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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Moving to larger PC.. Help and thoughts

Jeff.. A cool idea

Jeff.. A cool idea

Jeff,

You should make a sticky that allows users to post their system configs, and then a quick description of what it gives them.
(no discussions.. Just the configs)

IE.

I use this and this and this..
Results:
Pros
I run premiere pro cs5 and I can play back 23 layers of 4K footage in real time with 30 effects each.

Cons:
I can only run the computer for 1 hour before it melts through the floor and falls down to the basement of the house!! (See Alien acid/blood effect for visual)

You get the idea.

It could really be a HUGE HELP

Jay
 
SSDs have their good and bad points. The best reasons to use an SSD for OS and applications is they load really fast with very low latency. A fast RAID is going to be faster for data rates, but will have slower latency and seek times. So for loading small bits of data very fast, SSD is where it's at.

The down-sides to SSD are write times, which become slower over time as the space fills up. At first, typical SSDs write faster than most of the best 3.5" HDDs, some as much as 2.5X as fast or so. But it's usually all down-hill from there. One of the big things to look for in an SSD, especially one based on MLC tech, is how fast the zone clear and reset times are. Often, the best speeds come from writing to an SSD as it simply moves new data to un-used areas. As it fills up and you replace data, it must clear and reset previously used portions and this can often cut write speeds to 1/10th of what they once were!

SSDs are a great choice for the OS and application storage in a system because they occupy little physical space for the performance they give. You typically don't write much information or change much information very often within your primary application and OS space other than updates and to install new apps. Of course, you will want an SSD that is at least a good 50% larger than what your OS and apps need to reside. I don't know how you would build a serious windows workstation with a 120GB SSD for a system drive. Most of my systems typically need around 250~300GB to hold my OS and apps and still leave me with some acceptable room left over.

@Jay -- Your suggestion about the system configuration thread.... I think we tried that once before, but it's not a bad idea. I'll set it up in the main workflow section. The trick is keeping the discussions out of it -- probably best to make a separate thread for the discussions.
 
Elsie N said:
Petri, Some of the new motherboards and BIOS are making overclocking much easier as I'm sure you are aware of
Click to expand...
Yup. Just the other day I was testing an Asus Supercomputer mobo which has a very nice and easy-to-use auto-oc'ing feature in the BIOS. Unfortunately the settings it came up with weren't stable in the slightest :)

But I agree. I don't think Jay will need to. His build will have so much horsepower and his workload sounds like it will be GPU heavy. Reliability will probably be of greatest concern.
Click to expand...
My point exactly. Reliability is concern #1 when building a rig for a paying job where time equals money. I personally tend to spend a bit more money on the hardware to get a fast & reliable rig with no oc'ing than save a few bucks to end up with an oc'd house-of-cards-in-a-hurricane (to exaggarate mildly) :badputer:
 
Thanks for the SSD info Jeff... best explanation I've read yet of how an SSD works.
 
Regarding SSDs: it actually pays to read some hardware sites before splurging on a specific SSD. There's quite a lot of difference in both read/write speeds between different models, usually based on the controller used in the drive. AFAIK the fastest MLC drives currently are based on the Sandforce controller.

It's also good to keep in mind that SSD technology is currently advancing in leaps and bounds, which means whatever you buy will be obsolete very quickly. On the other hand drive prices should be coming down while performance keeps improving rapidly.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I don't know how you would build a serious windows workstation with a 120GB SSD for a system drive.
Click to expand...
I'm doing just fine with a 120GB SSD, actually. But it's only got Windows 7 64-bit, a very stripped-down Adobe CS5, Sony Vegas 9 Pro and RC-X :)
 
I Have a SSD system drive with 64GB, with osx and final cut studio. The demos and templates in other drive.

I prefer to have a small drive because i like to make backups from my drive. If i have a 320GB drive, i know that i will fill at least 300GB. If you have 64GB, you have a limit, and when you want to make a backup it's really fast.
I have my system 10.6, my system 10.6.2, my system 10.6.4... etc... and when i want to update my system, before i make a new backup.

I like ssd because i think it's reliable. In my opinion its faster but if you fill it, its slow. I think 4 times slower than empty, at least my ssd.

Saludos,

Jose.
 
Hey Jay

What do you want to do with the system? I think that should inform your build. Are you doing lots of editorial revisions to shortform stuff and you don't have many projects going at the same time (in that case, spend more on SSDs for your most active projects)? How much color correction are you doing, etc?

May I play devil's advocate for a moment (you know I am a big PC / Premiere fan since version 5, right?) and ask:

Are you sure that Premiere CS5 can actually take advantage of this crazy system you're putting together?

Will it actually give you speed in the right places?

Maybe you'll be able to able to do 53 layers of video with gaussian blur and color correction... but when it comes to scrubbing through footage, it's not very fast due to Redcode decodes not being properly optimized for many cores? And by the time Red's SDK gets optimized, maybe there will be faster CPUs available for less - so essentially you paid a premium for some extra cores which stayed idle?

Also IMHO Premiere just isn't responsive as an Avid and you waste a lot of time doing certain tasks.

If I wanted a responsive editing system, I'd get fewer cores and higher gigahertz, get an SSD for sure and ditch Premiere for Avid.

Also for color correction - Premiere on a 12-core PC might render faster than DaVinci Resolve on a Mac... but if it takes you more tries to get the color right because the tools aren't as good, then you'll not be as fast as the slower computer with superior software.

I'm surrounded by 8-cores at work but after a test with Premiere and After Effects to online a feature, the workflow just bogged me down. It worked, but man did things suck. I had to stop down multiple times to write scripts to do simple conform tasks, After Effects crashed every 50th R3D clip, Premiere got very slow, clunky and crashy, etc. I also found that for color correction rendering, running 3 copies of AE at the same time was 2-3x faster than running one copy of AE with multiprocessing turned on. Now THAT is a prime example of inefficient code! Are you really willing to build your project workflow around the idea of breaking things into 3-4 projects that can render simultaneously just because Adobe can't be bothered to get the most out of anything more than a dual-core systems? If not, then the 12 core may be a waste.

Just don't want you to buy this $7000 system and then find out it's not that fast (and that if you'd bought a 4-core mac with avid / resolve, you'd be finishing projects faster).

I understand Lightwave work on your 12-core would be awesome, of course!

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
You bring up some good points Bruce. And I need to consider this.

After Effects and Lightwave are the source of my "flashy" graphics, and to be able to work in them better, with faster rendering, would mean lot.. However you are correct in that I am not really getting much out of After effects by itself.

I was VERY interested in DaVinci.. That's for sure.

Your point about DaVinci is a good one. I really wanted that too. My largest issue with the MAC is it's limitations in the hardware area, and I worry Apple may not have much love left for it's poor little computer.

I'll take a little time and think about this.

I think if anything, I may pull back a little on the specs of this system, and give myself some breathing room.

Jay
 
Bruce Allen said:
Hey Jay



Also IMHO Premiere just isn't responsive as an Avid and you waste a lot of time doing certain tasks.

I use both on a PC and PPro CS5 with 24 gigs on an overclocked 980x is clearly more responsive then the Avid. It's not even close.

Although I'm on a PC and not a Mac so I wouldn't know if this makes a difference...
Click to expand...
 
Steve Cee said:
I use both on a PC and PPro CS5 with 24 gigs on an overclocked 980x is clearly more responsive then the Avid. It's not even close.

Although I'm on a PC and not a Mac so I wouldn't know if this makes a difference...
Click to expand...

We are probably doing different tasks regularly then.

BTW, totally agree - overclocked 980x is to me the sweet spot - much rather have 6 very fast cores than 12 slow ones for good interactive editing performance.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Future of SSDs...240 gig available July 4th. The only downside is that because they are raided there is no trim support yet. But if you are on a Mac there is no trim period.

Once you can link these puppies together I think you will see large enough capacities for editing feature length stuff. Then just back them up to a regular hardrive.

The great thing is there is no Sata bottleneck because you are directly connecting them to pci express.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3788/oczs-revodrive-pcie-ssd-preview-an-affordable-pcie-ssd

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=913&type=expert&pid=1
 
Hey Jay,
Hang on to your nvidia 470 (forget the 285). They've officially released the cuda 3.1 drivers, officially supporting CS5 GPU accelleration.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-257.21-whql-driver.html

The unofficial "rumor" from Adobe was that the CS5 update to officially include 470 cards wouldn't be far behind the driver release.

The same unofficial source said the 480 would still be stuck in the lab for a while.
 
Jay A. Kelley said:
Some of you may remember I was going to move to MAC cause it had Divinci, and I thought, since it can also boot windows, I have nothing to lose..
Click to expand...
I don't want to highjack this thread and someone may already had mentioned it earlier.
If not, I just would like to remind, that Resolve also runs on Linux, very well I might add. So, you don't a Mac in order to run Resolve. And yes, of coarse it ist hen a much more expensive proposition, $49k more expensive to be exact.
That's it, carry on...
 
Thoughts to date

Thoughts to date

Leave it to Bruce to fuck with my world....

:blushing:

He brings up a good point in regards to compatibility. When I shoot for clients, a lot of them use FCP. I do NOT use any MAC stuff in my closed loop productions, but that does not mean I don't use MAC.. Clients want stuff all the time from there.

As for Davinci, sigh... That's a painful issue.. I REALLY want Davinci, but I am still trying to figure out the damn workflow here.

If only color finesse had power windows, I would be fine with them.. As it is now, the only way to accomplish that would be using After Effects, and I am not completely against that if I can get it running well enough.

I dunno.. At this point, I am considering pulling some things off the "monster PC" and getting a decent mac as well.

One way or the other, I need to upgrade.. I'll keep people informed.

Jay
 
Jay A. Kelley said:
Leave it to Bruce to fuck with my world....

:blushing:

He brings up a good point in regards to compatibility. When I shoot for clients, a lot of them use FCP. I do NOT use any MAC stuff in my closed loop productions, but that does not mean I don't use MAC.. Clients want stuff all the time from there.

As for Davinci, sigh... That's a painful issue.. I REALLY want Davinci, but I am still trying to figure out the damn workflow here.

If only color finesse had power windows, I would be fine with them.. As it is now, the only way to accomplish that would be using After Effects, and I am not completely against that if I can get it running well enough.

I dunno.. At this point, I am considering pulling some things off the "monster PC" and getting a decent mac as well.

One way or the other, I need to upgrade.. I'll keep people informed.

Jay
Click to expand...

Jay,

I have both and I need both, neither one is better. I run a HP Z800 with a Nivdia 5800/SDI and it's pretty fast with a very affordable ARECA SAS raid. It's a dependable workstation for Resolve, Scratch or SpeedGrade (that's what I use it for). We also run CS5 on it and the new PremierPro runs lightning fast on it, swallowing literally anything you are throwing at it, including DPX and CineForm.

But we also need Apple Hardware for Smoke on Mac and the tons of ProRes files that enter our place. FCP is still one of the two big NLEs and many, many use it although we have less and less use for it.

I rather invest into good software than into expensive bleeding edge hardware. Hardware is so quickly out-dated. Good software holds it's production value considerably longer. And the advantage of the latest computer developments are pretty small in a daily routine. That's at least what I found out in the last 15 years.

Hans
 
Bruce Allen said:
...


... but when it comes to scrubbing through footage, it's not very fast due to Redcode decodes not being properly optimized for many cores?

www.boacinema.com
Click to expand...

usually I´ve always open a reference monitor with a RGB Waveform. By chance I switched off the "gang to referencemonitor" and what a surprise, I can now scrub through the timeline without any hiccups...(2 year old core2Quad)

bg
alex
 
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