Divinci Resolve With Cubix GPU Xpander

[Mark Pedersen]

So I am about to pull the trigger on an overall editorial system upgrade for 3 FCP edit bays that will include a DaVinci Resolve panel and a cubic expander for our grading suite.

We're moving from direct-attached XRAIDS to a StorNext SAN, with a 20 port 4GB Fiber Channel Switch and 2 Rorke Galaxy HDX3 32 TB RAIDS with SAS dual controllers.

The Resolve room will be run on a new 12 core MacPro with 24G of RAM, and the ATI HD 5770 as the GUI card for Resolve.

We are going with the CUBIX Expander Rackmount 6 which can add six to twelve PCI Express (PCIe) slots to one, two or three computers. This allows us to configure it as three independent Xpander units order to provide flexibility for expanding either our Resolve suite and/or the other bays.

For Resolve we are going to start with two nVidia 4000's, a rocket and Kona 3G card in one of the expansion units, leaving us two open expansion units to either add more 4000's or say, make edit B a Smoke suite, or add a Rocket for dailies using RedCine.

For monitoring we are using a Panasonic V25 54" panel with our existing 14" Ikegami color critical CRTs as a secondary reference (which we may or may not keep).

Our understanding from our system integrator and BMD is that they have tested the Rackmount 6 configuration with two 4000's and we should be able to do 4K real time grading (at least in a half-debayer), but I can't yet get a clear picture on how many nodes etc...

But for color correction, color depth is far more important than resolution, so if we are grading 4K or 5K r3d's at half debayer we should be good.

Backup will be via a Quantum LTO-5 superloader.

Any feedback, comments or suggestions welcome.

Mark

[Shane Betts]

My first reaction Mark is why 4Gb FC? 8Gig is the current standard and I wouldn't aim any lower than that. When we began our upgrades a bit over a year ago, 8Gig was very new and difficult to get but I went with an 8Gig switch and, eventually, upgraded the Atto cards to 8Gig as well. Right now our old Xserve RAID is reaching EOL at 2Gb and, whilst our two Infortrends are doing fine with 4Gb backplanes, the XRAID will be replaced with a Sonnet or an Infortrend with 8Gb. The performance out of these units will be perfect for EXR or DPX.

You might also look at your choice of LTO loader, depending on your software. I replaced our Quantum LTO4 with a Quantum LTO5 only to discover that Bru was no longer offering support for Quantum products due to Quantum's "lack of support for the Mac" according to Bru. This meant a rather expensive upgrade to PresSTORE and, even though it's a great product, I'd found Bru was great and a bargain and, quite frankly, changing packages has been a PITA. Careful the domino effect!

BTW, have BMD implemented support for the KONA card as yet? I know they said they were planning on it but I've seen nothing yet - might have missed it though.

Also, you might want to ensure StoreNext will support you with possible future solutions such as Avid ... If you feel there may be a possibility down the road. We went MetaSAN and, although it certainly has it's ... how can I say this - personality traits:-) ... we run it with FCP, Avid and everything else we use.

[Dave Blackham]

We went MetaSAN and, although it certainly has it's ... how can I say this - personality traits:-) ... we run it with FCP, Avid and everything else we use.

It certainly has and its got sharp teeth, Im not sure id go there again......

[Jason H]

yes, is there support for kona coming soon? do you know something we don't mark. hehehe....

j

[Dave Blackham]

So I am about to pull the trigger on an overall editorial system upgrade for 3 FCP edit bays that will include a DaVinci Resolve panel and a cubic expander for our grading suite.

We're moving from direct-attached XRAIDS to a StorNext SAN, with a 20 port 4GB Fiber Channel Switch and 2 Rorke Galaxy HDX3 32 TB RAIDS with SAS dual controllers.

The Resolve room will be run on a new 12 core MacPro with 24G of RAM, and the ATI HD 5770 as the GUI card for Resolve.

We are going with the CUBIX Expander Rackmount 6 which can add six to twelve PCI Express (PCIe) slots to one, two or three computers. This allows us to configure it as three independent Xpander units order to provide flexibility for expanding either our Resolve suite and/or the other bays.

For Resolve we are going to start with two nVidia 4000's, a rocket and Kona 3G card in one of the expansion units, leaving us two open expansion units to either add more 4000's or say, make edit B a Smoke suite, or add a Rocket for dailies using RedCine.

For monitoring we are using a Panasonic V25 54" panel with our existing 14" Ikegami color critical CRTs as a secondary reference (which we may or may not keep).

Our understanding from our system integrator and BMD is that they have tested the Rackmount 6 configuration with two 4000's and we should be able to do 4K real time grading (at least in a half-debayer), but I can't yet get a clear picture on how many nodes etc...

But for color correction, color depth is far more important than resolution, so if we are grading 4K or 5K r3d's at half debayer we should be good.

Backup will be via a Quantum LTO-5 superloader.

Any feedback, comments or suggestions welcome.

Mark

Is the AJA card supported for Resolve yet, so far as I know the guys at Da Vinci say they hope to support it soon....I have a card (works fine) but not in resolve. Note the HDMI only works in DVI mode at the moment but passes for hooking up to the V25. Id also use a BM HD Link to insert the LUT in to the V25. Also if your switching 3D modes on either the HD link or AJA ie Onionskin/mux to SbS or whatever. The V25 (V20 in our case) monitor swicthes to an odd display. So it only really works when the source is locked down properly top SbS. As of today so far as I know few apps support dual link via HDMI so in practice either via AJA and BM are both SbS. But it seems to work OK though.

Also consider catDV for your content management on the SAN. BRU works well with the Tandberg T40 auto loader, apparently reported some where on this board BRU were not supporting Quantum for some reason.

Make sure the SAN has dual metadata controlers and the metadata store is raid 1 and the whole issue has a UPS behind it. We used the D link switches for the metadata LAN, can't recall the model number.

What tech monitoring do you propose ?

Id be interested to know how the Cubix works out and how many node you get, we have Resolve with one 4800 and hope to add Cubix and another 4800 or pair of 4000 cards to it. A Great grading system though.

[Shane Betts]

It certainly has and its got sharp teeth, Im not sure id go there again......

He he. Yeah, me neither. It does support Avid though ...

[Mark Pedersen]

My first reaction Mark is why 4Gb FC? 8Gig is the current standard and I wouldn't aim any lower than that. When we began our upgrades a bit over a year ago, 8Gig was very new and difficult to get but I went with an 8Gig switch and, eventually, upgraded the Atto cards to 8Gig as well. Right now our old Xserve RAID is reaching EOL at 2Gb and, whilst our two Infortrends are doing fine with 4Gb backplanes, the XRAID will be replaced with a Sonnet or an Infortrend with 8Gb. The performance out of these units will be perfect for EXR or DPX.

You might also look at your choice of LTO loader, depending on your software. I replaced our Quantum LTO4 with a Quantum LTO5 only to discover that Bru was no longer offering support for Quantum products due to Quantum's "lack of support for the Mac" according to Bru. This meant a rather expensive upgrade to PresSTORE and, even though it's a great product, I'd found Bru was great and a bargain and, quite frankly, changing packages has been a PITA. Careful the domino effect!

BTW, have BMD implemented support for the KONA card as yet? I know they said they were planning on it but I've seen nothing yet - might have missed it though.

Also, you might want to ensure StoreNext will support you with possible future solutions such as Avid ... If you feel there may be a possibility down the road. We went MetaSAN and, although it certainly has it's ... how can I say this - personality traits:-) ... we run it with FCP, Avid and everything else we use.

Hey Shane,

Thanks for the feedback!
Turns out we are going with an 8G switch (bad copy over from an old quote).
We are selling our XRAIDS so will only be running the Rorkes.

Also, thanks for the heads up on BRU support for the LTO5. We are currently running BRU, on a DLT machine, but it seems weird that BRU wouldn't support LTO 5, but seeing the other threads on Reduser, particularly by Jeff Kilgore, that seems to be the case. I'll have my team check out the alternatives. Seems going with an HP LTO-5 drive and sticking with BRU would be the best bet. Retrospect sucks.

Cheers,

M

[Albert Frates]

Talk to Torrey Loomis from Silverado Systems
He's also here on Reduser.net he deals with this kinda stuff, I believe he was testing one out.

[Shane Betts]

From what I understand Mark, Bru utilises more of the Mac OS tools for communicating with the library, where others like PresSTORE seem to write their own tools. This means that, when a company like Quantum decides to let Mac systems fix their own problems (only my assumption from what Bru have published), this leaves Bru a little more exposed to incompatibilities. Of course, I could be totally off base here but that's how I understand it. It's a shame because, for us here in Australia, the support for Quantum hardware is AMAZING and I really like Bru. Damn!

[Stephen Lovett]

Hi Mark,

I'm traveling and have a crap connection or I'd check, but I'm pretty sure Shane is speaking specifically about Quantum, not LTO-5 in general. I got a quote with my maintenance license for BRU for a stand alone LTO-5 HP unit so I know they support some brands. I'm ignorant about tape loaders because I don't need one.

One more thing to consider is the sound level of the enclosure. Rack mount enclosures typically assume data room / datacenter deployment, and thus can be pretty loud.

The low noise level was one of the things that attracted me to the soon to be released JMR solution you let me know about in December.

Unfortunately that product will require purchasing integrated storage which isn't a good fit for me.

Steve