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Thread: Older Catalyst and HD

  1. #1

    Older Catalyst and HD

    Hello all. I have an older Catalyst. It is running M165, but the computer is older. The computer is a Dual G5 2.7GHz with 512 MB of Ram. It does have a SCSI hard drive for content. My question, is that I have a show coming up in a month that really wants to playback HD content. So I have been able to run 1 1080i movie in the Apple Intermediate Codec, but if I try and add a second one it will drop the frame rate of both down to 15FPS. I tried running the same thing on my laptop which is an Intel Duo 2.2GHz with 2GB of ram, but only the normal hard drive that Apple puts in their laptops. It did almost the same thing.

    So is the frame dropping problem a processor thing, or is there not enough ram in the Catalyst, or what. I noticed that when I ran it on my laptop the CPU counter I have on my dock never went above 50% for either processor. I thought maybe it was the fact that I am trying to pull more then one HD movie off of a single SCSI drive at once. If I equipped it with and SSD drive would that help?

    Thanks for everyones help with this.

    Anthony

  2. #2
    Anthony,

    It is probably a combination of issues. More importantly the content drive and video card.

    What video card are you using, and how much memory does it have?

    The SCSI drive is also going to "bottleneck" you if trying to play back multiple HD clips simultaneously.

    It wouldn't surprise me if only having 512 MB system RAM is also giving you issues.

    Hope this helps
    Best Regards,
    - Marty

  3. #3
    So on the side of the hard drive, would upgrading it to an SSD be better? Or what if I added an SSD to it and split the video between the two. I will have to check on the video card. It is out on a rental right now, but I will get it back tomorrow and look.

    Thanks for the help.

  4. #4
    I doubt you will be able to get more than one Full-HD File playing at the same time on a G5 machine.
    SSD might speed up things - but I don´t think that things will improve that much - will also depend on your application (curved screens use alot more resources than a flat image...)
    Olli
    ------
    Oliver Ranft, Aachen, Germany

  5. #5
    No curved screen. It is going to be 3 screens next to each other. We were going to do a blend, but the client did not want to spend the money to get a 36' wide screen. They already had some 12' screens so they are just going to put them next to each other. Won't look as good as a blended screen, but I can't control that. So just 3 outputs. I am going to get a triple head to go so that I can run the 3 screens. So really it is just a matter of being able to play back 3 HD videos.

  6. Quote Originally Posted by efxmaster View Post
    .....So just 3 outputs. I am going to get a triple head to go so that I can run the 3 screens. So really it is just a matter of being able to play back 3 HD videos.
    I have to warn you... G5's don't support triple heads.... So that won't work.
    Either you have to get an extra computer, or get hold of an MACPRO...
    Fons Hogenes
    Improve
    Rotterdamseweg 270
    2628 AT DELFT
    Netherlands
    info@improve.nl

  7. #7
    So why does it say on Matrox's website that it will work with a Power Mac G5? I have heard of other people using a Triple Head to Go with a G5.

  8. #8
    So if I were to get a newer computer to do all of this, what would some recommendations be? Like what speed, how much memory, what graphics card and so forth.

    Thanks

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by efxmaster View Post
    So why does it say on Matrox's website that it will work with a Power Mac G5? I have heard of other people using a Triple Head to Go with a G5.
    the earlier g5s dont have enough graphics power to do triple head things-
    ati 9800's were poor enough at 1024x768 - without going above that.

    the earliest machines i used were the quad 2.5Ghz machines.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by efxmaster View Post
    So if I were to get a newer computer to do all of this, what would some recommendations be? Like what speed, how much memory, what graphics card and so forth.

    Thanks
    you can probably just about get away with
    mid range intel mac pro - with 2G RAM - 8800 graphics card.

    buy an mtron ssd - then you dont need a scsi card - and they plug straight into the drive tray.


    ---

    you can of course spend as much as you want to spend on extra stuff-
    and buy the biggest and best...

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