[QLab] ibook performance thoughts

[Shawn Parr]

We just used a 933Mhz G4 for a mostly sound cue light show, although  
when cues happened they happened in large groups, but we also  
triggered two sets of projectors.  While the fade in and outs of the  
video where a bit stuttery, the audio performance was flawless.

I would definitely make sure to have a decent amount of RAM, as that  
was one area the G4 showed issues in.  We had 768MB, and the paging  
files got pretty huge with all the still image 'video' cues we were  
running.  And load time was very painful, but once running things were  
pretty okay.

The other issue is drive speed.  You may want to consider using a  
firewire drive for your cues to live on, especially if you have a very  
heavy or complicated show.

As far as CPU usage, the big issues are routing, fades, and decoding  
audio.  If you use wave or aiff files they require more throughput  
(more drive speed, more RAM), but will use less processing power  
decoding the audio than if you used mp3 or AAC.  Fades and routing are  
not that terribly complex by today's standards and just about any G4  
iBook you run across should be able to handle them as long as the rest  
of the equation is there, unless you get into some really heavy cue  
sequences.

All my opinion of course.  :)  But I do have a bit of experience as I  
once had to do 16 track recording for a TV show on a 500Mhz G3 iBook.   
If it held up, your G4 should.

- Shawn Parr

parr at shawnparr.com
ICQ:  13914925
AIM:  muskratstudios
MSN:  msn at shawnparr.com

On Jul 2, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Matt Otto wrote:

> I ran QLab previously on my PowerBook g4 thats 1.25Ghz with no  
> problem. I cannot imagine a 600mhz will be a problem QLab is light  
> on CPU. I think you'll have a bigger problem with finding one.
>
> Have fun,
> =Matt Otto
> off list: mottosound at gmail.com
> www.mattottosound.com (work in progress)
> AIM: ottoman42
>
>
> On Jul 2, 2007, at 8:35 PM, Andy Leviss wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jul 2, 2007, at 7:12 PM, David Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> I'm looking at buying a used ibook and something like a firepod to
>>> rent out on shows I design. I've used Qlab on an iMac and a G4
>>> powerbook, but wonder
>>> if G4 ibook with 667 or 1ghz is capable of doing a medium sized  
>>> show -
>>> say 5-8 outputs. What are the symptoms with Qlab when running on
>>> a slow processor- Latency? stutter? ?
>>
>> I've currently got a show running 6 outputs on a MOTU 828 off of a
>> PowerBook G3 Pismo (it's either 400 or 500 mHz, I'm not sure off the
>> top of my head, and no idea how much RAM*), and a frightening one at
>> that. The display is questionable, and after two aborted attempts at
>> upgrading it to 10.4, I had to go for a full format and install to
>> get it to take. Hey, when you've got no budget, you work with what
>> you've got!
>>
>> Editing is fairly tedious; I did the bulk of programming on my
>> MacBook Pro, and then transferred it over as we got into runs. I
>> could tweak cues on it, but there was a bit of lag opening up the
>> Inspector, and the actual loading of the program is horrendously
>> slow. Once up and running, though, it's reasonable. It seems a bit
>> loose loading and playing tightly linked cues, but I haven't noticed
>> anything too serious. Then again, the show I'm using it on doesn't
>> have many processor/memory intensive overlaps, the worst being
>> sequences of three or four overlapping/near-overlapping explosions.
>> Haven't run into stutter at all, and I haven't seen noticeable
>> latency on "go" cues provided the cue is loaded before playing.
>>
>> FWIW,
>> Andy
>>
>> *-Frankly, I almost didn't want to know. It was a, "If this beast
>> works, awesome, if not, we'll punt and come up with a plan B". So
>> far, knock on wood...
>>
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