HD Playback on Catalyst

[OlliR]

I just used the system disk for a worst case test.

I found these contacts for Mtron SSDs in Europe:

Belgium:
http://www.ssdisk.eu/

Germany:
http://www.winkom.eu/

On www.ssdisk.eu you can find prices of 950 Euros for 32 GB and 1510 Euros for 64 GB.

My decision is made. I will get one of those.

[Gian]

I have a client what wants (because wants) to playback a HD movie uncompressed. You can make a test for me please, on a 2.66 MacPro Dual ( I belive you have one of those) and a MTRON disk, you can test a Uncompressed 1920 x 1080p. We use 30 fps, but if you tested on a 25 fps is fine too.

[samsc]

I have a client what wants (because wants) to playback a HD movie uncompressed. You can make a test for me please, on a 2.66 MacPro Dual ( I belive you have one of those) and a MTRON disk, you can test a Uncompressed 1920 x 1080p. We use 30 fps, but if you tested on a 25 fps is fine too.

you have to take a different approach to uncompressed- MTRON not so important-

the data rates are very large-

you can also investigate whether apple's pro -res codec or DVCProHD is "Uncompressed" enough... for your client.
( I could get almost 50frames per second total - from Pro-res 1080p ( seems to be around 30MB/s ) and DVCProHD 1080p ( around 15MB/s ) using MTRON and quad 2.66Ghz Intel )

----

one second is 1920x1080x ( 2 or 3 - yuv or rgb - depends on codec ) x30 bytes = 186MB/s or 124MB/s
one second of standard definition 720x576 uncompressed is only 17MB/s - you can normally do 2-3 layers of this from a single 15k scsi disc if the wind blows in the right direction -

you need more than one disc- you might need up to 4 or 5 discs to do 186MB/s consistently-
This is the only time when a RAID solution is required.

First of all - you need to begin by making a little test using a RAM disk.
Check CPU and bus limits with RAM Disc-
i could only get esperance dv to create a 2GB ram disk-
So create one for yourself- create a Hidef- movie - a few seconds long - and see if it will play in catalyst from Ram disk.

Does it playback? from ram disk?
How many minutes does client need?

Then you need to start to do a lot of research on the RAID cards on the market-
SATA or fibre channel - internal SATA RAID on Mac - how many discs needed for length of content required?

[SourceChild]

Have there been any results or comparisons between Mtron SSDs vs xServeRAID?

[samsc]

Have there been any results or comparisons between Mtron SSDs vs xServeRAID?

MTRON works much better than xServeRAID.
and doesnt weigh 45kg.

[SourceChild]

MTRON works much better than xServeRAID.
and doesnt weigh 45kg.

I agree with you. I have yet to buy an xServeRAID. I do however have several machines with 32Gb and 64Gb Mtrons in them and they work fine. I do have a few seek issues with the Mtron and Catalyst. I end up crashing Catalyst. When I can duplicate the issue I will report it.

Now that I have SSDs, many of the multi-projector edge blending projects I am doing are getting HD content. I have started taking all of my stock HD content (Motion Loops, Artbeats, Digital Juice) and converting it to Apple Intermediate Codec @ 1920x1080 and 1280x720.

The problem is, a dozen or so stock content libraries eats through a 64Gb disk fast. At least with an xServe Raid I would have more storage space for some of these permanent installs I'm working on.

[jjrecort]

you can also investigate whether apple's pro -res codec or DVCProHD is "Uncompressed" enough... for your client.
( I could get almost 50frames per second total - from Pro-res 1080p ( seems to be around 30MB/s ) and DVCProHD 1080p ( around 15MB/s ) using MTRON and quad 2.66Ghz Intel )

If the Costumer is picky... he will notice the DVCPRO HD Compression... ProRes visually is like Uncompressed so it's a good choice.

but..

ProRes it takes a lot of computer resources to uncompress, specially over the Graphics board.. on the Decklinks are sigthly better.

So what you will gain on bandwith probably will affect the overall performance of the system.

ProRes is a resoure eater codec!

[samsc]

Apple intermediate codec works best - far better than anything else.

You need to look at MTRON SSD for HD playback - works so much better than anything else

[samsc]

If the Costumer is picky... he will notice the DVCPRO HD Compression... ProRes visually is like Uncompressed so it's a good choice.

but..

ProRes it takes a lot of computer resources to uncompress, specially over the Graphics board.. on the Decklinks are sigthly better.

So what you will gain on bandwith probably will affect the overall performance of the system.

ProRes is a resoure eater codec!

DVC PRO HD codec only installed with final cut pro-
And only gives 1 layer playback - its performance is very poor.

For ProRes also need final cut installed.

AIC works better than both. and looks just as good

[jjrecort]

Hi,

I have tested also with HDV, DCPROHD, H264 and ProRes codecs... and we only had good performance with one layer.

We tryed to sync two plays from the same clip (and two different clips) and both are on sync.. but on the Catalyst Display, Video one is at 25fps and video 2 is at 11 fps..

I know that Richard always recomends DV, but I prefer Photo-JPEG because you can control the compression and the quality is much better since it's a true progressive codec.. so everything but video looks crisper and with better color range.

Anyway in HD, you cannot use DV (unless you force settings out of standards), so I guess I will continue with Photo-JPEG.

"OPPSSS... I skyped by accident the posts about Apple Intermediate Codec, I will check it out!"

But a good option to optimize the performance will be to define two different Content Drives/Volumes as Catalyst Libraries.

In my case I have a SCSI volume and a Raid Volume of 3 Raptors.

It will be nice to be able to have some videos on the SCSI and the other layers on the RAID..

It's possible to define Catalyst Libraries at different volumes?

Thanks!