Ask Your Question
0

warpAffine execution time varying

asked 2014-08-06 06:50:48 -0600

Plouf gravatar image

Hello,

I'm working on global motion estimation in videos. And I noticed that the execution time of the warpAffine function varies a lot (same input image, same transformation). Here's a small test :

Mat im = imread("image_test.png");
Mat wavimg = Mat(im.rows,im.cols,CV_8UC1);
Mat mapMatrix = Mat(2,3,CV_32F);
mapMatrix.at<float>(0,0) = 1.05;
mapMatrix.at<float>(0,1) = 0.0001;
mapMatrix.at<float>(0,2) = 5.3;
mapMatrix.at<float>(1,0) = -0.0001;
mapMatrix.at<float>(1,1) = 1.05;
mapMatrix.at<float>(1,2) = -0.8;

double tic, toc, tictoc;
for (int i=0; i<1000; i++){
    tic = (double)cvGetTickCount();
    warpAffine(im,wavimg,mapMatrix,wavimg.size(),CV_INTER_LINEAR+WARP_INVERSE_MAP);
    toc = (double)cvGetTickCount();
    tictoc = (toc-tic)/(1000*(double)cvGetTickFrequency());
    printf("time: %fms\n",(float)tictoc);
}
return 0;

Here are the execution times for 300 samples. These times are mainly around 0.8 ms but some of them are higher (up to 1.4 ms). I don't understand why and I'd like to know the reason. My configuration : windows 7 pro, visual studio express 2013, opencv 2.4.8, Intel Core i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.4Ghz, 64 bits

Could anybody help me please ?

Regards, image description

edit retag flag offensive close merge delete

2 answers

Sort by ยป oldest newest most voted
1

answered 2014-08-12 07:02:35 -0600

Plouf gravatar image

I have solved my problem. I compiled Opencv with the option WITH_OPENMP. My computer was using 8 threads. I forced it to use 1 thread (with the code lign : omp_set_num_threads(1);) and my execution is faster now and stable. On the chart below, I call 1000 times the function warpaffine with one thread (blue dots) and with 8 threads (red dots). With 8 threads, the execution time explodes sometimes (the red dots at 5 ms are higher actually, I reduced their values (~50ms) to 5 ms for scaling reason). As I call warpaffine function several times per frame and some other optimized opencv functions, there were some big execution time leaps. Now, the execution time per frame is stable (+- 1ms) and faster (time/2). It's less efficient to use more threads due probably to data transmission.

image description

edit flag offensive delete link more
0

answered 2014-08-06 07:00:09 -0600

boaz001 gravatar image

Issues like this are almost impossible to track back to one cause. Simplified explanation: this is because of the operating system controlling the processes and threads and the utilization of processor(s).

I think it is more important to solve problems then to find causes. So is this extra delay giving you trouble performance wise?

edit flag offensive delete link more

Comments

Hey boaz001, thanks for your answer. I want to estimate global motion in real time and I want to have time left to do other stuff. My video is 720x576 at 30fps. I'd like to estimate global motion in less than 15ms. I call 10 times per frame the function warpaffine. So it's important for my application to have a stable execution delay. I tried the function calcOpticalFlowPyrLK on a predefined set of points and I noticed the same irregularities..

Plouf gravatar imagePlouf ( 2014-08-07 09:21:50 -0600 )edit

To understand the problem and not basically ask the same question again. You must understand that you simply cannot guarantee something like timing on a software platform that has hardware that is controlled by some operating system. There is no stable execution delay! (Although I would call that 99% of warpAffine that runs in ~0.9ms very stable.)

Problems like this can be solved in many ways, to name a few; - Downscaling, use a lower resolution - Lower framerate - Faster hardware - Improve or simplify algorithm - Improve code - Not solve it; accept lag or missing frames - ...many more...

boaz001 gravatar imageboaz001 ( 2014-08-08 03:42:32 -0600 )edit

Question Tools

Stats

Asked: 2014-08-06 06:50:48 -0600

Seen: 1,887 times

Last updated: Aug 12 '14