< Back to MixEmergency Tips & Tricks

MixEmergency 3 Optimisation

Below are some tips to help you get the most out of MixEmergency 3 and its new GPU-accelerated video decoding of H.264 videos (on compatible hardware).

GPU Acceleration

To take advantage of the GPU-accelerated video decoding you need to ensure:

• Your computer hardware supports GPU-acceleration (most laptops after 2010 are capable of this, though some are limited to only one video).
• Your videos are able to be decoded via GPU-accelerated decoders (in most cases, encoding with the H.264 codec should be fine).
• GPU-acceleration resources aren't being used elsewhere (i.e. close any videos playing in your web-browser, or in other applications such as QuickTime Player).

You can check whether GPU-acceleration is being used for a video by opening the Info window of MixEmergency. This will list either "CPU", "GPU / Hap", or "GPU / H.264" as the method of decoding. Note that this will only change when a video is loaded, so if you disable GPU-accelerated video decoding, you will need to reload the video before the setting will take effect.

Advanced Preferences

In the Advanced Preferences of MixEmergency, ensure that the preference "Enable GPU-Accelerated Video Decoding" is enabled (this is enabled by default).

It's also important to set the Cache size to a level suitable for your GPU. It is recommended that you set this lower than half of the available RAM of your GPU (closer to a quarter is better). For example, if using an Intel HD Graphics 4000 (1024 MB) GPU, it is recommended that you set the Cache size to between 200 to 300 MBs.

Bonus Optimisation

Here are a few other tips to help you optimise the use of your computer's CPU and GPU:

• MixEmergency's Single-Window Preview mode is more efficient than the Multi-Window Preview mode.
• If using Serato DJ (or Scratch Live), don't overlay MixEmergency over sections of the Serato DJ that are updating regularly, such as the waveforms or deck views, as this will place a significant additional strain on your GPU.
• It's more efficient if all the windows of MixEmergency are opaque - so if you've lowered the transparency level in MixEmergency's Preferences, it can help to raise these again to the maximum level.
• If using Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), it is recommended that you enable the Reduce Transparency preference in the Display section of the Accessibility panel in Mac OS X's System Preferences.

This tip was created with MixEmergency 3.0.0 and Mac OS X 10.10.2. Subsequent versions may differ.