Load balancing

FFRend 2.1.00 adds an important performance-related feature (load balancing), and fixes a large number of bugs, some of them serious. Issues marked (V2) are specific to version 2.

For more on how to use load balancing, see the load balancing manual page. For the theory behind load balancing, see my article Pipelining for Plugin Chains.

1. A load balancing dialog was added, which allows multiple threads to be assigned to a plugin. Given sufficient cores, load balancing can greatly improve throughput in the common case where some plugins require significantly more CPU time than others (asymmetrical loading). The dialog is accessed via Edit/Load Balance or Shift+L. Load balance settings are stored in the project. Note that load balancing is only effective for stateless filters: assigning multiple threads to a stateful filter may cause output strobing.

2. Changing the frame rate in the Options dialog caused an incorrect recording length if the record duration was specified in time (as opposed to frames). Fixed.

3. The single step command wasn't updating the slider positions of modulated parameters. Fixed. (V2)

4. In the history view, the zoom setting now persists in the registry. (V2)

5. In the history view, the renderer's display name was changed from Output to Renderer, to be consistent with the other views. (V2)

6. The file browser's list control had an extra border (in XP and up) which appeared as a thin black outline. Fixed.

7. In the file browser, some editing keys (Delete, Insert, Escape, Ctrl+Z) behaved unexpectedly during label editing: they triggered app behaviors instead of edit control behaviors. Fixed.

8. Pressing the Escape key while dragging a plugin tab, patch row, or metaparameter row failed to cancel the drag operation. Fixed. (V2)

9. Pressing the Escape key failed to cancel a drag operation if a dialog row control had focus. Fixed.

10. If an error occurred while restoring the job control state, invalid jobs could result and persist. Partial data is now purged, and the user is given the option to delete the potentially corrupt job control file.

11. Restarting the engine caused frame queues to be destroyed and recreated, incurring needless overhead; the queues are now resized instead. (V2)

12. The options dialog was converted from a dialog to a property sheet, allowing related options to be grouped into pages for easier comprehension.

13. Changing the MIDI device can be slow if the CPU is heavily loaded, so a wait cursor is now shown, and the main frame is explicitly updated to ensure that the options dialog erases cleanly.

14. The sync oscillators command (Edit/Sync Oscillators) was initially removed in V2, but it's been restored. (V2)

15. The graph view was causing a handle leak, in which each graph update would leak two process information handles. The bug could be demonstrated by resizing the graph view. Fixed. (V2)

16. Deleting a plugin or opening a new project could cause a serious memory leak, which would occur while shrinking the frame buffer pool. As many as two frames could leak, depending on whether any of the deleted frames were currently assigned to a DirectDraw surface. Repeatedly undoing and redoing a plugin deletion would eventually demonstrate the bug. Fixed. (V2)

17. Dropping files onto the app from Explorer would leak heap memory, due to OnDropFiles failing to call DragFinish. Fixed.

18. Left-clicking a parameter slider's thumb without moving it added an undo event, even though the parameter value was unchanged. Fixed.

19. Opening a recent file via the file menu could cause the file menu to bounce, i.e. redisplay unexpectedly. This occurred after deleting a row in the Parameter, Patch, MIDI Setup, or Metaparameter views, while one its controls had focus, which would cause a hidden form view to receive focus. Fixed. (V2)

20. If MIDI Setup was showing a plugin-specific page, and one of the page's row controls had focus, attempting to select a main menu command via the Alt key would cause an infinite loop, permanently hanging the app. This is the infamous WM_GETDLGCODE bug, solved by removing the DS_CONTROL style from the MIDI Setup dialog. Fixed.

21. If a metaparameter was added while the Metaparams view was hidden, and the MIDI Setup view was visible and showing its Metaparam page, the new metaparameter wouldn't immediately appear in MIDI Setup. It would appear when the MIDI Setup view was next updated, e.g. by hiding and reshowing it or selecting a different page. This could occur when creating a metaparameter via the main view's context menu. Fixed. (V2)

22. In the MIDI and Metaparameter views, the header columns didn't line up correctly with their corresponding controls, due to a row item coordinate conversion error. Fixed. (V2)

23. Right-clicking the History view's scroll bars showed the view's context menu, instead of the scroll bar context menu. Fixed. (V2)