I now got a 3 screen setup by buying a portable lcd and attaching it to backglass using velcro

[joyrider3774]

I have bought this wimaxit 11.6 inch portable screen (from amazon.de but also exists on .com here) because i wanted a 3rd display for displaying a topper / dmd on it. The screen is a full hd screen although in windows a lower resolution is recommended but i use it as a full hd 1920x1080 screen (it is selectable in windows). I display my topper and dmd on it inside pinballx, with pinball fx3 and visual pinball tables i used the full screen to display the dmd using external dmd (freezy). The best part is i don't know any woodworking so i just attached the screen to my backglass screen using some velcro tape i had bought (one strip to screen, one strip to display). The plus side is that the screen can be easily removed if i wanted to do this and use it for other things as it is portable (but you still need a power outlet, there exists versions with batteries but way to exepensive and not good for pinball x). ps for velcro don't buy extra / super strong it's way too hard to get it off probably simpler velcro tape is better but it's al i had laying around

Here's a little video i made, I display a few tables running with it but as you can see in the video i only recently received the screen and still have to redo all my backglass videos / setup different pictures in pinball fx3, resetup malzbies, pinball wicked, bigscore pinball so i've given myselve a lot of work by buying this screen but i'm happy with it and it was an easy solution to get a 3rd display

edit: seems something went wrong while recording audio  ah well it's still all visible

[Mike_da_Spike]

Nice one @joyrider3774!

[joyrider3774]

seems i'm reaching the limits of the pinball cab's cpu. I had enabled topper video's in pinupplayer but was displaying freezy at 1920x1080 (so over the topper location) and i was getting hickups / stutter. setting freezy to use only bottom half of my new dmd screen seems to free up some resources as i'm getting less to none stutter then. Not sure why, maybe because the topper was overdrawn with freezy dmd or maybe freezy uses cpu to scale the graphics and 1920x1080 just is asking too much while also displaying a topper. i got a pentium gold 5400 @ 3.7 ghz thats less than an i3 but better then a dualcore as far as i'm aware but visual pinball kinda requires good single core cpu speed but that's not counting in other processes running. 

When i was using a 2 screen setup where the dmd was really small i did not had any problems at all, but initally i was not using freezy only started using it with my 3rd display and puppacks. I think will have to test more and perhaps let pinballx display a topper for tables that don't have puppack but have not checked yet if i can let pinballx keep displaying the topper while playing a game

[scutters]

Nice!

I think i remember seeing something about performance for DMD that recommended keeping the screen ratio at 4*1 (or it might have been a direct ratio multiple of 128*32) so maybe that's a factor when you go 'full screen'.

Not sure what your plan is for toppers though, i'm probably reading it wrong but why have a topper playing behind the dmd - or are you just testing performance?

[joyrider3774]

topper playing behind the dmd i did not notice initially but the topper came from a puppack in flinstones puppack. But i have now changed to this setup: 1920x1080 screen 1920x540 for topper and below it 1920x540 dmd so now i see both the topper as the dmd basically i use half of my new screen for topper and half for dmd. I also changed pinball fx3 to only display the dmd at the same position as inside pinballx and don't hide the topper while playing pinball fx3. In an ideal world i would have a topper per game displaying the game name animated like the pinball fx3 one i'm using now. I created a "no topper.mp4" in defaut videos subfolder to display that topper currently and if i ever find game specific toppers i can use those (could not immediatly see any on ftp). I could now even use animated backglasses but hard to find 4:3 ones only 16:9 i could find.

Basically it looks / works like this now

 

[joyrider3774]

here's a better picture how i set up the screen (now that there is sunlight i could take the picture)

[scutters]

Gotcha, the dmd overlay on topper was just during initial testing / setup.

Good job!...   just got to find those topper videos now 

[joyrider3774]

Already found many animated backglasses on pinup popper as wel as topper video's. Have not really searched in other section of pinballx ftp. I only installed popper and did a fake setup for pinball fx3 so i could search for their media. I'm using less toppers and backglasses than they have though, only using a subset because i did not like them all. For backglass i like the modified static ones to be animated kinda what imaginevp had created and posted about some months ago. For topper i prefer the table name to be visible or its logo without it i did not use it, also not too fond of toppers which are basically a trailer for a movie. Still have lots of work todo. But i don't hide backglass and topper anymore for pfx3 and i edited 16:9 backglasses to be letterboxed 4:3 (so adding black bars above and below image not just resizing it without taking aspect ratio into account). Pfx3 now displays a backglass on every table but still mising many toppers for newer tables. What do you guys use for toppers for vpx system?

[scutters]

2 hours ago, joyrider3774 said:

What do you guys use for toppers for vpx system?

Not a problem i have as i don't have a topper, but i know @HiRez00 has been doing some nice looking toppers at VPinball https://vpinball.com/VPBdownloads/categories/topper-videos/

If you're really stuck you could use instruction cards, like the apron display?. But i don't have one of those either so what would i know 

[joyrider3774]

2 hours ago, scutters said:

Not a problem i have as i don't have a topper, but i know @HiRez00 has been doing some nice looking toppers at VPinball https://vpinball.com/VPBdownloads/categories/topper-videos/

If you're really stuck you could use instruction cards, like the apron display?. But i don't have one of those either so what would i know 

ah yes, they are very nice going to use them just what i was looking for.

Btw @scutters if you run vpx freezy etc and you check taskmanager (you must let it run on top and click on playfield again otherwise cpu is hardly being used) how much usuage is shown with flinestones for example or in general.

My cpu is the bottleneck currently i ran some tests again with flinstones and had gotten some hicks for example during multiball when getting a jackpoit and the lights go crazy. I was remotely monitoring cpu usage and i can see it in graphs also some time flirting or hitting the 100% cpu usage mark. And yes i have vsync turned on so it's not going as fast as it can but only 60 fps.

Gpu is not the problem as it does not even go above 75% usuage....

 

so i will need to get a new cpu but it's hard to replace it and not sure what to get don't want to spend hunders of euro's (it's a Socket 1151) .  They assembled the pc on cabinet on a weird way and i have to remove everything in order to be able to deattach the cpu cooler :/ (have to get underneath mobo to push pins out). So not sure if i'm going todo that also not sure how demanding flinstones table (with pup videos) really is and if there are other high demanding tables to test

[Mike_da_Spike]

So, you didn't make your own cabinet @joyrider3774? Shame on you

what are your specs ? 

Edit : I checked my cab this morning pretty quick. I use freezy too, to use my PINDMDv3
When turning freezy off, my CPU reach at max 20%
Turning it on reaches 35%
I know I have another CPU that you have, but doesn't make a hige difference for me.
Using a table with PinpupPlayer (for some reason I can't get Freezy's DMD to work properly there), my system reach up to 75% CPU !
GPU is pretty low. Around 40% running a VPX table in 4k



 

[joyrider3774]

6 hours ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

So, you didn't make your own cabinet @joyrider3774? Shame on you

what are your specs ? 

No i ordered a cabinet to be made in the uk. Probably payed way too much for the specs the pc came with not to mention the delivery costs. I'm good with software and such but i really can not do any woodworking or electronics. The cpu is bad, initially it came with a low end gfx card as well, even pfx3 did not play well initally but i have since replaced the gfx card already and that improved things but i guess now the cpu is the bottleneck.

These are the specs:

ASRock H310M-HDV motherboard (uses socket Socket 1151)
Intel Pentium Gold G5400 @ 3.7 ghz, which is a dual core cpu with hyperthreading so 2 cores 4 logical ones.
8 gig of ram (don't know which nor the timings)
Nividia gtx 1050 ti single slot gpu or it would not fit the cabinet. Already had todo some small modifcations on cabinet to fit the card. Initially it came with a geforce 710 which was bad
 

i reach near 100% cpu usage consistently with flinstones table have not tested with puppack disabled might need todo that once. But tables like harry potter for example have no problems although must say have not tested it since the 3 screen setup. I guess the combination of freezy + puppacks + pinmame + higher demanding table is killing it for this system. I think big slowdowns happen when that new feature of latest pinupplayer is used (PuPShapes) which flinstones uses although there also is version without it. Will have todo some more testing 

[Mike_da_Spike]

Oh dear ...you have an issue ...

I'm not good with wood too, but very good with electronics and pc's.

Bought a 2nd hand medion pc. Corei7 7600 with nvidia 1060 , 16 gb of ram and 128gb ssd.

Replaced the video card 2 years ago for a 2070 (the 1060 wasn't  fast enough for 4k). Changed the ssd for a 1tb ssd (just sata )

completly stripped the computer case and build in my hand made cab. Too bad my cab can only have a 40" monitor/tv in it.  good onces are not for sale anymore.

but back to you. As we say in nl:" I cant look in your wallet"walletI would recommend to upgrade a bit. 

I ordered a couple of months ago some parts to do some more video/picture eddittibg and to run Visual Studio on. Core i5 9600, asrock itx mb, pcie ssd (1tb) , powersuply and case. Was "just" 400 euros, and made my life must happier

[joyrider3774]

18 minutes ago, Mike_da_Spike said:

Oh dear ...you have an issue ...

Well it played fine on 2 screen setup although not sure of flinstones with puppack it had it stutters, but never reached a jackpot on 2 screen setup. I can probably buy a new cpu but am affraid to try and take the cabinet appart as i can't fix it if i break something. although the mobo is accessible but have not yet checked if i can remove the mobo easily like with screws or how they have it attached. Also not sure which cpu to get my upgrade options are limited. These are the ones i can choose from for this motherboard http://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-ASRock/H310M-HDV.html best would be that 4ghz i7 i guess but might be overkill. I know visual pinball likes good single core cpu speeds

[Mike_da_Spike]

Ok. Hard decision. I7 is indeed overkill (although i have a i7 7th gen in my cab)

Maybe ask the visual pinball guys for advice

[joyrider3774]

asked it on vpforums have to wait.

Did another test, only disabled pup pack and enabled b2s backglass again (how i used to play a long time before this)

These are the results: No hickhups or slowdowns ever not even when hitting the jackpot although you can see when i had gotten the jackpot as the cpu usuage spiked to near 90-95%. Cpu usuage spikes 4 - 5 times to about 70% and for the rest it hovers around 45 % max so it's definatly the puppacks that require the most cpu as only using freezy + b2s gives no problems with my current setup

 
 

 

[joyrider3774]

success !!! at least with flinstones puppack. I have created an ffmpeg script (batch files) which will resize all videos inside it to 50% original size. Original video's were mostly 1920x1080 new videos are mostly 940x540 now just look at this cpu graph now  Plays at 60% cpu usuage max and only a few small spikes to 80% !!!



if someone needs these scripts they are very simple 

create resize_pup.bat

for /f "tokens=*" %%G in ('dir /b /s *.mp4') do conv "%%G"

create conv.bat

ffmpeg -y -i %1 -vf "scale=iw*.5:ih*.5" -c:a copy output.mp4
IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 (
  copy /y output.mp4 %1
  del /q output.mp4
)

the reason i delete the file is because not all files will succeed for example if width or height is not divisble by 2 otherwise it would copy the previously resized video to the original file

copy ffmpeg.exe and those 2 batch files in the root directory of the puppack and double click resize_pup.bat it will scan for *.mp4 files from current directory and resize them to 50% width. do not execute  resize_pup more than once per puppack or you'll end up with 50% of 50% of original file width / height. Run this on a fast pc

[scutters]

11 hours ago, joyrider3774 said:

I have created an ffmpeg script (batch files) which will resize all videos inside it to 50% original size.

I had to do a similar thing when i got stutter, but i was hitting limits of my GTX1060 6GB rather than cpu limits (so i didn't suggest it). Good to know it reduces overhead on both!

[joyrider3774]

23 minutes ago, scutters said:

I had to do a similar thing when i got stutter, but i was hitting limits of my GTX1060 6GB rather than cpu limits (so i didn't suggest it). Good to know it reduces overhead on both!

yeah it probably reduces cpu load because pinup player uses vlc with software rendering it's not compatible with hardware accelerated stuff. and probably it needs to scale less now and reduces load on the cpu

[tthurman]

Nice to see you found a solution that didn't require throwing more CPU power to it.  Thanks for sharing  your work!