Avid Qualified on Nehalem Mac Pros

[michael_lucid]

Pretty much what was expected. Click here for details.

In short, the 2.66GHz and 2.93GHz Dual Quad core with the GeForce GT 120 512MB = good.

Unfortunately, Metafuze is still not supported on the Mac (including bootcamp).

Next step? Avid to qualify the Z800 series!

 

[William Maheras]

Any problems using ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB in that configuration?

 

[michael_lucid]

Any problems using ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB in that configuration?

Aside from Avid not supporting it, no. I liken breaking Avid's config guidelines to the toying with the IRS: You may get away with for a little while - but it will get you. And then you're screwed.

These supported configs came out yesterday (4/21), so I personally have not done any testing. With 3.5.x reportedly further utilizing the GPU than previous versions, I'd be even more concerned about going "off book" from an Avid configuration. Because of this, I doubt I will do much testing with the ATI card, unless Avid endorses it.

 

[Jason Diamond]

Metafuze will work with VMWare Fusion... on MAC

 

[michael_lucid]

Has anyone used VM Fusion on the new Nehalems and checked stability...of both the environment and/or Metafuze?

With the Z800 series coming out, I'd rather wait and test on that natively.

Edit: The avid.com/metafuze site reads: Version 1.2; supported on Windows XP, Mac OS X using VM Fusion, and Linux via WINE, however, the lightbox download page reads: Supported on Windows XP and Linux via WINE. The README mentions support under VMWare.

Hrm, this is news to me. Perhaps testing is called for. Anyone have an idea when 1.2 was released? With 3.5? Michael P., has this been tested on a Nehalem with VM Fusion?

 

[michael_lucid]

I'll post this with my Nehalem bench thread, but since it was discussed here as well:

Using VMware Fusion 2.04, running Win XP SP2 on the 2.93 Nehalems, using the same footage and test I referenced in this thread:
http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=401950

VMware was set to use the max (2 virtual processors) and 4GB RAM (why add more? It's running XP)

Metafuze 1.2 (8 threads for both local and remote, although this would be throttled by the processors VMware allows)
QT 7.6
DNxHD Codecs 2.0 LE.

My results, thus far, are off the charts. And not in the good way.

I'm finding times around 72:1. Yes, that's right.

72:1. For RED to DNxHD36.

1 Minute of RED footage took well over an hour to encode with above settings. I ran the test again with shorter and longer clips, all clocking in around the 72:1 mark.

Given the preliminary results, I will not do a batch, nor try 220x.....can't tie up the computer for that long!

 

[MichaelP]

I wouldn't use v1.2 for speed tests... we have added lots of optimizations in v1.3 for transcode times. I am hoping to get to some tests here this coming week.

Michael

 

[michael_lucid]

I wouldn't use v1.2 for speed tests... we have added lots of optimizations in v1.3 for transcode times. I am hoping to get to some tests here this coming week.

Michael

Good to hear from you Michael, our paths didn't cross at NAB! Perhaps I missed ya standing in back at the reseller meeting, eh?

Once I get my hands on 1.3, I'll be certain to give it a whirl, although if it's still a Windows only app, the bottleneck may be what VMware allows (2 virtual processors) when doing the encode via virtualization.

Once I get an Avid sanctioned Z800, I expect that to blow the roof off of things!

~Michael