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Does your Finale saturate the CPU?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 8:07 am
by GarryW
The long and short of this post is:

If you have a 32-bit Windows machine, and you start the Windows task manager (control-alt-delete-Start Task Manager), and you start any simple Finale playback, what percentage of all CPU time does your Finale use?

Data from a couple other machines could be really helpful with a problem I'm having. My hope is that it's just my Finale that clobbers the CPU (while doing not very much work), and that perhaps there's a fix.

Magnificent test file attached, if needed.

thanks,
Garry
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Here's some gory details....

I've been doing video captures of Finale playbacks recently (yes, indeed, they'll be for posting on Youtube - after some post-processing.) And I'm using an excellent (and widely used) program called ffmpeg to do the capturing. But that program is having quite a bit of trouble because it can barely get enough CPU time do its work. And I'm suspicious of Finale.

Because:

I notice that my Finale (2014.5), when playing back, always "pegs the meter" on one of the four CPU cores on my machine. I.e., it uses all of the CPU that it can get (25% of the total power, as a single-threaded program.) That does leave three cores for ffmpeg, but... there's also memory contention to consider: if, in addition to all that CPU time, Finale is also banging on the shared memory, that'll slow down other programs. Even with multiple cores.

Re: Does your Finale saturate the CPU?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:03 am
by HaraldS
GarryW wrote:
Mon Oct 21, 2019 8:07 am
If you have a 32-bit Windows machine, and you start the Windows task manager (control-alt-delete-Start Task Manager), and you start any simple Finale playback, what percentage of all CPU time does your Finale use?
Nearly none, as my sounds are produced by external synthesizers.

Of course, if you have the same computer producing the sounds that is running Finale (e.g. using VSTs), the CPU usage would rise significantly. But the amount depends entirely on the VST software, e.g. how much memory it requests, how much caching is done, how fast data blocks can be transferred and the like: that is what can get any machine down to its knees, literally.

Re: Does your Finale saturate the CPU?

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:23 am
by GarryW
Nearly none? I'm jealous.

That example I sent was with everything at the default. That means, even playing back through Microsoft MIDI pegs the CPU with Finale. (The pegging also happens for all four of the VST's I have; I just tried them...)

Re: Does your Finale saturate the CPU?

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 2:47 pm
by oldmkvi
I'm on F25/Mac/Garritan/HP.
66% Idle when playing back.
Granted, it's only a Clarinet Quartet.
I use a Mytek Dac, External Speakers.

Re: Does your Finale saturate the CPU?

Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 6:45 pm
by GarryW
Well, that's not good. If that's 33% of *multiple cores* being used for your playback, that would sound like one of your CPU cores is saturated (too). And therefore total memory also on your machine might be getting pretty thrashed. Might not be uncommon.

So... I guess I'll have to do what I can with my CPU/memory time that's left over from my Finale as it is. Rather than trying a re-install or something. Thank you for saving me from that!

(I wonder if MM is sometimes running a "busy loop" to do their playback timing. That would not be the most elegant way of doing things...)

Garry

Re: Does your Finale saturate the CPU?

Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 5:13 pm
by oldmkvi
Sorry, I have no idea about that stuff.
Playback works great, AFAIC!

Re: Does your Finale saturate the CPU?

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 4:49 pm
by BuonTempi
GarryW wrote:
Mon Oct 21, 2019 8:07 am
I notice that my Finale (2014.5), when playing back, always "pegs the meter" on one of the four CPU cores on my machine.
Yes, Finale has always pegged one core for playback. Doesn't matter how powerful the CPU. Happens on my new 6-core 3GHz Mac Mini, and happens on 10-year-old computers with a fraction of the power. Memory does not seem to change, however.