tbh 15.0.1 is bogging down and “hanging up” for me a lot and i have a series of related questions.
(besides not working on scenes that are “too long” or with lots of effects) are there “best practices” for taxing the computer system less, e.g. flattening drawings when i’m done drawing them? or getting rid of other layers even if they are not turned on?
are there other things while working in tbh to avoid taxing the system? right now i’m only sketching a lot of thumbnail storyboarding, lots of cutting, pasting, transforming of drawings, some with lots of line work.
i’ve been watching the cpu and when i’m copying/pasting/transforming/dragging, and the selections with the most line work are spiking the cpu a bit above and below 100%. sometimes i get the dreaded red “harmony not responding” warning.
is tbh 15 working a lot better on mac os x sierra? i’m currently on el capitan.
do bitmaps tax more than vectors? pencil lines more than brushes? etc.
my system specs are:
macbook pro mid 2015
processor 2.5 Ghz Intel Core i7
memory 16 GB 1600 Mhz DDR3
graphics AMD Radeon R9 M370x 2048 MB
You problems may be due to the limitations of your graphic card.
Try not having graphic intensive applications open at the same time
as running Harmony. (close Photoshop and any web pages)
Keep the Harmony scene to one shot. Flatten layers after you
are done editing them.
Get rid of any “rough” layers once you have the cleanup version.
If possible combine your audio clips.
Lower the screen resolution and/or reboot with only one monitor
active.
There is very little difference between Windows and Mac.
Generally vector is more efficient than bitmap. Non-texture
brushed are less of a burden that using textured brushes.
What were you doing in the software when the CPU usage spiked to 100%?
How long was it staying at this level?
If your project located in a folder on the internal hard drive of the computer?
can you clarify lowering screen res while working?
the cpu was spiking when i was scribbling a busy (pencil vector) drawing in one thumbnail, and then copying and transforming/shrinking it a whole bunch of times to imply a big zoom over time in the storyboards. too much math for the computer, it seemed. the more i continued to try and do it, the computer would hang up ea. time for a minute or so.
project is on a thunderbolt external drive.
btw- could i assume vector pencils are less processor-intensive than vector brushes?
also, i’m getting that lag when using the pencil (arcs and circles cut corners) and i read that it’s an artifact of el capitan with the flattened toolbar tools hidden under the double arrows (>>). the latter seems true, and ‘gulp’ i’m thinking of upgrading to sierra tonight…
Hi Charlie (I think I helped you with a support ticket before),
To lower the screen resolution before launching the software,
go into the “System Preferences” and from there to “Displays”.
Select “Scaled” resolution and select “Larger Text”.
If the system is low on resources, you may need to wait until the
calculations are done. We have made some speed improvements
in Harmony 16 for the Master Controller if you are using it and you
also have the ability for “local caching” which helps a lot if you
connect to a Harmony database at all. And check the “enhancements”
section for more:
Working off an eternal hard drive (even a Thunderbolt drive) is less
efficient than working off the local hard drive. I would recommend
editing the project off the internal hard drive and then zipping
project folder to move them onto the external drive for longtime
archiving.
Generally vector brushes are less resource intensive than bitmap
brushes unless the vector brushes have textures.
Try the flat toolbar setting in the Preferences’ “Global UI” tab,
Relaunch the software after making changes here. This way you can
see the difference between having the double arrows (>>) on the
toolbar or not.
I don’t know if it will make much difference. Same for upgrading to
Sierra - it’s unlikely to be the magic bullet for general resource
related slowness (since it will still all be the same hardware).
Also newer Operating Systems generally claim more of the system’s
resources just for general overhead.
and just so i can settle on a fav, go-to tool to work with:
are vector pencils (non-textured) more efficient with computer and software demands than vector brushes (non-textured)?
seems like pencils would be less, since they’re a shorter, central spline.
and since you mentioned graphics cards, do you have recommendations, or recommended specs?
There is no difference between vector brushes and vector pencils in terms
of using graphic card resources.
For Video cards, if you’re on Windows go for an NVidia GeForce card in the mid
to high-end range. In general, any graphic card that is good for gaming should
do well for animating with. Stay away from Intel grads in general because they
tend to be onboard cards that rarely have their own RAM (they leech memory
off the motherboard’s RAM). Also the Intel cards are not high performance cards,
they are basic cards that let you browse the internet and do basic stuff.