HeavyM can be very resource-intensive, here are a few tips to help you make sure you’ll get the best performance out of it:
- Make sure HeavyM is running on the 3D graphics card and that its drivers are up to date.
- Try to reduce your use of resource-intensive features when you don't need them. For example, you can disable the preview in the canvas (View → Show Preview), or disable Spout/Syphon (Output → Enable Spout/Syphon) and NDI (Output → Enable NDI) when you're not using them.
- If you are using videos in your project:
- Try to reduce their resolution and bitrate and increase their compression to an acceptable quality/performance compromise. We also recommend using .mov/H264 files (or HAP Alpha or ProRes 4444 if you need transparency).
- You can also try to enable the use of hardware acceleration for video decoding. It improves performances and reduces lags but might create occasional glitches on some videos or hardware. You can do so on each individual video in its media settings, or change the default option for all new videos in Edit → Preferences... → Rendering → Video decoding.
- Lastly, in Edit → Preferences... → Rendering → Global, you can choose to "Optimize rendering for videos" (instead of "effects").
⚠️ If you are using an older version than HeavyM 2.12.1, you might experience a glitch at the end of some videos just before they loop. A workaround is to use the PhotoJPEG / MotionJPEG codec. The downside is that the converted files are heavier and don't support an alpha channel. A simple transcoding tool on macOS is AVF Batch Exporter by the VIDVOX team. On Windows, MPEG Streamclip does the trick.
Also, check out our article on how to choose the best computer and components for video mapping!