Performance Optimisation
Here are a few settings to check in your Hive Media Players if the playback is not perfect.
Region Source
If you are only playing back a single layer of media and you are not applying effects or colour adjustments, then you should select your region source as ‘LAYER 1’ in the Advanced Mapping page. This will make a big difference to performance because the render pipeline is not setup in preparation to mix multiple layers as it is when you use the default region source mode ‘LAYER MIX’.
Disable device preview
When you login to a hive player the first thing you see is the device page. On this page there is a live preview which is a stream of jpg compressed frames illustrating what your hive player is rendering out onto your HDMI output. Creating this stream uses system resources on your Hive player, so if you want to achieve optimum performance, disabling this preview will help significantly.
Display Device Setting
Many display devices such as projectors and displays have manufacturer settings which can affect performance. For example on Samsung TV’s best performance can be achieved in ‘Game’ mode as it reduces latency and improves display mode capabilities. Manufacturers often use default settings which are sub optimal for our use case because it allows them to create a ‘better’ picture or use less power in a consumer use scenario. Other examples of this are ‘dynamic contrast’ on Panasonic projectors, 'motion smoothing’ on Sony displays and so on. For optimal performance please read the manufacturers manual for your display product and disable any mode which is trying to ‘improve’ the image, and enable any mode which mentions reducing / improving latency.
Clock Correction
In the Adjust / Settings page you will find a setting called clock correction. If your system is not at full capacity and you believe it should be capable of playing your media smoothly, but you see occasional stutters, then you could enable clock correction, this attempts to ensure that each frame is presented sequentially, if any frame numbers are repeated or skipped then they will be corrected. Please note that if the system is at capacity and dropping frames due to not being able to render the frames in time then this setting will not help, it may make performance worse in this situation.
Timecode Smoothing
On the Play / Timecode page you will get best performance from selecting ‘smooth’ as the sync mode. You may also want to try enabling ‘glitch protection’ this will smooth out any incoming network related gaps in the timecode packets the system receives
Output frame rate vs content frame rate
For optimal performance it is recommended that the frame rate of your video files is either the same as the hive player output resolution, or at least a multiple of. So a video file made at 25 FPS will look OK on a 50hz projection. But a video file made at 29.97 FPS will not look perfectly smooth on a 50hz projection. For optimum smoothness you should consider rendering your content at 50 or 60 FPS.
Codec selection
To ensure smooth playback we recommend the following settings Hive BeeBlade Preferred Codec Settings: 265 HEVC as mp4 Profile: Main Level: 6.2 Tier: High Bitrate Encoding: VBR, 1 pass Target Bitrate [Mbps]: 100..800 (depending on quality requirements, 400 should be plenty in most cases, but 800 may be required where optimum quality is critical) Quality: Highest Key Frame Distance: 1 Use Maximum Render Quality