Script Special Settings for SAC-SAW Start

[Carl G.]

Ah, I wasn't sure about Power Management. I have a separate power plan for Audio, but not having to choose it manually would be nice. I was thinking that other things like background programs and settings Bob recommends, but might be less than ideal for office-type functions, could be toggled through Logins. But I haven't tried it yet. Still haven't recorded any jobs on the laptop, but at some point the 5-year-old studio tower will get flaky.

While the main feature is toggling the power plan, the script also changes the CPU affinity for SawStudio to use just the first two physical cores of the CPU (or one if you desire).

The hope in the affinity change is that we can still have hyperthreading enabled for the rest of the operating system but prioritize SawStudio to just a particular core. (We noticed that Bob's Force Single CPU option doesn't appear to change CPU affinity... so we're hoping that by changing the CPU affinity to one (or two) cores that we're sending a strong suggestion to the Windows scheduler that we want SawStudio to run on just one or two physical CPUs... and that if two processes are contending for that CPU that the priority be given to SawStudio and the other process be assigned to another CPU).

We just did a quick test of SawStudio playing, while opening up Lightroom to do heavy editing on large RAW files just to see if there was any degradation in SawStudio performance... we couldn't detect any. But we did notice that Lightroom seemed to hit the other cores higher than the first two cores that we had SawStudio on which seemed good. In real practice, I only have a word processor open for reading/editing scripts while producing in SawStudio.

[Bob L]

Carl... using the Force single CPU option in SAW will force it to one cpu only... but of course other programs and threads can still use the other cpus... but they may also stomp on SAWs cpu...

No need to fool with cpu affinity on SAW.

Bob L

[Carl G.]

Carl... using the Force single CPU option in SAW will force it to one cpu only... but of course other programs and threads can still use the other cpus... but they may also stomp on SAWs cpu...

No need to fool with cpu affinity on SAW.

Bob L

That's what we needed to know... thanks Bob! We were confused because with the CPU Option checked, we saw all the Affinity boxes still checked for all the other cores... even though it's obvious on the graph that SAW was using just one core. He will leave affinity out of the script. Thanks.

[Carl G.]

Power Management Wrapper for SawStudio

Description
A simple Powershell wrapper that will launch SAWStudio. The standout feature of the script is to conveniently change the Windows Power Plan to a more performance oriented plan only while SAWStudio is running. This allows you to set your laptop or computer to a default power saving plan of your choice in a multi-purpose environment, then automatically switch it into High Performance mode only while SawStudio is running.

The setup is this:

1. Create a desired High Performance Power Plan optimized for SawStudio. Call it "SawStudioPower"
2. Place SawStudioPM.ps1 in the SawStudio folder (download below)
   Right click on the file -> Properties. In the "General" tab, check "Unblock"
3. Create a shortcut to SawStudioPM.ps1 (for starting SawStudio)
   Enter "Target": C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powersh ell.exe -File "SawStudioPM.ps1"
   Enter "Start In": "C:\Program Files\SAWStudio" (or whatever directory SawStudio is in)
   (you can also change the icon to the SawStudio icon if you wish)
4. Open up PowerShell and type: Get-ExecutionPolicy (and press enter)
   If the results says "Restricted" or "AllSigned", you'll need to follow the note below before running SawStudioPM.ps1.
5. Launch SawStudio via the newly created shortcut from above (I pinned my shortcut to the taskbar).

Note

Windows, by default, disables the execution of Powershell scripts. To allow SawStudioPM.ps1 to run, you need to open a Powershell window (run as administrator) and type the following:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

The above command is system wide, and allows local Powershell scripts to execute, but configuration files or other scripts that are downloaded from the internet have to be signed by a trusted publisher before they will run.
If you decide later to revert to Windows default, you can undo the above change by opening PowerShell (run as admistrator) and type the following:

Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy Undefined

You can read more about Set-ExecutionPolicy at https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/.../hh849812.aspx.


Additional Notes:
The script assumes that it lives in the same directory as the executable. So if the executable is in C:\Program Files\SAWStudio\SAWStudio.exe, then the script must also be placed in C:\Program Files\SAWStudio\.

At the top of the script are several variables which can be set

$target_plan = "SawStudioPower"
$exe_name = "SAWStudio.exe"

Here's what each of the code variables do:

• target_plan: The plan to toggle when executable is launched.
  The script will save the currently active plan and when the launched process
  exits, the power plan will be toggled back.
• exe_name: name of the executable (in the current folder) to launch

Download
The script file is available here (right click and Save As): SAWStudioPM.ps1
Here's the hash to verify the integrity of the original file: (sha1: cceb6f540f9fe03fc83b61331414a96c9bf537a4)

The script above is released under the BSD license. You may modify and redistribute the script (as long as license is kept intact).

[Carl G.]

We also posted a Power Management Wrapper for SAC on the SAC forum.

You can run both Power Management Wrappers (both SawStudio/SAC) at the same time but you will need to exit the programs in the reverse order in which you started them for Power Management to return to your default Power Management.