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> Testing and Optimizing Your Content > Unreal Insights > Timing Insights

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Timing Insights

An Overview of the Timing Insights Window in Unreal Insights.

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Timing Insights Main Toolbar

The Timing Insights window is where you can find per-frame performance data for different tracks, including the CPU and GPU tracks. The Timing view has a new toolbar, splitting the Tracks drop-down menu into multiple menus where you can look at different visualizations of the time your project spends on various tasks.

The Timing Insights window features the Frames panel (1), the Timing panel (2), the Log panel (3), the Timers and Counters tabs (4), and the Callers and Callees panels (5).

Timing Insights Main Toolbar

The toolbar provides the capability to select blocks of time to view in groups, sort, or categorize data, and review log output.

You can toggle the visibility to display data for that frame in the Timing, Timers, Callers, Callees, Counters, and Log tracks by clicking on each respective track.

You can select blocks of time to view in aggregate, show or hide the respective panels. sort or categorize data, and review log output. To do this, click on a single frame in the Frames panel, or click and drag a section of the scrub bar at the top of the Timing panel, known as the Time Ruler.

Frames

The Frames panel displays the total time taken by each frame using a bar graph format. This is useful for identifying general trends, such as low performance or framerate drops when a level is loaded, an unoptimized scene is visible, or spawning a large number of Actors simultaneously.

The frames panel displays the Frames, Timing, Timers, Callers, Callees, Counters, and Log tracks.

Hovering the cursor over a bar causes that frame's index and running time to appear.

If you right-click on on the bar, the following Zoom context menu options will appear:


Option	Description
Auto Zoom	Toggles auto zoom, which fits the entire session time range into the frames display window.
Zoom Timing View on Frame Selection	Toggles whether the timing view is zoomed when a frame is selected.

These options are also available to edit in the UnrealInsightsSettings.ini file.

Timing

You can show or hide each track individually by clicking the arrow next to it.

All Tracks

Clicking the All Tracks dropdown arrow displays a list of all available tracks.

CPU/GPU

Clicking the CPU/GPU dropdown arrow displays theCPU and GPU tracks and thread group options.

Other

Clicking the Other dropdown arrow displays options for visibility of the Main Graph, File Activity, Asset Loading, and Frames Tracks.

Plugins

Clicking the Plugins dropdown arrow displays Tracks and options that are exposed by plugins, including information about Slate, Gameplay, Animation, and RDG Tracks.

View Mode

The View Mode dropdown arrow displays controls for various options for the Timing View.


Timing View Option	Description
Compact Mode (key shortcut: C)	Toggles compact mode which displays the timing tracks with reduced height supporting tracks.
Auto Hide Empty Tracks (key shortcut: V)	Auto-hides empty tracks without timing events. This option is persistent to the `UnrealInsightsSettings.ini` file.
Depth Limit (key shortcut: X) * Unlimited / 4 Lanes / Single Lane	Toggles the display of different CPU depth options. The X key can be used as a shortcut to cycle through the different CPU depth options.
Coloring Mode (CPU Thread tracks)	You can assign a color to CPU / GPU timing events based on their duration (inclusive time). The color key is as follows: ≥ 10ms : red. ≥ 1ms : yellow. ≥ 100μs : green. ≥ 10μs : cyan. ≥ 1μs : blue. < 1μs : grey.
Allow Panning on Screen Edges	When enabled, panning continues when the mouse cursor reaches the edges of the screen.

Quick Find Widget

The Quick Find widget is used to search and filter events displayed in the Timing view. The widget can be opened from the Timing view context menu by right-clicking on a Timing event or by using the CTRL + F shortcut when the Timing view has focus.

The Quick Find widget search logic is defined using Groups and Filters. Group nodes contain child Filter nodes and define the logic applied to the children's result. Filter nodes are leaf nodes and contain a filter each.

Each filter contains:

The filter type, that can be selected from a drop down menu.
The filter operator, also selectable using a drop down menu.
The filter value, that can be entered using a text box.

Once the filter logic is created, it can be used to search for events or filter the tracks from the Timing View.


Filter	Description
Find First	Searches for the first event matching the filter in the order of the event's start time. If a match is found it is selected and the Timing view brings it into view.
Find Previous	Searches for the previous event matching the filter starting from the current selected event's start time. If no event is selected, it acts as a Find First.
Find Next	Searches for the next event matching the filter starting from the current selected event's start time. If no event is selected, it acts as a Find Last.
Find Last	Searches for the last event matching the filter in the order of the event's start time. If a match is found it is selected and the Timing view brings it into view.
Apply Filter	Highlights all timing events that pass the filter logic from the tracks.
Clear filters	Stops highlighting events based on the filter's logic.

If you make changes to the filter's logic, you must click Apply Filter again to highlight events based on the new logic.

Timers

The Timers panel lists all timer events that run within the time range designated in the Timing panel. In addition to grouped data based on time range, the list can be sorted in ascending or descending order by the values in any active column.


Group Name	Description
Flat	Creates a single group. Includes all Timers.
Timer Name	Creates one group for one letter.
Timer Type	Creates one group for each timer type.
Instance Count	Creates one group for each logarithmic range(1-10,10-100, 100-1000.)

To change sort order, or to activate or deactivate columns, right-click on the column. The following options are available:


Sorting Option	Additional Sort Option	Description
Sort Ascending (by Timer, Group Name, Instance Count, Total exclusive, Total inclusive.)		Sorts Column by Ascending order.
Sort Descending (by Timer, Group Name, Instance Count, Total exclusive, Total inclusive.)		Sorts Column by Descending order.
Sort By:	Timer or Group Name Instance Count Total Inclusive Time Total Exclusive Time Sort Ascending Sort Descending	Name of timer or group. Number of select instances. Total inclusive duration of selected timer's instances. Total exclusive duration of selected timer's instances.


Column Visibility Group	Description
View Column	Hides or shows the following columns. Timer Or Group Name Meta Group Name Type Instance Count Total Inclusive Time Max Inclusive Time Average Inclusive Time Median Inclusive Time Min Inclusive Time Total Exclusive Time Max Exclusive Time Acerga Exclusive Time Median Exclusive Time Min Exclusive Time
Show All Columns	Resets tree view to show all columns.
Reset Columns to Min/Max/Median Preset	Resets columns to Min/Max/Median Preset.
Reset Columns to Default	Resets columns to default.

Asset Load Time

When starting Timing Insights from the command line the Asset Load Time channel can be used to enable named CPU timers for UObject::Serialize and toggle tracing Blueprint names.

In the past, tracking Blueprint names was enabled by default, but this would add a lot of cost to the trace runtime event. Now, if you want to enable Blueprint name tracing, you must turn on this argument in the command line.

To enable asset load time tracking from the command line, you can use the argument

    `-trace=default,AssetLoadTime`

Because there are many timers added when Blueprint names are toggled on, they are hidden in Trace Insights by default.

Enabling Blueprint Names

After enabling Asset Load Time tracking, you can display Blueprint names by adding the argument:

    `-statnamedevents`.

Executing Commands Without Opening the UI

Timing Insights can be run directly from the command line without opening the UI. You can either specify a single command directly in the command line, or you can execute a series of commands by using a response file. In each case, a set of data is exported to a .csv or .tsv file.


Command	Description
`TimingInsights.ExportThreads`	Exports a list of GPU and CPU threads.
`TimingInsights.ExporTimers`	This command exports a list of GPU and CPU timers.
`TimingInsights.ExportTimingEvents`	Exports a list of GPU and CPU timing events. The list of events that is exported can be filtered by thread, timer, or by time range.
`TimingInsights.ExportTimerStatistics`	This command exports the list of GPU and CPU timers and their aggregated statistics.

These commands can be useful for running automated tests.

Export Functionality

The Timers panel includes the capability to export your timing event data by selecting one or more timers and right-clicking on the context menu.

Timer Options Include:


Option	Description
Open Source in Visual Studio	Opens the source file of the selected message in Visual Studio. Visual Studio must already be open before using this option otherwise it may only open its Start page.

Other Miscellaneous export options include the following:


Option	Description
Copy To Clipboard (CTRL+C)	Copies the selection of timers and their events to clipboard.
Export (CTRL+S)	Exports the selected timers and their grouped statistics to a text file. You can navigate to the Timing view and mark the time you are interested in saving from the main timeline view by clicking and dragging on the Time bar. Observe the grouped stats are updated in the Timers panel to reflect the time selection. From the Timers panel, manually select the timers you are interested in saving or use Ctrl+A to select all timers. Next, press CTRL+S or select Export from the context menu and choose a `.tsv`,`.txt` or `*.csv` file to save the selected timers and their aggregated statistics (for selected time range).
Export Timing Events	Exports the timing events to a text file. Navigate to the Timing view, and mark the time you are interested in exporting from the main timeline view, by clicking and dragging on the Time bar. If no time selection is made, the entire timeline will be exported. In the Timing panel, click on the CPU/GPU thread tracks to show or hide the tracks you want to export. Select the timers you are interested in, or use Ctrl+A to select all timers. Select Export Timing Events (Selection)... from context menu and choose a tab-seperated value (`.tsv/.txt`) or comma-seperated value (`*.csv`) file. You can export the "Threads" and "Timers" in order to match the thread id and timer id with the names of threads and timers.
More Export Options / Export Threads	Exports the list of timers to a text file. (`.tsv` or .`csv`).
More Export Options / Export Timing Events (All)	Exports all the timing events for all CPU/GPU threads to a text file (`.tsv` or .`csv`). The exported file can be massive in size, Even a small session could have several million timing events.

Source File For CPU Timers

In the Timers panel, the source file and line number is visible in the tooltip of each timer.

Callers and Callees

The Callers and the Callees panels display a hierarchical list of task events. When you select an event from the Timing view hovering over the information icon of an individual task will display the Id, Name, Type, Source, Number of instances (Num Instances) including detailed information on the Instance count, and total Inclusive and Exclusive time.

Counters

The Counters panel lists all stats incremented during the same time period as the Timers panel. You can rearrange the panel by updating the sort order and column organization.

The following Groups are available:


Group Name	Description
Flat	Creates a single group. Includes all Counters.
Stats Name	Creates one group for one letter.
Meta Group Name	Creates groups based on metadata group names of counters.
Counter Type	Creates one group for each counter type.
Data Type	Creates one group for each data type.
Count	Creates one group for each logarithmic range.(1-10,10-100, 100-1000)

Log

The Log view displays all logs generated by calls to the macro UE_LOG from the Trace session. The logs can be filtered by verbosity and category, similar to the Output Log window in the Editor.

Selecting a time period in the Timing panel highlights all log entries that fall within that time. If you select multiple log entries, the Timing panel highlights the time range between those entries. The log panel features a search box that filters out all log messages that don't match the text you enter. In addition to filtering, clicking any row will pan the Timing panel to the time when that row's text was logged. You can save logs by selecting one or more messages and right-clicking on the context menu and selecting one of the following options from the drop down menu:


Menu Option	Description
Copy (CTRL+C)	Copies the selected log (with all its properties) to clipboard.
Copy Message (SHIFT+C)	Copies the message text of the selected log to clipboard
Copy Range (CTRL+SHIFT+C)	Copies all the logs in the selected time range (highlighted in blue) to the clipboard.
Copy All	Copies all the logs to clipboard
Save Range As… (CTRL+S)	Saves all the logs in the selected time range (highlighted in blue) to a text file (tab-separated values or comma-separated values).
Save All As…	Saves all the (filtered) logs to a text file (tab-separated values or comma separated values)
Open Source in Visual Studio	Opens the source file of the selected message in Visual Studio (or the registered IDE). Visual Studio must already be open before using this option otherwise it may only open its Start page.