Re: Frame Rate

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Allan Schaffer (allan++at++southpark.engr.sgi.com)
Wed, 25 Aug 1999 09:50:53 -0700 (PDT)


On Aug 25, 7:25am, Wear, Mark wrote:
> PROBLEM:
> When I limit the frame rate to 30Hz, the simulation runs 30 Hz with frequent
> drops to 20 Hz. However, when I limit the frame rate to 60 Hz, the
> simulation runs 30 Hz with occasional jumps to 60 Hz (during roll). If the
> simulation can run 30 Hz when asking for 60 Hz, why can it not run 30 Hz
> when limiting to 30 Hz? What is going on here?

I assume you're running IRIX 6.5.x. This is an IRIX bug that was
introduced in IRIX 6.5 and just recently fixed for IRIX 6.5.5. The
best overall solution would be to upgrade unless this causes problems
for Vega. IRIX 6.5.5 is on the SGI website (support.sgi.com) and
CD's should be shipping around now.

Here's what's mentioned in the Performer relnotes;

       6.1.1 Problems_fixed_in_IRIS_Performer_2.2.6

          o A change in the semantics of sginap() could cause
            frames to be missed if the application was running in
            FLOAT or LOCK phase and finishing its frame more than a
            full video field early. See Chapter 4 of these release
            notes for more details. This has been fixed in IRIX
            6.5.5 (SCR 635983).

       [and from Chapter 4:]

       4.1 IRIX 6.5

       In IRIX 6.5 through IRIX 6.5.4, a change in the semantics of
       sginap() can cause frames to be missed if the application is
       running in FLOAT or LOCK phase and finishing more than a
       full field early. The sginap() call is used by IRIS
       Performer specifically in the case where the application
       finishes more than a full field ahead of schedule. This
       does not affect applications running at field rate (ie. 60
       Hz) or applications running at their requested rate.

       A workaround is to give the program a realtime scheduling
       priority using the npri program (which must be run as root
       or with the CAP_SCHED_MGT capability):

          # npri -s RR -r <any number 0-255> <program> <args>

           or:

          # npri -s FIFO -r <any number 0-255> <program> <args>

       To allow users to run npri without full root permissions,
       you can give the npri program the set-capability-on-
       execution attribute:

          # chcap CAP_SCHED_MGT+eip /usr/sbin/npri

       If you later want to change it back:

          # chcap all= /usr/sbin/npri

       See the npri(1) and chcap(1) references pages for more
       information.

-- 
Allan Schaffer                                            allan++at++sgi.com
Silicon Graphics                           http://reality.sgi.com/allan

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