Older Catalyst and HD

[efxmaster]

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

[Marty Postma]

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

[efxmaster]

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.

[OlliR]

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...)

[efxmaster]

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.

[Improve]

.....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...

[samsc]

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.

Anthony

your laptop is faster than your g5 tower...

the scsi drives HES shipped were not good either.

what you see is telling you about the total system performance you can get - its about 30fps for the files you have.
i doubt you will get much more than that.

[efxmaster]

Thanks Richard.

So with a newer system and a SSD do you think I will be able to get 3 1080i videos to play back?

Thanks for your help.

[samsc]

Thanks Richard.

So with a newer system and a SSD do you think I will be able to get 3 1080i videos to play back?

Thanks for your help.

you need to check and double check the exact limits of your setup- as they are all different - and there is no comprehensive answer.

--
i can get 3x1080 to play - on newer systems - using AIC codec-

in the end it does depend on the content -

[efxmaster]

Thanks everyone for the help. I went ahead and ordered a newer Mac. Here is what I ordered.

2 3.0GHz Quad-Core
2GB of Ram
1 320GB 7200 for System
NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT 512 Video Card

I am going to buy the Triple Head 2 Go and a SSD hard drive. What is the best place in the US to buy those?

Also, anyone know how hard it is to transfer the Catalyst software and everything over to the new mac. I have a decklink card that came with it that I would still like to use. Is that hard to move over?

Thanks for the help.