5K imac timeline lag

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kimandreasjohansson
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5K imac timeline lag

Post by kimandreasjohansson »

Hi!

Has other people with a fairly fast 5K imac experienced serious lag when scrubbing or playing back even the simplest of animations in the timeline in Moho 12.4?

Guess it´s hard to say if this is a mac only issue cause it´s not common with 5k screens on windows. But this clearly must be an issue with bad optimizations for high res screens. When I open the app in low resolution mode (by right clicking the app icon and checking the low res box in properties) it works like a breeze. Except the interface looks like freaking BLURRY PORRIGE! Another solution is to detach all the panels and make the preview window SUPER TINY. Or you can scale the resolution in mac preferences which makes everything look SUPER HUGE!

Frame skipping needs to be switched off if using full resolution or else it simply skipps like 10-15 frames per second. But when turned off it goes very very slow instead, so it makes it hard to see if your animation is right or not.

The solution with opening Moho in low res mode with frame skipping off I found to be the most acceptabel, but still its really sad not to be able to display the interface in 5k. I would be totally OK with a function to simply scale down the resolution of ONLY the preview window (like you do in after effects) which seems to be causing this issue.

Does anyone else have the same problem or have found a better solution for this? Really greatfull for a response.

Just another note:
My imac is from 2017 with 3.4 i5 Kaby Lake, 16 gigs of ram, a proper SSD (not fusion) and a Radeon pro 570, it should not lag when animating a freaking bouncing vector ball... Before I got my imac I was using an retina old macbook 13 from 2014 with an external 1080p monitor on which scrubbing and playback still works fairly fast with the exact same projects I tested on my new Imac.)
Visual artist based in Sweden.

iMac 5K (2017) 3.4 ghz i5, radeon pro 570, 16 gb ram
MacBook Air m1 16 gb ram
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synthsin75
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by synthsin75 »

That Radeon pro 570 is far too weak a graphics card, especially on a high res screen.
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Greenlaw
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by Greenlaw »

I'm on Windows but I can confirm that Moho has problems with high pixel density screens. The situation has gotten a little better with recent Windows 10 releases but there are still some problems with how Moho adapts its text and icons. And it's not consistent between Debut and Pro either.

Most of my experience in this area has been with my Wacom Cintiq Companion 2, which is a mobile tablet computer with 13-inch display with a max resolution of 2560 x 1440. A few years ago, running Moho at this res made the text and icons way too tiny to be usable, and adjusting the text size via windows made caused formatting problems with the UI. My solution back then was to drop the resolution to 1920 x 1080 and hope that Moho or Windows would catch up. I was okay with this back then because other popular programs, like Photoshop, also had issues and reducing the resolution solved the problem for many programs.

Fast forward to today and many of these programs now work properly with this displays. Moho still seems behind though.

In recent Windows updates, I found that I can use Moho at the suggested res just below the max (sorry, don't recall the exact numbers at the moment,) and be legible on the Companion's 13-inch screen if I also enable the Bigger Text option in Moho's Preferences. The text is still pretty tiny though and the Layers window is difficult to read if I use color layers. If I drop the res down slightly lower, the text becomes more legible but then I'm seeing panel layout problems--I don't remember exactly but it's like the windows become either too small or too big for the UI elements. For now, I'm going with the slightly lower than Max setting because it looks fine with everything else I use and tolerable with Moho (I'll deal with the tiny text for now.)

The Debut problem I mentioned is odd. The Style palette looks all right when the program first launches, but when I switch to advanced mode and then switch back, the width of the panel collapses and crops out part of the UI. This doesn't happen in Pro mode. I think this happens because the Style window in Debut lacks the Checker Selection option, which is probably propping up the width of panel itself. (IMO, Checker Selection is completely useless and should be removed from Debut because it actually makes this 'entry level' version of Moho more difficult to use. I don't normally use Debut but I've been developing a beginner animation class using Moho Debut, and Checker mode makes it impossible to show fills and strokes accurately.)

At work, it's been fine but the displays we have are much bigger than on my tablet computer of course.

Anyway, I know you're on Mac but I thought this info might provide insight and maybe give you some ideas for how to adapt Moho for your system.
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Greenlaw
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by Greenlaw »

Hey Wes,

I was just wondering, do you know if there's a user editable place in one of Moho's program files where the text size can be made bigger? I'm sure that will probably just mess things up for the UI, but I wanted to give it a try for my Wacom computer.
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synthsin75
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by synthsin75 »

No, it's just normal or large, even in the AppData settings file.
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Greenlaw
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by Greenlaw »

Ok, thanks.

It's not horrible, but I do find myself squinting sometimes. (Maybe I just need new glasses.) :)
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Greenlaw
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by Greenlaw »

I'm working in Moho on my personal tablet at lunch right now and I found a way to slightly improve text legibility. This probably doesn't affect anybody else but I thought it might be worth a mention.

In the evening, I often set the brightness of the display to Windows 10's 'Darkest' or 'Darker' settings, which is fine at night but during the day, it does make small text more difficult to read on this screen. A few minutes ago, I bumped the brightness up to the 'Suggested' setting, and I'm finding it much easier to read the Layer names, even with layer colors enabled. Naturally, this depends on the lighting conditions of the room. In a more brightly lit room or outdoors, the 'Brighter' or 'Brightest' setting may work even better.

I still wish I could make the text just a little bigger but for now, I'll take what I can get. :)
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Greenlaw
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by Greenlaw »

One more note regarding text legibility on my high-density screen: Certain layer colors may affect legibility more than others. I had been using Turquoise to identify switch layer drawings that had certain properties applied, and Turquoise makes it nearly impossible to read the text on my screen, even with brightness turned up. If I choose almost any other color, I can read the text fine.

I'm not seeing the same problem on my work computer's screen but I may have Moho's UI colors set a little differently on this computer, and I think I'm using the default color scheme on my personal tablet computer. Will have to check on that later.

Sorry, I know this is getting OT. Just wanted to complete this thought in case this info can help somebody else, or I need to come back and reference it in the future.
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Greenlaw
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by Greenlaw »

I think I figured out why Moho on my work computer screen is more legible than on my personal screen.

Before I left work, I sampled my UI color palette in Preferences and used this to sync the UI colors for Moho in my personal tablet. This did not make the text in layer names more legible. I had also noticed that my Appearance Brightness was darker at work, so I adjusted that on the tablet to compensate. The layer names were still noticeably less legible.

Finally, I noticed that the text is gray on my tablet where it was white on my work computer. So, on my tablet, the text is literally gray text against a gray background. Ugh!

To be clear, not all layer text labels are gray, just the Layer text for 'hidden' layers like all layers in a switch layer. Even the text label for the active layer is gray, only the icon is white. Against certain layer colors, like Turquois, the text is even less legible. On my work computer, I believe the same text is white, which shows up more clearly and legibly, and perhaps only the icon is gray. (I'll need to check this Monday.)

Most of the other layer text labels are black or white, and either of these colors is perfectly legible on my computer, even against other colors. It's only the gray text that's virtually unreadable. Unfortunately, I have long lists of switch layer drawings and it's really hard to read the text for these layers.

I'm guessing now that the difference is between the versions of Windows Moho is running on. On my personal computer, I have Windows 10, but at work we're using Window 7. I have noticed UI differences in other programs running on different versions of Windows, and I think that's what's going on here.

I really wish the UI color and size options were more flexible for Moho. For now, I think may layer text labels is as legible as it's going to get on this computer. I hope the devs can make improvements here in a future release.
chucky
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by chucky »

I've had good experience with 4k in Moho on a PC Desktop, both with an Nvidia 760 and 1070.
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kimandreasjohansson
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Re: 5K imac timeline lag

Post by kimandreasjohansson »

Thanks for interesting comments people!
Still it would be interesting to hear from someone who are using a 5K or 4K imac?
Visual artist based in Sweden.

iMac 5K (2017) 3.4 ghz i5, radeon pro 570, 16 gb ram
MacBook Air m1 16 gb ram
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