There are a number of tools in Hippotizer to view and monitor the performance of a system.
The basic Performance Meter provides an overview of system utilisation and temperature and is added by dragging out the Performance group from the Pin tree.
Performance Meter
The Performance Meter is a computationally light-weight way of observing the status of Hippotizer.
Performance
Engine
Engine Frame Rate is a measure of how fast Hippotizer’s engine (The Render Component or RC) can complete a render loop. Each loop processes all layers, mixes, effects and plugins. The engine will render as fast as it can up to the frame-rate of the output (commonly 50 or 60 FPS). If the engine is rendering slightly below 60FPS it does not necessarily mean that output will be un-smooth; all it means is that the render loop is taking longer then the desired frame-rate will allow.
| Note: The time it takes to show captured video (the latency) will become longer as the engine frame-rate decreases. Capture delay is a set number of frames ( 4 Frames ), which at 60 FPS implies a delay of 66ms. A longer render time per frame will increase the latency. |
Playback
This is a trailing average indicating what percentage of frames in the last 2 seconds have been rendered. Under normal circumstances, a media player will render 100%.
Hardware
CPU
The percentage utilisation of the computer’s Central Processing Unit (CPU). Consistent readings above 70% will likely lead to degraded performance. Much of the processing is done on the Graphics Processing Unit (the Graphics card or GPU) but some work resides on the CPU including:
- Media Encode and Transcode
- Some media decode such as FlexRes Quality
- Windows background programs
Temp 1 and Temp 2:
| Note: Amba and Amba+ have a different temperature control system which does not report back to Zookeeper. |
Provides reading from two temperature sensors mounted inside the case. Temperatures of 35 degrees and below are considered normal.
The fan speeds will increase automatically with the system temperature depending on the chosen profile.
Normal The Default Fans will always run at a basic level and ramp up with temperature increases.
Quiet Fans will run at a very low speed and ramp up only as the system gets above 30 Degrees.
Safe Fans will run at a higher speed at all times.
Green Hippo recommends Normal fan profiles for most applications. Where noise is an issue, Quiet mode is advised. In permanent installations Safe Mode is suggested.
Network
Send/Receive
Displays the volume of traffic on the HippoNet network connection.
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