VaM 1.x MacGruber Supershot Freezes

[Ghostwalden]

Anyone else around, who experienced freezing problems with MacGrubers Supershot when taking a Screenshot?

This happens quite regularly to me and I don't know why...

Maybe someone has a solution to this?

 

[LubaFoto]

I don't know the under the hood exact raison, but there is a clue in the plugin. You need a lot of memory to run some options. Depending on the setup of the scene, on my side when it freeze, I close everything but VAM, make sure you have memory left to take a screenshot. Or then we end in a never ending story about bloated VAM install. VAM and supershoot with few .var is very fast, compare to bloated one.

 

[Ghostwalden]

I don't know the under the hood exact raison, but there is a clue in the plugin. You need a lot of memory to run some options. Depending on the setup of the scene, on my side when it freeze, I close everything but VAM, make sure you have memory left to take a screenshot. Or then we end in a never ending story about bloated VAM install. VAM and supershoot with few .var is very fast, compare to bloated one.

Thanks for your reply LubaFoto

I use supershot a lot for my Asset Screenshots...
The weird thing is, that when I do the shots with a look and the asset, it mostly works,
but without the look, what would mean much less computing power and memory usage, supershot mostly freezes.

But at least I am somewhat reassured that I am not the only one
I can imagine, that a lot of vars can make it more likely to freeze,
but one needs the vars, he needs to work

Maybe there are also plugins that are not compatible with Supershot.
I am definitely grateful for any advice that could help with this problem

 

[LubaFoto]

I just test your Kansai spirit with max setting (postmagic also running), work like a charm. I don't see any problems with your asset, doesn't eat much memory, nor frame rate lost.
Beside, some assets can cause memory problems, I don't think your problem is coming from your assets (I also test Taverna). Personally I wouldn't blame your work for the freeze. I would try to delete essentials plugins and reinstall it.
If I look at your sreenshots from your resources I realy don't see a scene that would require much power.
Like I said supershoot also run like crap in my 2400 and plus .var VAM install. In my second install only got 20 .var, supershoot work way more faster.

 

[Ghostwalden]

I just test your Kansai spirit with max setting (postmagic also running), work like a charm. I don't see any problems with your asset, doesn't eat much memory, nor frame rate lost.
Beside, some assets can cause memory problems, I don't think your problem is coming from your assets (I also test Taverna). Personally I wouldn't blame your work for the freeze. I would try to delete essentials plugins and reinstall it.
If I look at your sreenshots from your resources I realy don't see a scene that would require much power.
Like I said supershoot also run like crap in my 2400 and plus .var VAM install. In my second install only got 20 .var, supershoot work way more faster.

Thanks for testing.
I also thought that my scenes wouldn't need that much power for causing that problem.
But the plugin thing is definitely something I can try.
I can imagine, that a lot of vars make supershot slower. I have actually 3500 vars in my VAM.
But when they make the plugin slow, that would not be the problem, the only problem is the freezing thing.
I earlier worked with a version, where i had much more vars, and i can't remember, that supershot freezed.

 

[MacGruber]

What does "freezing" mean for you? If you take an 8K screenshot and do NOT use the downscale feature, it is normal that it takes a while to save that image to disk. Especially PNG export (default setting as its the best quality) is very slow and single-threaded on the main thread. Depending on your CPU that could take a couple of seconds.

If you use the default settings (take 8K screenshot, but downscale on GPU to 1920x1080), that is much faster and should be less than half a second. Because the CPU processed data is only 1/16 of the 8K screenshot...so it's roughly 16x faster.


If I remember correctly, while taking the screenshot SuperShot might temporarily pull up to 6.3 GB of VRAM from your graphics card. Heavily depends on your settings. If you got only 8 GB (or even less) of dedicated VRAM on your graphics card, it should be obvious that it might be a problem to fit VaM as well as all other running background applications + Windows itself into that. It would either crash or produce entirely or partially black screenshots.

 

[Ghostwalden]

Thanks for your reply MacGruber

What does "freezing" mean for you?

Freezing means, that I can't do anything anymore in VAM until I close it and start it new.
I'm used to Supershot taking a few seconds to take a screenshot, but I have only had this freezing for a while

If you take an 8K screenshot and do NOT use the downscale feature, it is normal that it takes a while to save that image to disk. Especially PNG export (default setting as its the best quality) is very slow and single-threaded on the main thread. Depending on your CPU that could take a couple of seconds.

I usually only use 4K Screenshots.
How could I not use the downscale feature? Normally it is on Lanczos, but I also could switch to Linear, but no option to turn it off.
I'm a bit astonished, just tried PNG and JPG and both screenshots took the same amount of time.
I never used JPG before and expected it do be much faster
But will try it again, when I have a freezing situation again.

If you use the default settings (take 8K screenshot, but downscale on GPU to 1920x1080), that is much faster and should be less than half a second. Because the CPU processed data is only 1/16 of the 8K screenshot...so it's roughly 16x faster.

This are my regular supershot settings.
With downscale on GPU you mean the Downscale Method Lanczos?
or am I overlooking something?

If I remember correctly, while taking the screenshot SuperShot might temporarily pull up to 6.3 GB of VRAM from your graphics card. Heavily depends on your settings. If you got only 8 GB (or even less) of dedicated VRAM on your graphics card, it should be obvious that it might be a problem to fit VaM as well as all other running background applications + Windows itself into that. It would either crash or produce entirely or partially black screenshots.

This is certainly a weak point of my system, guess my Graphiccard has only 6GB Ram
I dont have a problem, when a screenshot takes a bit longer, but the freezing thing (VAM crashing) is annoying.

 

[MacGruber]

Freezing means, that I can't do anything anymore in VAM until I close it and start it new.

Ok, I see.

I usually only use 4K Screenshots.

As per your settings you do an 8K screenshot, which is then downscaled to 4K. The downscaling step takes about 1/3 additional VRAM, so you can save there a bit.

This is certainly a weak point of my system, guess my Graphiccard has only 6GB Ram

On your screenshot the plugin is telling you...in red text...that it needs about 3.1 GB just for itself.
If you got only 6 GB, the recommendation would be to downscale the image yourself (in Photoshop, GIMP or whatever) plus also reduce the MSAA setting. MSAA is basically a multiplier on memory usage.

Just to show you why it needs so much memory for an 8K shot:
7680x4320 Pixels * 8 Byte (RGBA + Depth + Stencil Buffer) * 8x MSAA
That is almost 2 GB, just the render buffer. For downscaling you need additional smaller buffers.

SuperShot is basically the sledge hammer approach to improving image quality

 

[Ghostwalden]

As per your settings you do an 8K screenshot, which is then downscaled to 4K. The downscaling step takes about 1/3 additional VRAM, so you can save there a bit.

Not sure if I understand it right...
Does Supershot always an 8K screenshot and downscaling it then to the selected resolution?
According to the settings in this case, I would have thought that it would take a 4K screenshot and then double it to 8K using the Resolution Multiplier

On your screenshot the plugin is telling you...in red text...that it needs about 3.1 GB just for itself.
If you got only 6 GB, the recommendation would be to downscale the image yourself (in Photoshop, GIMP or whatever) plus also reduce the MSAA setting. MSAA is basically a multiplier on memory usage.

Hm... but how can i turn off downscaling then?
As said, I can only choose between two options, Linear and Lanzcos 3.
When I reduce the MSAA multiplier, the the Image gets pixalated.
I seems better to just turn off the Resolution Multiplier, there seems to be only a small loss of quality here.

Just to show you why it needs so much memory for an 8K shot:
7680x4320 Pixels * 8 Byte (RGBA + Depth + Stencil Buffer) * 8x MSAA
That is almost 2 GB, just the render buffer. For downscaling you need additional smaller buffers.

SuperShot is basically the sledge hammer approach to improving image quality

Yes, I seems to be a heavy one, and 8K is not nothing.

 

[MacGruber]

Hm... but how can i turn off downscaling then?

Set the resolution multiplier to 1, then increase the output resolution.

When I reduce the MSAA multiplier, the the Image gets pixalated.

Well, yes. If you want quality, you need to spend the memory
But 2x resolution multiplier (or just 8K output and downscaling externally) plus 4x MSAA should still give you the equivalent of a theoretical 16x MSAA. So, if your hardware can do that, it would still be better than native VaM.