Speed up the performances of ArKaos on your computer

Problem:

My ArKaos software seems to be slow on my computer. What can I do ?


Solution:

There are many ways to make your computer run an ArKaos software more smoothly.
Let's review the reasons why my software can be slow and how to avoid them:

Memory acess:

Memory acces is not related to your CPU frequency, but to your bus frequency. If your memory access times are low, your processor might be waiting for data from the memory and therefore won't be used at its maximum speed.

  • If you do not have enough memory (PC only), your system can store data on your hard drive temporarily.
  • If your processor does have a small cache memory, reading, treating, and writing frames will take more time.
  • If you have many other softwares running at the same time on your computer, your system switches from one to the other many times in a second. Memory access will be slower.
Solutions:
  • Check that you have no other programs running. On a PC, all the icons at the right of the task bar, near the clock, are background running programs, ex: anti-virus, firewall etc.
Processor is too slow:
  • If you are running multiple layers, with chroma/luma or addition etc. arKaos has a lot of processing to do. Luma/Chroma and copy modes are optimized for PII-PIV & Mac G4-G5 (MMX, SSE2 & Altivec), so in most of cases, limits are coming from memory access but you should avoid running many layers with chroma/luma.
  • If you are using highly compressed movies, your processor has to decompress it in real-time. Some compression formats are using complex algorithms, like Sorensen. Playing only two of these movies at the same time in 32 bits in 640x480 can cause very low FPS. Cinepak offers low cost compression, but decreases quality...
Solutions:
  • Close the preview when running fullscreen makes arKaos faster (if don't need the preview)
  • Be sure no other programs are running if you don't need it
  • Choose the appropriate compression format (PhotoJPEG is fast but require a lot of disk space)
  • Avoid using too many layers (you can export movies resulting in many layers combinations to avoid doing it in real-time)
Operating system:
  • On Windows XP, totally disable the System Restore function; XP doesn't ask arKaos the appropriate moment to make his system restore checkings and when XP stores datas on the disk, arKaos will need more time to read the movies because the hard drive is always switching from one location to another.