recording current experimental time

Michiel Spape Michiel.Spape at nottingham.ac.uk
Tue Jul 12 11:05:37 UTC 2011 

Hi,
I'd sooner see the difference in ram/hdd performance - I've not noticed E-Prime making any marked use of the GPU (and some of its visual performance is pretty abhorrent, if you try canvas stuff). Anyway, two suggestions from a different angle, perhaps they help:
- Rather than using bitmaps, why not use text displays? You can always add a little border to a text, and don't display any text at all. Or Ascii, works pretty well as well... Anyway, that saves all bmp loading.
- Also, you could use canvas stuff instead of bitmaps, and draw everything to a separate buffered display. That way, all loading can be done at your leisure (although for 100 lines, it won't be *that much*) and only at the vital moment, your buffered display is swapped for the 'real' one.
Best,
Mich

Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu


-----Original Message-----
From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tobias
Sent: 12 July 2011 11:54
To: E-Prime
Subject: Re: recording current experimental time

Well, the computers have some differences, the slowest is a Core2
Pentium, the fastest an i5. But we are talking of really small bitmaps
of 40x40 pixels, I guess this shouldn't make much of a difference even
for a 486er.
The two bitmaps are a horizontal and a vertical line. They are
distributed on a matrix of 10x10 positions.

On 11 Jul., 20:11, Peter Quain <pqu... at une.edu.au> wrote:
> Hi Tobias,
>
> That much difference between machines sounds pretty bad, and they
> can't be too 'comparable' hardware wise. Could be a faulty graphics
> card / driver on the 5 second machine? Is it a GeForce card, perhaps?
> They can perform really badly. Maybe it has a bunch of processes
> running background, chewing up CPU? Anyway, 5 seconds is an age, I'd
> be wary about using that machine.
>
> If you only have 2 stimuli, what are they? (why do they need to be bitmaps)
>
> Peter
>
> At 03:37 AM 12/07/2011, you wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >Thanks Peter!
>
> >That command and your suggested syntax perfectly worked out. Now I
> >know which part of my code was so time consuming.
> >However, I am not sure if I can reduce the timing and still I don't
> >know why the loading time differs so much between computers.
>
> >Here is the crucial part of the code:
>
> >for i = 1 to 101
> >'matrix positions
> >                 Set ResponseMask_SlideImage = New SlideImage
> >                 ResponseMask_SlideImage.Name = "Image" & i
> >                 InitSlideImageDefaults ResponseMask_SlideImage
> >                 ResponseMask_SlideImage.X = "104 " + ((i-1) mod 10)*48
> >                 ResponseMask_SlideImage.Y = "24" + ((i-1) \ 10)*48
> >                 ResponseMask_SlideImage.Width = "40"
> >                 ResponseMask_SlideImage.Height = "40"
> >                 ResponseMask.States.Item("Default").Objects.Add
> >ResponseMask_SlideImage, "Image" & i
>
> >Select Case ResponseMask.ActiveState
> >Case "Default"
>
> >                 Set ResponseMask_SlideImage =
> >CSlideImage(ResponseMask.States.Item("Default").Objects(i))
> >                 ResponseMask_SlideImage.Filename = "Mask.bmp"
> >                 if i = 1 then ResponseMask_SlideImage.Filename =
> > "fixation.bmp"
> >                 ResponseMask_SlideImage.Load
> >                 Set ResponseMask_SlideImage = Nothing
>
> >end select
> >next i
>
> >Especially the "ResponseMask_SlideImage.Load" takes 5-8 ms. As I have
> >a display of 100 elements this adds up to almost a second. However,
> >there are only two types of stimuli, so maybe there is way that the
> >two bitmaps are loaded once each but "built up" on all 100 positions?
>
> >Any clue why loading time differs so much between computers with
> >comparable hardware?
>
> >Thanks a lot in advance!
> >Best,
> >Tobias
>
> >On 11 Jul., 17:57, Peter Quain <pqu... at une.edu.au> wrote:
> > > in the e-basic help look up: Clock.Read. It is ms since start of the
> > > script. You can store value in variables and compute various
> > > durations if you want.
>
> > > Example:
> > > 'Make some Global Variables (in 'User' Tab)
> > > Dim time1, time2, dur1 as Long
> > > 'At some later time in your script, grab time since script started
> > > time1 = Clock.Read
> > > '[.... some more part of your experiment ....]
> > > 'Grab time since script started
> > > time2 = Clock.Read
> > > 'Compute interval, time1 to time2
> > > dur1 = time2 - time1
>
> > > At 01:39 AM 12/07/2011, you wrote:
>
> > > >Hi together,
>
> > > >I programmed an experiment in which a lot of positions and stimuli
> > > >have to be calculated online. Calculation of slides happens BEFORE
> > > >they are executed. Interestingly, this can cause a delay of up to 5
> > > >sec (not ms!) for some computer, 2 sec for other computers and only 1
> > > >sec on a third computer. Importantly, these computers are comparable
> > > >regarding their hardware, i.e. processor, RAM etc.
>
> > > >To test what exactly takes E-Prime so long under some circumstances,
> > > >Iw ould like to measure the experimental time at several points in
> > > >time during a single trial. So I can find out which part of the
> > > >programming should be optimized or if there's even an error I don't
> > > >recognize.
>
> > > >Therefore I would like to have, let's say 10 attributes and assign 10
> > > >times the current run time to one of these attributes. Unfortunately I
> > > >couldn't find the right command for this operation in the manual.
>
> > > >Does any of you know how I could do so? Or did sth similar (i.e. this
> > > >delay) happen to one of you?
>
> > > >Best,
> > > >Tobias
>
> > > >--
> > > >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> > > >Groups "E-Prime" group.
> > > >To post to this group, send email to e-prime at googlegroups.com.
> > > >To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> > > >e-prime+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> > > >For more options, visit this group at
> > > >http://groups.google.com/group/e-prime?hl=en.
>
> >--
> >You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> >Groups "E-Prime" group.
> >To post to this group, send email to e-prime at googlegroups.com.
> >To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> >e-prime+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
> >For more options, visit this group at
> >http://groups.google.com/group/e-prime?hl=en.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "E-Prime" group.
To post to this group, send email to e-prime at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to e-prime+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/e-prime?hl=en.

This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.

This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment
may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system:
you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the
University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "E-Prime" group.
To post to this group, send email to e-prime at googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to e-prime+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/e-prime?hl=en.

More information about the Eprime mailing list