Multiple Batch Stitchers?

[Matthew Mascheri]

Greetings,

I saw that this question was asked a while ago and wanted to see if there were any updates (planned) for this?  I am using the batch process to create equirectangular frames for video, and I'd like to be able to stitch frames quicker, or more that one at a time.  My system is fast, and can handle pretty much anything thrown at it, so I hate to see lots of that power going to waste only stitching one set of images.  Is there any way we can get more copies of the batch stitcher to run, or to force PTGui to use all processor threads and use more ram (I have 32 gig).

Thanks!

Matt

[Joergen Geerds]

Only under MacOS X: 

1. launch the batch stitcher

2. open the (hidden) /tmp folder

3. rename the ptgui_batch to ptgui_batch1

4. launch another instance of the batch stitcher

5. repeat #3 etc etc

I found 3 batch stitchers (with 8 cores each) enough for a 8 core machine to render 6 video 'streams"

there is no known solution for ptgui under windows.

[Matthew Mascheri]

Hey Joergen,

I did see this in the previous post, but it is only for MacOS not Windows  ;-(

""C:\Program Files\PTGui\PTGui.exe" -batch" as the call for the batch, there has to be a way to get a -m switch like Adobe After Effects has to run multiple instances.  

I guess Joost has to put that in, but maybe if we ask nice enough....  ;-)

Thanks

Matt

[Erik Krause]

Am 23.04.2013 01:21, schrieb Joergen Geerds:

> there is no known solution for ptgui under windows.

...apart from using virtual machines of course.

--
Erik Krause
http://www.erik-krause.de

[Joergen Geerds]

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 3:46:28 AM UTC-4, Erik Krause wrote:

> there is no known solution for ptgui under windows.
...apart from using virtual machines of course.

true, that could be a possibility... I'm not a win user, I was just merely repeating what Joost told me in 2011...  

[Erik Krause]

Am 23.04.2013 01:21, schrieb Joergen Geerds:

> there is no known solution for ptgui under windows.

I wonder whether someone tried with multiple users and the runas command?

[Matthew Mascheri]

Hey Erik, I just tried that and no dice.  I even tried an application called Sandboxie which is supposed to isolate an app from windows and other apps, but again, no dice.

Also tried to open PtGui as one user, run a batch, log out, log in as a different user, run PtGui - and it froze up on me.

Matt

[Erik Krause]

Am 23.04.2013 20:59, schrieb Matthew Mascheri:
> Hey Erik, I just tried that and no dice. I even tried an application
> called Sandboxie which is supposed to isolate an app from windows and other
> apps, but again, no dice.
> Also tried to open PtGui as one user, run a batch, log out, log in as a
> different user, run PtGui - and it froze up on me.

Interesting. I just tried to launch one instance as ordinary user, one
as admin. This worked (windows 7).

[Matthew Mascheri]

Really Erik?  So you got two unique batch stitchers to launch at the same time?

Can you detail out how you did that?

Did you run the batch direct or launch from within PTGui?

You ran one batch as as an admin, one batch as a normal user...any special permissions or other windows oddities that people need to be aware of?

Thanks

Matt

[Erik Krause]

Am 23.04.2013 21:39, schrieb Matthew Mascheri:
> Can you detail out how you did that?

Simple.

> Did you run the batch direct or launch from within PTGui?

Direct. I've created a shortcut containing
ptgui -batch
as command and started it with a double click. Then I started it again
via Shift-Click and "Run as Administrator". Result: two instances of
Batch Stitcher. I didn't test to run any project though...

> You ran one batch as as an admin, one batch as a normal user...any special
> permissions or other windows oddities that people need to be aware of?

None that I know of. I have a pretty normal win 7 pro x64 installation.

[Matthew Mascheri]

Wow, a huge thanks to Erik who helped me come to a working solution (kinda), cause now I've created another issue.

I can now run as many Batch Stitchers using the single command below in a .bat file (see attached, just rename from .tmp to .bat).  No multiple users, no right clicking just double click to run!

start "" "C:\Program Files\PTGui\PTGui.exe" -batch

Repeat this command in the bat file for as many instances you want and boom, another instance of the Batch Stitcher!  You can only run this once, so if you need more stitchers, you need to repeat the command more in the .bat file

This means you can now run multiple batch stitches at the same time instead of waiting for a batch list to finish up.

The problem that I am having now is taking advantage of multiple instances to stitch a single batch render.  Right now if I launch four instances and run the same batch, the same panorama file is re-written four times (not what I want).  The batch stitchers do not talk to each other or see that a particular stitch has already been completed. 

It would be extremely helpful to have the multiple batch stitchers to work on PTGui projects 1,2,3 and 4 at the same time, and know to intuitively move on to the next available PTGui project.

I know I can always split a 2000 frame stitch into 4 sets of 500, and it is only a small inconvenience to do so, but to have all the batch stitchers work together would be awesome!

Many thanks again to Erik.

Happy batch stitching!

Matt

[Henrik Tived]

Hi Matt,

 

When you run multiple batch’s what is your machines performance? Are you using 100% CPU, RAM etc…??

Just trying to see if you can actually max out the resources by using multiple incidences vs. running one at the time and if so what is your resources usage in that scenario.

 

You could find that your bottleneck is somewhere else J

 

Henrik

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[Matthew Mascheri]

Hi Henrik,

I'll be running an intensive test later this evening, so I will report my findings some time tomorrow.

Matt

On Tuesday, April 23, 2013 8:45:45 PM UTC-5, tived wrote:

Hi Matt,

 

When you run multiple batch’s what is your machines performance? Are you using 100% CPU, RAM etc…??

Just trying to see if you can actually max out the resources by using multiple incidences vs. running one at the time and if so what is your resources usage in that scenario.

 

You could find that your bottleneck is somewhere else J

 

Henrik

 

 

Wow, a huge thanks to Erik who helped me come to a working solution (kinda), cause now I've created another issue.

[Henrik Tived]

Thanks Matt that will be really helpful, as it might be useful as it may identify any bottlenecks – will you be running a single stitch as well as a reference?

 

Also could you mail me that batch file, but zip it up it keeps getting stuck in my email filters, thanks

 

Henrik

--

[Matthew Mascheri]

Ok first test complete, and this .bat file passed with flying colors. I was able to stitch over 6400 6kx3k equirectangular images (with lots of masks and other corrections) in about 5 hours with four instances of Batch Stitcher open. This same process using a single batch instance would have taken 20+ hours to complete.

The bottleneck is the CPU which I had pegged at almost 100% the entire time. I have a pretty beefy I-7 3930k intel running win 7 on dual SSD. I was reading and writing to an external USB3 drive. Memory was not an issue at all. I may have maxed out at just over 6 gig (I have 32) but it was closer to 5 gig during most of the night.

Hope this helps

Matt

[Erik Krause]

Am 24.04.2013 02:26, schrieb Matthew Mascheri:
> I can now run as many Batch Stitchers using the single command below in a
> .bat file (see attached, just rename from .tmp to .bat). No multiple
> users, no right clicking just double click to run!
>
> start "" "C:\Program Files\PTGui\PTGui.exe" -batch

Really that easy? Well, PTGui batch lists have a simple XML structure.
They start with the lines
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<PTGuiBatchList>
followed by the list of pts files in <Project tags. Hence it should be
possible to write a script which takes a batch list and split it in an
arbitrary number of lists and passes them to the same number of batch
stitchers. It could even be done in bad old batch language.
Unfortunately I don't have the time to do it at the moment. But I can
help offlist if somebody wants to try...

[Erik Krause]

Am 24.04.2013 20:39, schrieb Erik Krause:
> Hence it should be
> possible to write a script which takes a batch list and split it in an
> arbitrary number of lists and passes them to the same number of batch
> stitchers

... I've done it. It's only 42 lines, but it took me three hours. I
forgot almost anything about batch language. But first of all I forgot
how horrible it is ;-)

Contact me off list if you want a copy.

[Henrik Tived]

Writing to an external drive could be a but slow approx 120mb/s if USB3

Thanks for doing the test

Henrik

Sent from my iPhone

[Alex Marsh]

6kx3k seems like quite a high resolution for 360 video playback. I'm not sure how many computers would be able to play back competently at a frame rate of say 25fps or drop frame. Would it not be better to output the equi files in the resolution that you require for playback? It would speed up the processing time no end.

[Matthew Mascheri]

Hey Zipster,

6kx3k is what I need (actually higher) for projection in a dome environment.  I really need 8kx4k to match the projectors we work with in the dome.  We can then always down-rez for web, tablet and mobile devices if we want.

Cheers

Matt

[Henrik Tived]

That didn't make much sense what I wrote :-) it must be the isolation in Australian outback where I am at the moment :-) and limited communication

By the sound of things you are happy with the setup and it'd and improvement over using just one batch incident.

I can't test this on my computer at home, we must have had a power failure as I can't access it remotely. It will be another 3 or so weeks till I get back

All the best

Henrik

Sent from my iPhone