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09/04/2010 01:40
 
stevek_mcc
5th Level Poster

Joined: 02/04/2010
Posts: 104

I'm trying to display song text with a video in a background layer, but can't seem to find a PC with enough power. In tests, it seems that displaying just a song takes more CPU than displaying just a video, which surprises me. Task Manager shows nearly 100% CPU for a song; videos are 30-70%. The song shows over 20,000 page faults a second. Results seem the same for Standard or Fast rendered; with WPF the page faults drop to 100 or so, but CPU remains high (and I couldn't display videos).

My current system is a 2.8GHz Celeron with XP SP3 and 3D Blaster FX 5200 with a single display (displaying either to the whole display or 50%). Earlier tests have been on more powerful machines with better graphics cards and a secondary monitor. What would be a reasonable spec for a PC to show a background video and a song, and to change either of them smoothly?
 
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09/04/2010 01:51
 
stevek_mcc
5th Level Poster

Joined: 02/04/2010
Posts: 104

Just noticed that setting the song background to a Color rather than None drops CPU usage to 2% and page faults to 10,000 a second. With an Image background CPU is 52% and page faults rise to 33,000 a second. With a black layer 1 and the song with no background in layer 2, CPU is 100% and page faults 20,000.

Sometimes ScreenMonkey seems to throttle the CPU to 50%, but more normally it goes to 100%.

(Sorry for my first post starting with a problem! I really like what I've seen in a few days of playing with ScreenMonkey. You've achieved something quite remarkable here, even if everything's not quite working for me yet)
 
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25/04/2010 05:47
 
cicakprints
10th Level Poster

Joined: 25/04/2010
Posts: 1

stevek_mcc wrote

Just noticed that setting the song background to a Color rather than None drops CPU usage to 2% and page faults to 10,000 a second. With an Image background CPU is 52% and page faults rise to 33,000 a second. With a black layer 1 and the song with no background in layer 2, CPU is 100% and page faults 20,000.

Sometimes ScreenMonkey seems to throttle the CPU to 50%, but more normally it goes to 100%.

(Sorry for my first post starting with a problem! I really like what I've seen in a few days of playing with ScreenMonkey. You've achieved something quite remarkable here, even if everything's not quite working for me yet)

 

Hi. I'm facing a similar issue. I notice the CPU usage drops back to normal if the Song Type --> Display Option --> Transition is NOT set to None. As long as one of the transition speed is selected, the 100% CPU issue doesn't appear.

Looks like a software bug to me.
 
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27/04/2010 11:41
 
owaits
1st Level Poster

Joined: 30/12/2005
Posts: 590

I notice in the original post you are using XP. The hardware acceleration needed to use transparent backgrounds or images is not present in XP. You need to use either Vista or even better Windows 7.

The high CPU usage is a good indication that the display is being rendered in software. A good graphics card will help the situation. When setup properly the CPU should be around 3%.

 

 
 
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