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Solution for choppy animations

D

duyvan82

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 25, 2007
91
2
Sydney, Australia
So, a lot of us have been having problems with animations being choppy on Leopard (especially the new glass dock, genie effect and expose). Apparently, this is due to vsync. I have tried using quartz debug to disable automatic beam synchronization. As soon as it's disabled, the animations are silky smooth again, just like how they were on Tiger. So this is the solution

1. Launch Quartz debug (it comes with the development tools, if you don't have it, install it using your Leopard DVD)
2. Edit => Show Beam Sync Tools
3. Click "Disable Beam Synchronization"
4. Force quit Quartz Debug to make the change permanent

Your dock animation, as well as expose, dashboard, spaces should be smooth now. Lemme know how you go.
 
duyvan82 said:
So, a lot of us have been having problems with animations being choppy on Leopard (especially the new glass dock, genie effect and expose). Apparently, this is due to vsync. I have tried using quartz debug to disable automatic beam synchronization. As soon as it's disabled, the animations are silky smooth again, just like how they were on Tiger. So this is the solution

1. Launch Quartz debug (it comes with the development tools, if you don't have it, install it using your Leopard DVD)
2. Edit => Show Beam Sync Tools
3. Click "Disable Beam Synchronization"
4. Force quit Quartz Debug to make the change permanent

Your dock animation, as well as expose, dashboard, spaces should be smooth now. Lemme know how you go.
Click to expand...

Disabling beam sync is bad because now you're going to see a lot of horizontal tearing when animations occur because the graphics are updating faster than the screen can refresh making the animations appear to break apart. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_tearing
 
Kilamite said:
I cannot believe this works!

Good find.
Click to expand...

People have been able to turn of beam syncing in Tiger and Leopard too. It's nothing new but, it's bad. Who wants to see that ugly tearing? That's one reason why I hate Windows XP is because of the really bad tearing when you move stuff around... it just looks stupid and it's why Apple's OS is more advanced in that area.
 
True, but I haven't noticed much tearing.

And I just can't get over how smooth Dashboard is now.
 
Sdahe said:
The only thing that is choppy in my computer is the dock amplification... everything else is running nice
Click to expand...

I think tearing looks like crap. I'd rather have dropped framerates than ugly tearing. I just don't like it at all.
 
Seriously, I must be super lucky with this ONE THING, in Leopard.

My dashboard / dock (2d) / spaces / expose' / and "show desktop" have all been very fluid.

Even running Boinc 98% of the time, and Desksaver running screen savers.

I have a 24" white Imac, FTR.
 
Big-TDI-Guy said:
Seriously, I must be super lucky with this ONE THING, in Leopard.

My dashboard / dock (2d) / spaces / expose' / and "show desktop" have all been very fluid.

Even running Boinc 98% of the time, and Desksaver running screen savers.

I have a 24" white Imac, FTR.
Click to expand...

Mine are good too. The only thing is the Application stack is a bit choppy at the end, but I think that's a fluke in stacks with a lot of items in them. My downloads stack, documents stack, dashboard and the dock are smooth as silk. White iMac's FTW!
 
I haven't noticed any tearing at all, mind you, I'm on a first gen Macbook 1.83 with 2GB of RAM. I'm just happy as long as my animations are smooth hehehe

Glad it fixes it for some of you guys :)
 
for those of you who are experiencing page tearing and would like to re-enable vsync but still want to have smooth animations, here is a work around I just accidentally came up with

- launch quartz debug
- tick "automatic beam sync"
- force quit quartz debug
- run this command in the terminal
Code: 
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver Compositor -dict deferredUpdates 1
- restart your mac

Hope that helps :)
 
I really dont understand the issues some have with the GUI effects.

I have a Titanium PowerBook. It has 768MB RAM and a G4 @ 1.25 GHZ (not a consumer model) and a Radeon Mobility Pro 9000.

Thats pretty crappy specs really. I do NOT have a transparent menu bar. Other than that, everything works smooth as silk. I did NOT expect it to be so smooth, especially spaces. There is no horizontal tearing of dock icons with magnification on. Dashboard comes and goes fine and expose is great.

The only time I have slow downs is when I am doing really intense CPU stuff, like playing Sim City 4 Rush Hour in a window while surfing and chatting.
 
actually, nobody understands this issue. It happens very randomly, my mate who has the exact same Macbook as mine (CD 1.83Ghz) does not have any problem at all while I've been struggling with the dock, especially the 3D one. Mind you, his Mac only has 1GB RAM while mine has 2GB :mad: Some Mac Pros have the problem, some don't, the same goes to iMac and MBP
 
duyvan82 said:
for those of you who are experiencing page tearing and would like to re-enable vsync but still want to have smooth animations, here is a work around I just accidentally came up with

- launch quartz debug
- tick "automatic beam sync"
- force quit quartz debug
- run this command in the terminal
Code: 
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver Compositor -dict deferredUpdates 1
- restart your mac

Hope that helps :)
Click to expand...

Ok, it seems that you have a lot of free time, and guess what? I AM GLAD YOU HAVE A LOT OF FREE TIME! This command actually helped the choppy dock problem, now it is working as it was working in Tiger! Thanks dude! I really appreciate what you did. Now tell, what does this command do in Mac OS?

BTW, I vote for someone to sticky this post, it is a great fix
 
well that command enables...beam sync. Don't ask me how and why it fixed it, that's beyond me. As I said, I accidentally found out that it would fix the issue..

And trust me, I don't have as much free time as you may have thought lol it's just that having a choppy dock pissed me off. I know I'm a dock whore *sigh :D:D
 
Question

Do I need to disable it in Quatrz debug before entering the command line ?

If yes, I can't find the Quartz debug on Leopard DVD...can someone please point me in the right direction ??

Thanks in advance.
Ben
 
WOW, this actually worked, i'm up and running with smooth animations.
Thanks

duyvan82 said:
for those of you who are experiencing page tearing and would like to re-enable vsync but still want to have smooth animations, here is a work around I just accidentally came up with

- launch quartz debug
- tick "automatic beam sync"
- force quit quartz debug
- run this command in the terminal
Code: 
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver Compositor -dict deferredUpdates 1
- restart your mac

Hope that helps :)
Click to expand...
 
any way to do this without installing quartz debug? I can not wait until my friend gives me back the install DVD. those choppy animations are pissing me off to no end.
 
vega07 said:
any way to do this without installing quartz debug? I can not wait until my friend gives me back the install DVD. those choppy animations are pissing me off to no end.
Click to expand...


Code: 
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver Compositor -dict deferredUpdates 1
 
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