How to use the Profiler in FMOD Studio

FMOD Studio
1

Hey,

I’m trying to use the profiler in FMOD studio to figure out a slowdown problem I’m having.

I can connect FMOD studio to my game properly, but when I go to the profiler window all of the sections are blank.

On the code side, my system is initialized with these flags:
studio init flags set to FMOD_STUDIO_INIT_LIVEUPDATE
fmod Init Flags are FMOD_INIT_NORMAL | FMOD_INIT_3D_RIGHTHANDED | FMOD_INIT_PROFILE_ENABLE

If anyone has any advice on how to get the profiler working please let me know. Also, is there any documentation out there on how to use the profiler?

Thanks!

2

I would also like some documentation on how to use the Profiler.

Thanks

3

What is the IP and port set to when you connect?

Also I believe there is some documentation in the FMOD Programmers API download.

4

If the game is running on the same computer as Studio then you can connect to 127.0.0.1 or just “localhost” (without the quotation marks). If the game is running on a remote device or console then you will have to find the IP address of that device. On windows you can use ipconfig, on OSX you can check preferences -> networking.

For Android:

http://android.stackexchange.com/questi ... -phone-has

For iOS:

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=496
5

In code, I was able to get the profiler and live update to work with FMOD Studio 1.2.2 by initializing with:

fmod_system.initialize(32, FMOD_STUDIO_INIT_LIVEUPDATE, FMOD_INIT_PROFILE_ENABLE, extraDriverData);

To do live update, from within FMOD Studio: File->Connect to Game… and then select the default loopback of IP “localhost” (127.0.0.1). This allows not only changing mixer setting for channels while the game’s playing but also data switching of sounds already loaded in a bank, trigger range timeline changes, effects changes and more which is pretty cool! This is a pretty amazing functionality for sound artists using FMOD Studio - looking for documentation details when it’s available.

For running the profiler, I just used the start menu:
FMOD Studio API Windows->FMOD Profiler

Then just hit “Connect” with the default values when running on the same machine. There’s a bunch of extra options by clicking on the spanner (ie. wrench) in the bottom window in the top right.

It would be really nice if there was an indication of which sounds were actually playing as it appears to just be grouped by group inputs? As far as I can tell it isn’t possible to tell which sounds are currently playing. Having the option for a time tagged .csv spreadsheet output log of when sound events are triggered with information about CPU usage, voice usage etc… would be nice. Maybe having an example of how to hook up these with an example in the Studio API code examples would be helpful too in conjunction with the full documentation for these functions. It looks like things are currently in flux in this area of FMOD Studio so hopefully things will continue to progress.

1 Like
6

Hi guys,

The FMOD_STUDIO_INIT_LIVEUPDATE flag will activate the profiler so you don’t need the FMOD_INIT_PROFILE_ENABLE flag.

We have plans to expand the profiler to include features such as these, expect to see this in the future.

7

The original poster did mention that he was able to connect to his game, but got an empty screen. I had the same, and the answer was in the manual (FMod 1.05.14 at least, that manual came with 1.06.00).

You can to right-click the ‘Session’ panel and select ‘New session’. At that point you should get some channels like ‘Master Bus’. Then selecting the Record button, you can record a bit of the audio/events inside your game, which you can play back. Go from there.