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miguelangelpinheiro
07-04-2009, 07:22 PM
Is possible use Catalyst with snow leopard?? (osx 10.6)

NevBull
07-04-2009, 10:35 PM
It's a bit early for that question!!

As with all new OS releases, it is best to wait for the new software to settle down and for Apple to mend the things they have broken!

Mr_P
08-04-2009, 02:11 AM
Dont even go there....

Apple has only released the latest build (10A314) of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) to developers on the 1st April (ominous!!)

An exact release date for Snow Leopard has not been established , though it could be as late as September.

Stick with the OS you are currently using!

If you still use Tiger on 2007 Macs - stick with it - theses no significat reason to upgrade unless you 'really' want some Leopard features. Everyting still seems to work fine with latest Tiger & Quicktime software updates.

If you are using Leopard on 2008/9 Macs - have not seen any problems with all the latest OS & Quicktime updates.

Would recommend disabling spotlight, by placing hard drives in 'privacy' area
Users may also want to consider disabling dashboard and keyboard shortcuts, expose, etc.

Simon

miguelangelpinheiro
08-04-2009, 07:00 AM
well I´m testing it now and seems good, no problem yet, but I only use it at home, not for shows.

SourceChild
13-04-2009, 02:21 AM
A critical issue which might arise with Snow Leopard are the characteristics of OpenCL removing flops from the GPU to assist in CPU processing. I have been using the beta and have already discovered some concerns. According to the tech notes Apple has up, these issues will be resolved when OpenCL becomes better integrated.

Something else to think about is that the rumor of Snow Leopard being entirely Cocoa. Right now, there are APIs and frameworks in the beta that are still using Carbon. Basically what this means is that there might be a need to entirely reconfigure applications running on the new system. Catalyst would most likely need some rewrite depending on how radically different the interface.

I can't speak for Richard here but from my own development observations, are that while Snow Leopard will "look the same" to end users, it will be radically different inside and Catalyst won't work quite as well (yet).

NevBull
28-08-2009, 09:14 AM
Hi All

I have been playing with Snow Leopard for a few days now. My initial testing of Catalyst on a base machine, ie no input cards or other third party add ons seems very positive. Tested using OCZ SSD's and 4870 & 285 graphics cards.

As mentioned before, everyone needs to do alot of testing on their systems to check compatibility with input cards and other interfaces before this should go anywhere near a show!

Nev.

samsc
28-08-2009, 12:59 PM
Something else to think about is that the rumor of Snow Leopard being entirely Cocoa. Right now, there are APIs and frameworks in the beta that are still using Carbon. Basically what this means is that there might be a need to entirely reconfigure applications running on the new system. Catalyst would most likely need some rewrite depending on how radically different the interface.

I can't speak for Richard here but from my own development observations, are that while Snow Leopard will "look the same" to end users, it will be radically different inside and Catalyst won't work quite as well (yet).

No- catalyst should work without any changes at all in my code.
and so should all previous versions of catalyst.

if it doesnt work apple has broken something that needs to be fixed.

a carbon/cocoa API divide is misunderstood by many people- and its not relevant.

samsc
28-08-2009, 03:49 PM
Better watch out for this one....

They changed the default screen gamma... ho ho ho...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3712

samsc
28-08-2009, 03:55 PM
No- catalyst should work without any changes at all in my code.
and so should all previous versions of catalyst.

if it doesnt work apple has broken something that needs to be fixed.

a carbon/cocoa API divide is misunderstood by many people- and its not relevant.

In fact catalyst does work without any changes... so far . everything draws correctly

samsc
28-08-2009, 08:25 PM
Hi All

I have been playing with Snow Leopard for a few days now. My initial testing of Catalyst on a base machine, ie no input cards or other third party add ons seems very positive. Tested using OCZ SSD's and 4870 & 285 graphics cards.

As mentioned before, everyone needs to do alot of testing on their systems to check compatibility with input cards and other interfaces before this should go anywhere near a show!

Nev.

active silicon are making tentative claims that their stuff works in this years mac pro

NevBull
28-08-2009, 09:17 PM
Also - the standard Quicktime player in Snow Leopard has the edit/save features of Quicktime PRO built in - so no need to buy Quicktime PRO! As part of the Snow Leopard upgrade process, the installer moves QuickTime Player Pro 7 to the Utilities folder, so it’s still there if you want it.

Nev.

NevBull
28-08-2009, 11:24 PM
Hi All

for those who have asked - some figures from my test system consisting of the following:

8 Core 2.26 Intel Xeon 5500 series processors
6gb RAM
250gb OCZ Vertex SSD
Tested with ATI Radeon HD 4870 & EVGA GTX 285
2 x 1280 x 1024 Monitors

Test movies created in AIC at 720x576 25fps

OS 10.5: 9-10 layers
OS 10.6: 19-20 layers

Nev.

samsc
29-08-2009, 12:08 AM
Hi All
OS 10.5: 9-10 layers
OS 10.6: 19-20 layers

Nev.

wow double the performance in snow leopard-

we need other people to test their systems - and see if there are problems....

Mr_P
29-08-2009, 12:25 AM
Have you tested HD content playback?
were these results the same using both graphics card mentioned?

samsc
29-08-2009, 12:35 AM
Have you tested HD content playback?
were these results the same using both graphics card mentioned?

do you have any machines to test?

please test them if you do.

we need more people to test .... in case there are problems ...

there are too many variables in machines to make any conclusions yet

SourceChild
01-09-2009, 06:55 AM
I am running 10.6 on my hot backup machines. They are all outperforming the 10.5.8 machines.

I have been able to run 3 layers 1920x1080x29.97 having Audio with minimal frame drop.

8 core 2.66 processors
Mtron 7500 SSDs
8800 Graphics
Phoenix 1 lane 2 HD input

I can run 2 layers of the same and 2 layers of 720x480@29.97 at same time with no frame loss.

samsc
01-09-2009, 06:35 PM
I am running 10.6 on my hot backup machines. They are all outperforming the 10.5.8 machines.

I have been able to run 3 layers 1920x1080x29.97 having Audio with minimal frame drop.

8 core 2.66 processors
Mtron 7500 SSDs
8800 Graphics
Phoenix 1 lane 2 HD input

I can run 2 layers of the same and 2 layers of 720x480@29.97 at same time with no frame loss.

how many more standard definition files - without audio can you get?

SourceChild
01-09-2009, 11:23 PM
I'm on tour and testing during down time. My last leg I didn't get as much testing time as I wanted.

I also have a slow SSD which I need to zero and defrag content on. With 100Gb of show content, that is going to take a while. Once I do that I can run tests.

I'll report more on results after the weekend.

Oh and Apple's brilliant :confused: idea of changing the Gamma was a bit annoying to correct.

samsc
02-09-2009, 07:14 AM
I'm on tour and testing during down time. My last leg I didn't get as much testing time as I wanted.

I also have a slow SSD which I need to zero and defrag content on. With 100Gb of show content, that is going to take a while. Once I do that I can run tests.

I'll report more on results after the weekend.

Oh and Apple's brilliant :confused: idea of changing the Gamma was a bit annoying to correct.

defrag ssd?

isnt the access to every bit of data is the same time? irrespective of read position.

Semillion
02-09-2009, 10:29 AM
Do not Defrag SSD. It will only wear down the flash memory!

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-246283_14_0.html

It's not worth it...

samsc
02-09-2009, 10:43 AM
Do not Defrag SSD. It will only wear down the flash memory!

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/page-246283_14_0.html

It's not worth it...


i would agree with this -

but maybe todd has heard something else?

it says here :

OCZ also warns on their info page that “Solid State Drives DO NOT require defragmentation. It may decrease the lifespan of the drive.”

This is nothing to actually be overly concerned about as the theoretical re-write limits for each sector in a Solid State Drive are going to outlive the use of the drive. It is just that defragmenting (although not necessary) creates an excessive amount of write cycles on any drive. Solid State Drives are designed so that data is written evenly to all sectors – this is what the industry refers to as “Wear Leveling.” So feel free to fill your drive full of random data just so you can see how fast it defrags for kicks; you will not harm anything, but do not do it on a regular basis unless you want to lower the MTBF of the drive down to mechanical HDD standards.


http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/OCZ-APEX-SATA-SDD,news-30096.html

SourceChild
03-09-2009, 01:06 AM
In brief I will agree. Defragmenting a content SSD drive is not a good idea. However, here is a better explanation:



"a slow SSD which I need to zero"
I run the Disk Utility to Zero the Disk.



"and defrag content"
I Defrag the content on a separate HD and copy back to the SSD


Let me clarify how I will go about this. First, I have all the content copied and verified to backup disk. On the backup disk I run a defragmenter and series of tools so that the content is consolidated and orderly on my backup disk.

One the content is backed up, I zero the data on the SSD using one pass. Then I copy the content back to the SSD.

In this method, I only conduct two write cycles to the SSD.

The reason defragging an SSD is a bad ideas is because the defragging cycle can literally write hundreds of times to a specific zone or specific sectors on a disk during the cleaning cycle.

Another paradigm to consider is the use of the SSD in Catalyst. Ideally, we are not constantly read/writing like other industries. We (hopefully) write once or very few times and then simply read back repeatedly.

Now for a moment consider my specific application. I have a show where the total combined content creation added up to about 800GB of show files. Of course we threw out about 80% of that but we didn't know what was staying or going until the show was on the road.

Now if I had been able to, I would have justified an xServe RAID during preproduction which would have run all the servers. Since I didn't get the budget I needed for content, I had to settle for writing and deleting to the SSDs repeatedly.

Now I mention xServeRAID here for a reason. The show uses multiple servers and a single fast reliable repository for content means copying one time. As it turns out, the workflow I was subject to required tremendous amounts of wasted time waiting for files to copy.

Anyone who's copied a large volume of data to an SSD knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Had I used an xServeRAID, all the content creators on site could have been connected to a single repository through fibre and that repository being the same one I use to run the rehearsals. Instead, using the Gigabit network on copper meant that each time a file was updated it had to be copied successively from machine to machine with my content machine being an intermediary.

Of course some of this is beside the point but it paints a picture of how the content can get so messy and require cleanup from disk utilities.

I'm using 128Gb drives in all my machines, I really only have about 100Gb of safe limit before the disks get too full. (Following the 20% open space rule.)

Having to change content, revise files, and add new ones requires a lot of copying and a lot of deleting. This means dozens of rewrites to and from each SSD.

I have theoretically moved more than 2Tb of data across this disk for this show alone so the machines are do for a cleanup.

By zeroing the disk and rewriting the content to it, I might shorten the life yes, but not really in comparison to using the disk as a constant read/write/rewrite device. This show has two years in front of it so it's not like it's something I'll be doing again soon. So zeroing one time so that all the disks do are reads for the next 120 shows is not a bad trade off.

There are several other articles which talk about SSDs. Specifically that using MLS disks will cause adjacent memory locations to favor one another which causes the reader to misinterpret on first pass if the sectors have been rewritten repeatedly. By zeroing a disk, new data which writes will not be as easily compromised by adjacent cell degradation.

For more info search SSD pros and cons keeping in mind that SLCs have a greater lifespan than MLCs.

ajmaudio
06-09-2009, 01:27 AM
Well to get back on topic my first test results on snow leapord:
late 2008 8 core mac pro
8800 gt
ocz ssd
cat 167

using 720p files.. all around 150mb in size snow leopard allows for 1-2 more layers to be run... total of 7

I would say that so far it is a verifiable improvement... will test LFG cards next week if nobody beats me to it.

NevBull
06-09-2009, 08:29 AM
Thanks Anthony

samsc
06-09-2009, 11:02 AM
Well to get back on topic my first test results on snow leapord:
late 2008 8 core mac pro
8800 gt
ocz ssd
cat 167

using 720p files.. all around 150mb in size snow leopard allows for 1-2 more layers to be run... total of 7

I would say that so far it is a verifiable improvement... will test LFG cards next week if nobody beats me to it.

and standard definition?

ajmaudio
07-09-2009, 08:59 AM
I'll let ya know when I get a chance

SourceChild
10-09-2009, 01:56 AM
I have a few things on my touring systems which have limited playback (locking to interlaced and exact frame rates). However, I am successfully running my backup machines on Snow Leopard.

I tried to crash things today. I caused six crashes by running FX generator on multiple servers from a lighting desk. Obviously something I would never do during a real show. Each of the crashes were on the Primary Leopard systems and never a single crash on the Snow Leopard backup machines.

Although I don't have many regular SD test files, I loaded some of the original HES stock and was able to run 13 layers without frame drop at locked 29.97fps. I haven't tested yet at 25fps and won't with this configuration.

I am back in my office on Monday and will use some of my test servers to produce better reports. I'll be testing on one each of 2007 Pro (Mtron &x1900), 2008 Pro (OCZ & 8800), and 2009 Pro (OCZ 4870). I might try a Quatro FX 5600 also to see if there's a difference. However this is trivial for most of our applications.

ajmaudio
10-09-2009, 03:09 AM
It would appear,through limited testing, that the lfg cards work fine in snow leopard. Haven't done anything crazy but all 8 of my inputs seem to play nice.. I did notice that some of the input fx had issues like leaving trails etc but this resolved itself after a reboot... not sure what to think. On a side note, turning on input fx did crash my leopard os on same machine... seems like I remember reading something about that.. whats the deal?

NevBull
10-09-2009, 09:05 AM
I have spoken to Active Silicon who seem quite happy with their cards running on Snow Leopard - good to have some more reports

Nev.

ajmaudio
12-09-2009, 07:02 AM
anyone had any issues with visual effects crashing in snow leopard????...especially ones that have the "I" menu ??

samsc
12-09-2009, 12:44 PM
anyone had any issues with visual effects crashing in snow leopard????...especially ones that have the "I" menu ??

'I' menu? whats that?

i havent seen any crashing.

you need to email me a pdf profile please.

ajmaudio
13-09-2009, 10:38 PM
the little extra menu that u can click on in the visual fx library page on certain fx.

samsc
14-09-2009, 03:52 PM
the little extra menu that u can click on in the visual fx library page on certain fx.

which fx?

westintour
15-09-2009, 04:32 PM
i cant get 181 - 228 to edit when i choose them

westintour
15-09-2009, 04:36 PM
at least when i go to the libraries, choose visual fx, then scrolling down and hitting the "I" button to bring up the extra edit controls

samsc
15-09-2009, 06:00 PM
at least when i go to the libraries, choose visual fx, then scrolling down and hitting the "I" button to bring up the extra edit controls

i dont think there are any extra options in those.

ajmaudio
16-09-2009, 12:42 AM
there def are more options.. sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt.. on 2 seperate machines... havent had time to compare to leopard... but for instance the pixelize round and square often don't work.. but sometimes do..as do the extra menu options, and sometimes dinkin around in the visual fx crashes the entire program.

SourceChild
16-09-2009, 06:56 PM
dinkin around in the visual fx crashes the entire program.

I have repeatedly crashed Catalyst by running the FX engine from a lighting desk to alternate through the VFX on Catalyst. This is an issue independent of OS though.

westintour
16-09-2009, 09:22 PM
i thought the "I" button was for making user presets and other menu options.....and manipulating these effects in .167 is causing crashes

westintour
16-09-2009, 09:30 PM
ok, so it look like the "I" menu works for making user presets for color fx....i assumed it would for visual fx as well......anyone else having considerable crashes in visual fx in snow leopard?

westintour
16-09-2009, 10:09 PM
ok, another side note......visual fx seem much, much, much more stable in leopard as compared to snow leopard

ajmaudio
20-09-2009, 06:19 AM
I would indeed agree that the VFX seem to cause bad behavior in Snow Leopard for me.

late 2008 8core 2.8ghz
ocz ssd
8800gt

samsc
20-09-2009, 06:51 AM
I would indeed agree that the VFX seem to cause bad behavior in Snow Leopard for me.

late 2008 8core 2.8ghz
ocz ssd
8800gt

please indicate which ones.

and what you did.

and if you say it crash email me pdf profile of machine from catalyst application menu

samsc
20-09-2009, 06:53 AM
ok, another side note......visual fx seem much, much, much more stable in leopard as compared to snow leopard

please indicate which ones and what you did.

and if you say it crash email me pdf profile of machine from catalyst application menu

samsc
20-09-2009, 06:59 AM
i thought the "I" button was for making user presets and other menu options.....and manipulating these effects in .167 is causing crashes

please show screen capture of where you think these 'i' buttons are.

visual fx have very few 'i' buttons - maybe 1 or 2 do anything- framestore.

samsc
20-09-2009, 07:01 AM
i thought the "I" button was for making user presets and other menu options.....and manipulating these effects in .167 is causing crashes

please show screen capture showing where you click.

and send pdf profile of crash-

also suggest you change to m257 - as m167 is obsolete - and any problems will be fixed from that version.

samsc
20-09-2009, 07:02 AM
i cant get 181 - 228 to edit when i choose them

there arent any user options in any of these - the 'i' button there is just a placeholder test.

samsc
20-09-2009, 07:18 AM
write cycle wear is between 100,000 and millions of writes- and then the discs have redundant sections which they shift to

well outside this- on any short term application usage...


maybe if you read and write thousands of system files or use virtual memory - but not playing back movies or organising files...

sata hard discs are on a level with this level of failure - and much more catastrophic-

ssd's are totally different beasts from normal discs-
strategies for their use are completely different- there is no 20% rule- or any sata hard disc rule applicable.

---

xserve raids were a total pain in the ass- and so is the xsan software - administering them was a nightmare - and they never worked well enough to anywhere justify the cost - and they needed an extra machine to administer the thing. and you needed an IT person to set them up ....

performance across multiple machines was not good enough- and overall performance on entire device was only able to do 150MB/s- about 1 or 2 internal ssds bandwidth-

---

the time it takes to write files on multiple machines with the same content is not related to SSD - thats a file copying problem- it doesnt get faster with sata discs-



In brief I will agree. Defragmenting a content SSD drive is not a good idea. However, here is a better explanation:


I run the Disk Utility to Zero the Disk.


I Defrag the content on a separate HD and copy back to the SSD


Let me clarify how I will go about this. First, I have all the content copied and verified to backup disk. On the backup disk I run a defragmenter and series of tools so that the content is consolidated and orderly on my backup disk.

One the content is backed up, I zero the data on the SSD using one pass. Then I copy the content back to the SSD.

In this method, I only conduct two write cycles to the SSD.

The reason defragging an SSD is a bad ideas is because the defragging cycle can literally write hundreds of times to a specific zone or specific sectors on a disk during the cleaning cycle.

Another paradigm to consider is the use of the SSD in Catalyst. Ideally, we are not constantly read/writing like other industries. We (hopefully) write once or very few times and then simply read back repeatedly.

Now for a moment consider my specific application. I have a show where the total combined content creation added up to about 800GB of show files. Of course we threw out about 80% of that but we didn't know what was staying or going until the show was on the road.

Now if I had been able to, I would have justified an xServe RAID during preproduction which would have run all the servers. Since I didn't get the budget I needed for content, I had to settle for writing and deleting to the SSDs repeatedly.

Now I mention xServeRAID here for a reason. The show uses multiple servers and a single fast reliable repository for content means copying one time. As it turns out, the workflow I was subject to required tremendous amounts of wasted time waiting for files to copy.

Anyone who's copied a large volume of data to an SSD knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Had I used an xServeRAID, all the content creators on site could have been connected to a single repository through fibre and that repository being the same one I use to run the rehearsals. Instead, using the Gigabit network on copper meant that each time a file was updated it had to be copied successively from machine to machine with my content machine being an intermediary.

Of course some of this is beside the point but it paints a picture of how the content can get so messy and require cleanup from disk utilities.

I'm using 128Gb drives in all my machines, I really only have about 100Gb of safe limit before the disks get too full. (Following the 20% open space rule.)

Having to change content, revise files, and add new ones requires a lot of copying and a lot of deleting. This means dozens of rewrites to and from each SSD.

I have theoretically moved more than 2Tb of data across this disk for this show alone so the machines are do for a cleanup.

By zeroing the disk and rewriting the content to it, I might shorten the life yes, but not really in comparison to using the disk as a constant read/write/rewrite device. This show has two years in front of it so it's not like it's something I'll be doing again soon. So zeroing one time so that all the disks do are reads for the next 120 shows is not a bad trade off.

There are several other articles which talk about SSDs. Specifically that using MLS disks will cause adjacent memory locations to favor one another which causes the reader to misinterpret on first pass if the sectors have been rewritten repeatedly. By zeroing a disk, new data which writes will not be as easily compromised by adjacent cell degradation.

For more info search SSD pros and cons keeping in mind that SLCs have a greater lifespan than MLCs.

westintour
20-09-2009, 11:31 PM
please show screen capture showing where you click.

and send pdf profile of crash-

also suggest you change to m257 - as m167 is obsolete - and any problems will be fixed from that version.


m257 wont let me save my show

samsc
21-09-2009, 07:05 AM
m257 wont let me save my show

are you using cue lists in the software?

do you have a dongle?

( 'saving shows' isnt broken - so something else is missing ... )

westintour
21-09-2009, 08:31 PM
i thought the "I" button was for making user presets and other menu options.....and manipulating these effects in .167 is causing crashes

sorry i meant to say snow leopard not 167......confusing my self.........i am using 257, just meant to say that visual fx work in leopard great but some crashing in snow leopard. i will work with it this week and forward any profiles and such

samsc
21-09-2009, 08:39 PM
sorry i meant to say snow leopard not 167......confusing my self.........i am using 257, just meant to say that visual fx work in leopard great but some crashing in snow leopard. i will work with it this week and forward any profiles and such

thanks

samsc
03-10-2009, 03:18 PM
Noone has reported any verified snow leopard crashes .... for m257

thanks

ajmaudio
03-10-2009, 09:50 PM
is there something different in 257 that would make it more stable in snow leopard? 167 is definitely not as stable in snow leopard for me.

samsc
03-10-2009, 10:22 PM
is there something different in 257 that would make it more stable in snow leopard? 167 is definitely not as stable in snow leopard for me.

you need to send me a pdf profile. which shows any crashes.

i do not do any testing of any old software versions.

i have no idea about what system you have, what you are doing. etc

samsc
03-10-2009, 11:32 PM
is there something different in 257 that would make it more stable in snow leopard? 167 is definitely not as stable in snow leopard for me.

i dont see any problems at all with m167 on my laptop with snow leopard.

ajmaudio
04-10-2009, 04:39 PM
interesting.. I have the same problem on multiple machines.. changing fx causes crashes.. everything else seems perfectly fine

samsc
04-10-2009, 05:03 PM
interesting.. I have the same problem on multiple machines.. changing fx causes crashes.. everything else seems perfectly fine

i have no idea about your hardware or software setup. or exactly what you did.

you need to send me a pdf profile, and indicate which fx.

you also need to try m257

thanks

ajmaudio
05-10-2009, 02:20 AM
will do when I get a chance... have started running 257 but have not put it through the same test yet. All my machines are out working right now.

samsc
05-10-2009, 10:30 AM
will do when I get a chance... have started running 257 but have not put it through the same test yet. All my machines are out working right now.

thanks let me know.

please send me pdf profiles if you see any crashes.


you can set the number of layers and mixes in the preferences in m257-

---

the only possible crashes i remember in any visual fx in in m167 - relate to bugs when sound input was turned off - and some cropping fx not having enough layers defined in their implementation- these were fixed a long time ago - nothing to do with leopard/snow leopard
m167 is almost 2 years old- and i send software out for people almost daily...

ajmaudio
06-10-2009, 06:26 AM
Ya I caught that new feature.. very nice... as far as the crashing I am referring too.. it was occurring when switching fx... I actually got both snow leopard and loepard to do it but it took a very long time to happen in leopard whereas in snow leopard it happened sometimes within just a few changes. This happened when changing fx from the library window.. perhaps this is the cause? at any rate I will test 257 when I can. Thanks for your support of a great product.. now if only apple would support multiple video cards in a way that was conducive to what we are doin :)