Moho Forum

Does Moho 12 deliver better performance with imported video ?

Does Moho 12 have better performance when it comes to render times of video layers ?

I have Anime Studio Pro 11 and it struggles with imported video as a layer. I have done what people have suggested and make a very low quality render of the video I bring into ASP11 and then use it as a reference. Then when ready to render my animation, change out the low quality video for the high quality rendered video. But even when I re-render a 1080p 50fps mp4 video as 720p 12.5fps mp4 (3meg in size) and import it into ASP11 it still is affected by lag when moving around in the software and video is pixelated, though it is usable. I have even considered dropping the reference rendered video down to 640p and stretching it out. Also ASP11's rendering of video content takes quite a long time at it's highest setting although I am very impressed with it's final result and how sharp and detailed the video layer comes out. I have a HP Envy 17 Laptop with Quad core Intel I7 2.4 cpu, 16gigs Ram, 1Gig ssd, Nvidia 740m video card, so it shouldn't be a problem when it comes to hardware.

I couldn't tell you for sure which is the best codec and container for Moho, but maybe it's not mp4?
It may be possible that images sequences are better, I don't actually know so it would be great to find out which is the best.
Has anyone who has done some leg work on this topic and have an answer for this?
IT would be awesome if there was some common knowledge on this topic.
Something easy to decode I would think.
How about mov@720 using the png format? That sounds like an easy conversion.
How about mpeg ?
It has probably more to do with the video card than the software as the gpu does the hard yakka on image if gpu acceleration is on.

Oh nvidia740 'm' I think that might be your problem and on a laptop tsk tsk.
Nvidia are great but that a few generations old , down in the mid range and worst of all there's an 'M' in there,
Sorry cameradude if you compromise on the hardware, you have to compromise your expectations.
Animation with compositing can be rough on even the most ferocious desktops, you'll have to pick your battles wisely, you can still do awesome work.

I always use Quicktime videos with PNG codec (+millions colours for transparency), and found AS always responsive enough. Adding more and more videos of course slows it down, also causes errors during rendering, so I render in batches.

Haven't tested v11 extensively yet, bot so far didn't find any worse behaviour.

I've used my laptop for video editing and rendering in other programs with large 1080p 50fps video files and had no problems. A small 720p 12fps (3meg) file shouldn't cause any lag at all when moving around inside Anime Studio Pro 11, but it does. I'm not too concerned about render times, more just about moving around the software without constant lagging and software crashes.

slowtiger wrote:I always use Quicktime videos with PNG codec (+millions colours for transparency), and found AS always responsive enough. Adding more and more videos of course slows it down, also causes errors during rendering, so I render in batches.

Haven't tested v11 extensively yet, bot so far didn't find any worse behaviour.

I think I'll try what you suggested and render the video to be imported to this format and see if it makes a difference. Thank you.

cameraboy wrote:

slowtiger wrote:I always use Quicktime videos with PNG codec (+millions colours for transparency), and found AS always responsive enough. Adding more and more videos of course slows it down, also causes errors during rendering, so I render in batches.

Haven't tested v11 extensively yet, bot so far didn't find any worse behaviour.

I think I'll try what you suggested and render the video to be imported to this format and see if it makes a difference. Thank you.

mov@720 using the png format?

Did I not say the same thing?
Sigh

Generally you want to use a codec that writes whole frames. Traditionally, this meant using PNG, Motion JPEG or leaving it uncompressed. If your intention is to composite the scene in Moho, go with PNG; if it's just reference footage, use JPEG with a lot of compression. I wouldn't use uncompressed because the file size will be huge.

Most lossy codecs do not render whole frames and it is very likely you'll see audio sync problems or frame accurate playback issues when scrubbing or stepping footage that uses such codec. I'm not sure the container itself (mp4, avi, mov) really matters, you just need a codec that reads and writes whole frames, compressed or not.

Personally, I prefer to use an image sequence instead of a movie file, and import the audio file separately. Same criteria--if it's for final compositing in Moho, use PNG; if for reference footage, like an on-screen animatic, use JPEG.

To be honest, I almost never bother to do final compositing in Moho. To me, it's more efficient to use Moho to generate elements for final compositing in an dedicated compositing program like Fusion or After Effects. If I bring in an image sequence that I wish to use as bg reference, I typically use JPEG at 60 quality or lower because it streams very quickly even across a slow network, and I enable Don't Render This Layer in the layer settings so it doesn't accidentally get composited by Moho. (FYI, I do the same thing even when I'm working in a 3D animation program--this is just more efficient, especially when you have to be sensitive to RAM usage and network speed.)

The new Moho Image Sequence importer works well for this purpose because it treats the sequence as a single clip instead of a Switch Layer with a lot of individual files. Much easier to manage for reference footage.

chucky wrote:

mov@720 using the png format?

Did I not say the same thing?
Sigh

Yes you did. Thank you. I'm going to try it out tonight with the different format and see if it makes a difference.