TVP11 and Mac M4

[mikdog]

Hi all, looking for advice pls.
I have a 16” 2019 Macbook Pro laptop, it’s an Intel machine and I find the CTG layers take a little too long to compute between fills, it takes a second or so each time I fill, over the length of a project that slows me down quite a lot.

I’m looking at Apple’s newly-announced Mac Mini M4.

I see the latest changelog says TVP 11 doesn’t crash with Apple’s M1/M2/M3 chips and would hope this means it won’t crash with M4 either?

Would the faster processor speed and extra ram (16gb - 24gb) speed up the time CTG filling takes to finish computing? I’d love to know whether the CTG fills take place on the processor, on the GPU or if it happens in RAM?

Also curious if anyone has real-world anecdotal experience with upgrading and CTG speed.

Thanks

[Thierry]

Hey,

Obviously we cannot say it will work because these new macs are not even out yet.
But the work we've done for v11.7.4 and 12.0.2 should be good for these new Macs as well. I'll update both changelogs so it is explained better.

[mikdog]

Thanks Thierry! Looking forward to seeing the update!

A question please - what makes the biggest difference to the speed of CTG filling? I have great speed of everything else; rendering, drawing, playback etc. It’s just the CTG fills that slow me down a bit.

Does that use the gpu, cpu, cache disk, ram, etc?

Thank you

[Thierry]

Well, for starters, TVPaint does not use the GPU, only CPU & RAM.

What dimensions are your project? On higher dimensions, CTG calculations can take longer.

[mikdog]

Thanks Thierry, this is great to know re not using GPU at all, thanks.
I was animating a 4k project (3840 x 2160).
Will wait to hear re update on changelogs once M4 chips are out, thanks given that even an M1 chip is leagues faster than my current Mac Intel chip, I'm hoping the M4 (assuming and hoping it does work well with TVP11) is much faster with TVPaint with CTG layers.
Thank you.

[slowtiger]

I have a new M2 Mac. I'm used to start rendering a scene, go to the kitchen, make coffee, and rturn. Now it's finished rendering when I'm halfway up the chair.

[mikdog]

Thanks slow! Do you find the same thing with CTG layers? ie the CTG flood filling works much faster with the M2? Or are you referring just to the export rendering ie rendering to video?

[slowtiger]

Can't say because so far I haven't used CTG aside from some short testing.

[mikdog]

Thank you for the reply. If you ever do, I'd love to know - I do a lot of CTG and upgrading my machine would be the only reason I'd do so, for faster CTG filling!
Again, so pleased to have connected with you again, slow. You taught me so much over at the Moho forums, I pretty much based my entire animation foundation on the short test file you made with my bouncing Sun

[slowtiger]

*blush*

[mikdog]

I took the plunge and ordered a Mac M4 Mini. Been waiting to upgrade for a while and took the plunge.
Will report back on how TVP11 performs on it [fingers crossed] am so hoping it works ok.

[mikdog]

Early report back: been using it for a bit to draw, onion skin, etc - good news, hasn't crashed once yet and I've left it open overnight I think.
Still to give it a proper go as I haven't yet tested video export, etc. Will continue using and thus, testing.
EDIT: Just did a quick video export to MP4, seems like it works.
ONLY bug I've found thus far, is when using a WAV file for audio, the volume slider nor the 'mute' button (speaker with line through it) affect the audio at all, it's always full volume.
Using Mac 11.7.4 on Mac Mini M4.

[mikdog]

More info re audio bug report above, I can mute and control volume of clip when in the Project Timeline view, but not when in Clip Timeline view.
I also tried deleting the audio in the project view and adding it in the clip view, but it was the same result with mute nor volume slider responding when in clip timeline view.