slides

I sort of doubt that I should attempt this but has anyone ever recorded 16 tracks in while on the same iMac or MacBook simultaneously presented PowerPoint slides?

I would like to try this at my church but my guess is I will get occasional crashes and will need two machines.

Thanks


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iMac i5 w/ Reaper 5.77
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Old 03-21-2018, 07:39 AM   #2
vdubreeze
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It would be interesting to find out how far any given configuration can go. If the gear is at your disposal, and not locked up at the church, give it a go as a dry run. It's definitely not optimum but if getting another Mac in the set up would be difficult it's worth spending the time to find out if it's even feasible.

A few things would make a big difference. One, definitely need maxed out ram. Two, have the two not accessing the same drive and have both SSD. And three, it would depend on how involved the PP presentation is. Some are pretty simple, with static images, maybe animated transitions, maybe not even audio, while others are full bore video with running video in previews and a million things going on.

Also, you can set your buffer to a ridiculously high amount since latency isn't a factor.

It's worth finding out if just for future reference.
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Old 03-21-2018, 08:45 AM   #3
serr
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Test it first!

I've let renders run while uploading files to a cloud account while watching a Youtube video playing through the sound system and core audio sample rate converting on the fly. Got to do something to get the computer above idle once in a while!

Powerpoint should be zero CPU use. But test it first!
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Old 04-06-2018, 07:07 AM   #4
psarahtonen
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Default Thanks!

I'll set up a brutal test environment and run several things at once including 4K video output thru HDMI.

I'm hoping an i7 w/ 16 Gigs of RAM will work. No SSD, just a 1T hard drive.

I will report my findings!
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Old 04-10-2018, 09:00 AM   #5
psarahtonen
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Default My Findings

Here's my config:

iMac 2012 i7 w/ 8Gs of RAM
PowerPoint 2016 (thru Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter)
Reaper (current)
X-32 w/ X-USB card

IT WORKED! Sort of...

i recorded 16 tracks thru Reaper in the background while toggling thru a PowerPoint presentation to the music. However, at one point when nothing was happening I had a PPT crash which trickled to needing a restart.

I tried to replicate the event several times without any incident. So not knowing what to avoid is pretty disconcerting. I would hate for the crash to happen at church during a worship service.

My only theory is that I'm using a Fusion drive in the iMac. There is a possibility that a part of either Reaper or PPT's kernel/thread operation was relegated to Fusion's SSD memory after the crash. Otherwise it's just a Ghost in the Machine for now.

If I have more to report I will post it.

-Kc, Oak Hill Bible Church Austin TX
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