Building System For REDCine. Need advice

[galexander]

I Downloaded Iometer and see that there's a lot of complexity in the choices and I have no reason to learn up on it all. Feel free to feed me a set of parameters that make sense from your end and I'll run them.

I use a nice utility I learned about from Axel years ago made by Matrox called filexfer. It can test your drives using very realistic video editing settings for file I/O, and can even read/write multiple streams at once.

For instance, the raw WD 500 gig SATA's I have on hand will do approx 84 MB/sec read/writes when empty when tested on a single video stream. Run two streams and the performance degrades down to the lower 30's. In comparison, my 4 WD 250 gig RAID 0 will still read/write over 200 MB/sec with only 9 gigs free space!

I've been doing some tests with REDCINE and my system. Using JJ's 4K 235 frame funny car clip for testing and reading from one nearly empty SATA and saving to another. My project settings are 1080p, the shot is scaled to fit height and an s-curve applied for grading. Processing output is set to "standard" and scaling is cubic, and the results when saving to a DPX stream is 2.4 frames/sec. Increasing the processing to "full", which then scales from the full 4K information, the result is 2.46 seconds per frame.

Yikes! I'm pretty sure I've got all REDCINE settings optimized, the window is the lowest quality setting and I'm careful not to rescale in output.

please, take this in the most positive manner you can.

these numbers to me are really not much use. what codec is it simulating? are you simulating a stream directly from the camera so the whole file is buffered initially?

excuse me but what the hell is "standard" processing or "full"? does this simulate rendering? or color corrections? pixel masking? noise removal? dark current calibration? calculating motion vectors? are you simulating a log or linear? gamma corrections? or somewhere in the post workflow?

why are you scaling the image? why aren't you working directly on a 2k or 4k frame? i don't have a redcine so i don't have an understanding of what you are doing but i have Flaskmpeg, Avisynth, and VirtualDub which are brutually and exceedingly fast.

does this simulate a convert to a raw footage first? use it compressed?

IOmeter doesn't care about any of this, you can benchmark ANY system, it is a tool worth knowing how to use IMHO. i'd rather have the old swiss army knife than a specialized tool.

all i need to know is the following,

what is the biggest byte size (jumbo frame) of the data that Red supports over the coppper GiGe? if it's intel chipset it might be around 9k, broadcom maybe 7/8k.

why are you seeing such a significant drop when you switch to a 4k frame? a 4k frame(4096x2160) is 4.3 times a 1080p (1900x1080) frame, but your processing decreased by a factor nearly 6 from 2.4 fps to .406 fps. whatever you did has a ton of overhead.

 

[number6]

this little equation might help

performance

for that dual quad Dell specs

(0.85*2)*4*(667/1333)*(1.6/3.2)*(0.95)*(16/64)*(256/512)*(4/4)=~0.2

for the dual quad Macs

(0.85*2)*4*(667/1333)*(3/3.2)*(0.95)*(32/64)*(512/512)*(4/4)=~1.5

for the Jay set up

(1)*4*(1300/1333)*(3/3.2)*(1)*(64/64)*(512/512)*(2/4)= ~1.8

my current system
(1)*4*(1300/1333)*(2.95/3.2)*(1)*(16/64)*(256/512)*4/4 = ~0.45 (the video card is the choke point)

mine with new video card
(1)*4*(1300/1333)*(2.95/3.2)*(1)*(64/64)*512/512*4/4 =~3.6

larger numbers are better, Jay setup should be equivalent to the mac, (i guessed at the mac video setup) and 9X faster than the Dell.

explanation of equation
(efficiency of shared memory*No of CPUs)*(No of Cores)
*(Slowest Clock/ Maximum Bus Reference)
*(CPU Clock/ CPU Clock Maximum Reference)
*Efficiency Factor of Ram
*(Video GPU Crunching/ Video Maximum Crunching Reference)
*(Video Ram/Video Ram Max)
*(System ram/System Ram Max)

Efficiency factor of ram is ECC vs. Non-ECC, it really depends of quality and is subjective but quality Non-ECC will ALWAYS be faster than ECC at the same frequency.

these don't include any codec issues and just 'ballpark' number to compare systems. the mac OS will have an edge with 64-bit and better memory management.

you could also multiply by a factor for the storage if you wanted to compare a raid versus non-raid.

cost

dell $2k
mac ~$5 ??
Jay build ~$2k
my build ~$1.2k +video($300)( i have previous parts from a ML150G3 i pillaged)

so now the finale, CVP, cost vs. performance

dell = $10k/Processing Unit
mac= $3.3k/Processing unit
Jay= $1.1k/Processing Unit
me(current)=$2.67k/Processing Unit
me(+video)=$0.42k/Processing Unit

now you know why Dell makes a shitload of money, as does Mac and why the people build their own.... and it's always good to reuse parts from previous rigs.

galexander, I feel I've mislead you and in fairness to Dell, I should explain that the computer itself only cost $1,015 and the card is like $122. The rest was for operating system (Vista Ultimate 64 bit) and for a Dell 20" monitor.

And while I do not doubt your benchmarks, nor am I concerned that the (grinder) system I will be using came in last, I just wonder if they are completely relevant due to the fact that some apps work better depending on number of cores while others are more dependent on graphic card gpus? Also, maybe the time required to search for the different parts for a homebuilt, plus the time consumed putting it all together shouldn't be factored in? For some, time is money.

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

now my turn to ask questions

did you do a comparison with others? i was sort of looking at that samsung 305T. why did you pick the dell?

GA.. The current 30" monitor is a wonderful beast (Best of the breed for cool additions as well) and it's diving in price due to the release of a NEW Dell 30".

Right now the 2007 is #$1,100.00

I am pretty sure I will go this way since I don't need a lot of the add ons people are looking at right now.

Jay

 

[galexander]

galexander, I feel I've mislead you and in fairness to Dell, I should explain that the computer itself only cost $1,015 and the card is like $122. The rest was for operating system (Vista Ultimate 64 bit) and for a Dell 20" monitor.

And while I do not doubt your benchmarks, nor am I concerned that the (grinder) system I will be using came in last, I just wonder if they are completely relevant due to the fact that some apps work better depending on number of cores while others are more dependent on graphic card gpus? Also, maybe the time required to search for the different parts for a homebuilt, plus the time consumed putting it all together shouldn't be factored in? For some, time is money.

for including Vista, they should have paid you. i would install win2000 or NT4 before Vista anyday

the numbers are relevant for brute hardware numbers because of the failings or benefits of each OS that number is too hard to quantify as well as the applications. this represents an absolute maximum performance from your hardware. a professional will be able to tune the system to these sort of benchmark numbers. whether you run WinDoZe or some flavor of linux/bsd or a bad ass, professional, real-time OS like QNX or the SGI. the derating factors for software configuration is just too much of a fuzzy logic headache to contemplate. not to mention bad graphic drivers, memory leaks, crappy codecs. yadda, yadda, yadda...

the time required to search for homebuilt is fairly easy as you aren't looking for a generic global solution, you want a blistering, screaming, fire-breathing monster that you can afford, only solution is a gaming rig. this market tends to be small but not as niche as people think. eventually i see them as taking over the high performance server market. the days of the poor performing and overpriced server hardware will be extinct, mainly i think due to the quad cores. you don't need multiple slot board anymore for performance. even if you did have a need for 32-cores, the amount of applications that would actually be beneficial is low. unless like me you hack your own with PGI or intel OpenSMP compilers. heh heh heh

 

[number6]

for including Vista, they should have paid you. i would install win2000 or NT4 before Vista anyday

the numbers are relevant for brute hardware numbers because of the failings or benefits of each OS that number is too hard to quantify as well as the applications. this represents an absolute maximum performance from your hardware. a professional will be able to tune the system to these sort of benchmark numbers. whether you run WinDoZe or some flavor of linux/bsd or a bad ass, professional, real-time OS like QNX or the SGI. the derating factors for software configuration is just too much of a fuzzy logic headache to contemplate. not to mention bad graphic drivers, memory leaks, crappy codecs. yadda, yadda, yadda...

the time required to search for homebuilt is fairly easy as you aren't looking for a generic global solution, you want a blistering, screaming, fire-breathing monster that you can afford, only solution is a gaming rig. this market tends to be small but not as niche as people think. eventually i see them as taking over the high performance server market. the days of the poor performing and overpriced server hardware will be extinct, mainly i think due to the quad cores. you don't need multiple slot board anymore for performance. even if you did have a need for 32-cores, the amount of applications that would actually be beneficial is low. unless like me you hack your own with PGI or intel OpenSMP compilers. heh heh heh

Hope I didn't sound overly critical, and from your response I don't think you took it that way. I find your posts informative and, though generally above my (unpaid) pay grade, interesting.

But I think what we have here is a ferrari computer advocate (you), and a VW computer user (me, but I would prefer the ferrari).:cold:

edit: "for including Vista, they should have paid you. " Hah! spot on... but eventually I figure it will evolve to being as stable as XP is now, so a couple of years from now... BINGO!!!

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

Ok so you all know I purchased the parts for the computer today. Total price: $2068.00. This does NOT include monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

Over all I am pretty excited!

Thanks to everyone for the great advice. If all goes well I will have a 3.2GHZ QUAD system for under $2,100.00. That's pretty major.

Jay

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

Can anyone point me to the most powerful wireless router that is out there? I am looking for range, range, range. If anyone has some advice I would be grateful.

Thanks
Jay

 

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

Ok so you all know I purchased the parts for the computer today. Total price: $2068.00. This does NOT include monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

Over all I am pretty excited!

Thanks to everyone for the great advice. If all goes well I will have a 3.2GHZ QUAD system for under $2,100.00. That's pretty major.

Jay

What did you build?

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Ok so you all know I purchased the parts for the computer today. Total price: $2068.00. This does NOT include monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

Over all I am pretty excited!

Thanks to everyone for the great advice. If all goes well I will have a 3.2GHZ QUAD system for under $2,100.00. That's pretty major.

Jay

Jay - this is too much fun. We want pics and benchmarks!

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

No problem! I ordered it today, and expect it to arrive by Friday, then let the building begin!!

I will say Mark, it's been quite an education. Quotes to have the system built were anywhere from $300 - $1,200 more expensive.

Now, being a safe sort of guy, I have a back up plan (A computer type that can build systems in his sleep). But if this whole concept of over-clocking (reasonably, not pushing like the pro's do) really works, then I will have learned something that can save THOUSANDS of dollars in PC equipment.

At this point, my intention is to do this:

Build PC, make sure it works with REDCine.
Purchase Cineform 2k (I'm not living in the 4k post world right now)
Adobe Products (Which I already own)
Color Finesse for post finish work.

A lot has to go right for this to all work well, but I have faith. As for speed, I expect to get the system to 3.2ghz safely, and the 8800 gts is already overclocked.

My RED order is a confusing beast to me right now. Bascially what I have is NOT a working camera at this point. But I decided to promise myself I would not buy with emotion and speed, but rather with thought and patience. I.E. I am sold on the EVF but it's not ready. As for a camera monitor, I am interested in the Panasonic On Camera HD monitor.. I hear nothing but good things about it. It's a little more than twice the price, but allows me to use it on various cameras. That's important. I think it's a little larger too.

Lenses: I don't know enough about 35mm lenses to be paying $6,500 for a short zoom. So I decided to go the still lens route. However, right now no one has managed to make a still lens adaptor.. So right now, I cannot shoot on my RED until it's Nikon mount, or the Birger mount comes out.

The camera has a steep learning curve, there are many things to get a handle on before you can call yourself a pro. Not that it's a complicated technical piece of hardware, but more that it's a tool with lots of potential, and you have to have experience working with it to unlock it.

The best examples I can come up with are:
Photoshop
Lightwave
After Effects

You can get up and running on these things pretty quick if needed, but to be an ARTIST on them, takes time and study. Hopefully RED won't be THIS bad, but expect it to take a little time.

This is a tough way to go for me. I would LOVE to shoot the day I get it, but that decision could cost me thousands down the road, so if nessesary, RED will sit, and I will wait.


Jay

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

What did you build?

It's all on this thread Mac, just go back a couple of pages

Jay

 

[Simon Baechler]

Hi Galexander

here's a little system i've built myself,
thermaltake lanbox, modded.
asus p5k-vm
the onboard gigE supports jumbo frames up to 8088bytes
i regularly hammer the adsl and get 1350MB/s, the limit is 1500MB/s averaging a pull of about 130Kb/s continuous over 18 hours, oh yeah

q6400 - overclocked to 3GHz, with stock intel fan
Kingston X OC'ed to 1066Mhz, 4Gb
Win Svr 2003 x86 (it has PAE, so it uses all of 4Gb), lean and stipped of most of the MS bloatware. system tweaked, registry hacked.


for monitors, current is old viewsonic, but considering building a 15.4" 1080P, a true hi-def monitor that isn't going to break my balls if i want to take it to studio or location.

I'm planning to build a system to have on set in a portable rugged housing with integrated LCD and keyboard and external portable RAID. http://www.mh-service.de/Portable-pc/ATLAS-A5.html

How noisy is your system? Ok, it's overclocked. Would you be able to make it almost silent?

What playback framerate do you get when playing a clip in Redcine at 1/4 resolution?

Have you tried running OSx86 on it?

Regards
Simon

 

[galexander]

Hi Galexander

I'm planning to build a system to have on set in a portable rugged housing with integrated LCD and keyboard and external portable RAID. http://www.mh-service.de/Portable-pc/ATLAS-A5.html

How noisy is your system? Ok, it's overclocked. Would you be able to make it almost silent?

What playback framerate do you get when playing a clip in Redcine at 1/4 resolution?

Have you tried running OSx86 on it?

Regards
Simon

hi simon,

ah you are going with the 'lunchbox' solution i see. i've lugged a few of those around in my day. they are great rugged, tough systems but can be a bit expensive and the technology isn't always the latest and greatest. the type of ram, FSB and CPU are usually 4 to 6 months behind the consumer market but they have to guarantee field work and not someone's desk.

with this system, the airflow looks to be constrained somewhat, it is difficult to see where the CPU would be, there is a big block in front of the MB. so you need to be careful to see how much room you have for cooling. when i get time i'll post some pics of what i've built.

for an external raid, you need to figure out how much data and what type and for how long. depends on your shooting schedule, etc. if you go with a SATA/SAS/SCSI solution you will get great I/O performance but limited cabling, i.e., the raid will have to be close to the 'lunchbox'. depending on how many drives you have the fans cooling the raid can be loud as well.

if you go with a SAN over GiGE/fiber, you can put the raid ~50meters or so away but performance will be slower. you might go with a combination of both with a smaller faster raid in the lunchbox and during breaks in shooting connect up the external raid and dump the data off.

right now mine gets noisy when it is under a hard full-load. i have tied the case cooling fans to the PMW, pulse modulated wave, so that the output of the CPU fan control lines are tied to case cooling fans. most of the times, it is not noticeable.

also the case acts as a huge heat sink as i've thermally connected the hard drives via a 2mm brass plate to the case but still under full load, yeah it's definetly loud.

definetly, i can make it quiet but i was waiting to see what the results of jay's graphic card analysis first. to make it very quiet, there are at least two solutions. one is to use heat pipes, i would use a thermalright U120 or similar for the cpu, they are made to handle about 130Watts. they also do make a smaller more compact version. the only sounds would then be from your graphics card and hard drives. the second method would be to go with a water cooling solution, this cost is ~ 3X's the heat pipe.

i haven't bought the video card yet so i can't comment on the frame rates but i'm hoping to get a good deal off of ebay at the moment.

i've tested my system with XP SP2 both x86 & x64 and Win Server 2003 R1 and R2 x86 and x64.

in other threads, systems with a limited amount of ram are having problems with a 4k workflow. cineform has just released their latest codec btw. i'm benchmarking my raptor raid0 at the moment with XP sp2, x86.

i haven't tried OSx86, but i've just downloaded an iso from QNX. QNX is a real-time professional unix based OS so it doesn't have the latest and greatest graphic drivers(it might be easy to hack one or port a linux or OSx driver to it), but QNX is exceedingly fast and stable. we used it for real-time radar processing, detection, and imaging, it is sweet.

 

[galexander]

Hop
... stuff deleted...

But I think what we have here is a ferrari computer advocate (you), and a VW computer user (me, but I would prefer the ferrari).:cold:

ha ha i like this analogy but maybesomething more like "Shelby" taking a old classic 65 'Stang with an stock 289 and converting it to a GT550.

 

[galexander]

...stuff deleted....

Lenses: I don't know enough about 35mm lenses to be paying $6,500 for a short zoom. So I decided to go the still lens route. However, right now no one has managed to make a still lens adaptor.. So right now, I cannot shoot on my RED until it's Nikon mount, or the Birger mount comes out.

...stuff deleted ...

Jay

why don't you rent PL mount lenses try them out?

 

[Simon Baechler]

hi simon,

ah you are going with the 'lunchbox' solution i see. i've lugged a few of those around in my day. they are great rugged, tough systems but can be a bit expensive and the technology isn't always the latest and greatest. the type of ram, FSB and CPU are usually 4 to 6 months behind the consumer market but they have to guarantee field work and not someone's desk.

thanks for you quick response.

I'm looking into different systems right now but the lunchbox with separate Raid is my favourite right now. The other options are:
- A bigger portable rugged ATX case with 20" screen and the Raid built-in with hot-swap drives and SATA Raid controller. The only downside to this is that the thing is rather big and heavy. I assume about 60 lbs with all drives and back-up battery.
- A flight case with a 19" rack style computer and Raid. The problem there is that you would either need an external monitor or one that is built into the rack. I don't like either.

The system must be able to playback footage in real time. 24 or 25 fps in Redcine or better - once the PC Quicktime codec is out - in Quicktime Player.

I would also like to have a small software that takes care of the data copy and verification process. If anyone who is reading here can write shell scripts and program a GUI please write this software!

I've seen QNX. Long time ago there was talks that it would be the base for the next Amiga OS. They distributed a demo of the OS that was a live image of the OS with a GUI and working web browser on a single floppy disk!
So what does it have to do with Red?

I think for now it is more important that all the Red software runs well on Windows since this is a very widely used OS around here. How about support for Windows 64bit for a start, RED? When apple switched to 64 bit processors within a year almost all the software was 64 bit.

 

[Eddie]

Thank you all for this great thread.
I am also looking into different systems for redcine and will propably end up copying one of the systems posted here.
However I would like to know, if it would make sense to buy a small 32GB ssd for os and aps, and then use fast hard drives for the big red-files?

 

[galexander]

Dell::no PCIe 16X

Dell::no PCIe 16X

here is where i get my bus (PCI,PCIe, etc) adapters when i need them

http://www.adexelec.com/pci32.htm

no i don't work for them, but they build and customize whatever i need as well.

 

[galexander]

Thank you all for this great thread.
I am also looking into different systems for redcine and will propably end up copying one of the systems posted here.
However I would like to know, if it would make sense to buy a small 32GB ssd for os and aps, and then use fast hard drives for the big red-files?

hi,

if the have cash sure with the good configuration this would be the fastest system possible but affordable?

the cost versus performance, i.e., 'bang for the buck' probably isn't too great but you will get a system that can be more compact with greater stability. make sure the ssd is FAST and doesn't clog up the bus. it's no use have an FSB of 1333MHz and you put a crappy 667MHz component on the bus, everything slows to the weakest link.

boot it with a very minimum OS install, do NOT use a swap or pagefile on your fast drive, force the OS and apps to be resident in the memory. this is extremely fast. i have 4Gb and this is standard procedure for my systems.

the last time i looked the cost of a small 32GB ssd was >>> than a small, fast, 200Gb 7.2k rpm drive and it only support FSB of 667MHz but the Moore curve still holds so check it out and see what the latest specs are. just my .02

 

[galexander]

thanks for you quick response.
- A bigger portable rugged ATX case with 20" screen

if you're going portable why are you going bigger? especially with an external raid there's no reason to carry around a monster ATX case and 20" screen. if you have the $$, a nice 2U or 3U rackmount case is much easier in the field.

those nice big 20" screens look great in the studio but in the field with all of the natural sunlight flooding around, limited viewing angles, weight, etc., a smaller LCD that you can shield works much better.

and the Raid built-in with hot-swap drives and SATA Raid controller. The only downside to this is that the thing is rather big and heavy. I assume about 60 lbs with all drives and back-up battery.

do the numbers for your application and usage, don't just build a "mini-fridge" of a raid array. that is a waste of time and resources IMHO. estimate your current shooting time and then storage requirements , then double the amount storage required. you can always buy cheaper non-raid SANs, firewire, or bulk SATA hard drives to transfer data.

The system must be able to playback footage in real time. 24 or 25 fps in Redcine or better - once the PC Quicktime codec is out - in Quicktime Player.

i don't see any problems with obtaining this, but you haven't specified 4k, 2k or 1080p. you will need a bad ass system like the one in this thread.

I would also like to have a small software that takes care of the data copy and verification process. If anyone who is reading here can write shell scripts and program a GUI please write this software!

look around sourceforge.net, there might be something there. depending on the platform, just use perl and hook into md5, it has good CRC.

I've seen QNX. Long time ago there was talks that it would be the base for the next Amiga OS. They distributed a demo of the OS that was a live image of the OS with a GUI and working web browser on a single floppy disk!
So what does it have to do with Red?

why don't you ponder that one yourself?

as the cineform codec, QT, and FCP run native on Mac platforms. OSx is a bastardized version of linux/bsd. QNX is unix, small, light, fast, non-bloated.

I think for now it is more important that all the Red software runs well on Windows since this is a very widely used OS around here. How about support for Windows 64bit for a start, RED? When apple switched to 64 bit processors within a year almost all the software was 64 bit.

switched? mac PPC's were 32bit OS with 64bit architecture, so they had a good idea of what to port to 64bit on the intel platform.

the processors that apple use are 32bit/64bit, they are NOT exclusively 64bit. if you check under the hood of a Mac, i doubt very much if EVERYTHING is running at 64bit. they have to maintain compatibility with 32bit apps.

it is already possible that you can run XP x64 today with the 32bit codecs. whether the codecs will be stable??? i experimented with xvid, ffdshow x64 with limited success. drivers are not stable at this point.

it runs "best" or maybe easiest or least painful, it seems so far on Mac platforms at the moment.