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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 :)

DaVinci Resolve V7.0 Supports Rocket

Pre-Ordered my Resolve software today.
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
It's about making a new software solution work with an existing hardware infrastructure (SAN) and having to support two graphics cards at the same time. I can't chuck my ATTO card, or my Kona 3 (unless Im forced to upgrade it to use Resolve?) so either I use the two suggested graphics cards or I use one and a Rocket, assuming the lions share of work will be grading .R3D.

But would that even be a better option than just running with the two suggested graphics cards, since I can't have 5 cards?
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like i said, you are right, let us send apple requests!
 
Cüneyt Kaya said:
like i said, you are right, let us send apple requests!
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Another question would be would the 5 ideal pci cards (assuming only 5) max out the 40 lanes supported on intel processors? In other words is the 4 pci slot issue really a moot point. Haven't done this math, im guessing 5 would still be of benefit.
 
So, to put it the other way - how slow can a RAID be before you go nuts and start pulling your hair? Just asking.. I gotta get a new RAID solution myself. Preferably eSATA with PortMultiplier.... I've thought of 16 drives in four four-bay rack units - but these will be built step by step. I wasn't baptized in a river of coins... :)
 
OlaHaldor said:
So, to put it the other way - how slow can a RAID be before you go nuts and start pulling your hair? Just asking.. I gotta get a new RAID solution myself. Preferably eSATA with PortMultiplier.... I've thought of 16 drives in four four-bay rack units - but these will be built step by step. I wasn't baptized in a river of coins... :)
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How slow? Slow enough to drop 1 frame. That is the critical mass of failure if your in the broadcast or feature film game.

It's about scale... how much storage do you need and how many real time streams of video do you need to playback, at what frame rates, what codec and what resolution?
 
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Yeah, that's what I mean. But how many discs in what kind of RAID ? I can't spend 10K on a RAID over night just because I "need" it or "that's what everyone else does". I prefer eSATA since I got a few smaller RAIDs with it already.
 
OlaHaldor said:
Yeah, that's what I mean. But how many discs in what kind of RAID ? I can't spend 10K on a RAID over night just because I "need" it or "that's what everyone else does". I prefer eSATA since I got a few smaller RAIDs with it already.
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Here's an indie point of view:

1. I'm sure DaVinci will have some certified RAID systems that cost under 10K. There are RAID setups for way under that which have really good, sustained, reliable performance.

2. At the moment, Apple Color has serious difficulties playing realtime AT ALL :P But people figure out how to make it work (work at 16fps or so then render out to ProRes, which can play realtime without a fancy RAID, etc). DaVinci looks like it'll get you better performance than Color out of the box... and if you have the money for the right setup - then you get realtime. Best of both worlds.

3. What's your source format? In the DaVinci specs, it sounds like you can import ProRes, R3D, Cineform or DNxHD. All of those don't need a huge RAID to play back - although R3D needs serious processing.

4. Presumably DaVinci does its internal renders in uncompressed DPX or something. So that'd be the main bottleneck you might want to check.

5. The main trick with building your own RAID would be making sure that you didn't hit a situation where your RAID is fast enough most of the time... and then it drops a frame when you're going out to tape.

But if that isn't critical to you, I could certainly see an indie solution working cheaply (eg clients are okay with the occasional frame dropping when you're working inside the DaVinci - and when you go out to tape, you do so from a lower-bandwidth format eg ProRes / DNxHD / Cineform that doesn't frame skip).

Nobody would "certify" it or provide support if you're complaining about frames dropping once every half hour - but it'd probably work really well for a lot of indie tasks.

Again, even the cheapest setup would seem to me to be way superior to Apple Color - and give great value for money.

Once you start doing high-end work then you just get a better RAID and bill it to the job.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
Brandon Kraemer said:
Another question would be would the 5 ideal pci cards (assuming only 5) max out the 40 lanes supported on intel processors? In other words is the 4 pci slot issue really a moot point. Haven't done this math, im guessing 5 would still be of benefit.
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My motherboard (P6T7 WS) has 64-lanes using a second chip. 7 PCI-e slots. So it's possible.
 
CJ Roy said:
Has anyone had success with expansion systems that might help us with our Mac Pro's? I'm looking into options now... Magma, Cyclone?
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Magma totally works without a flaw.
 
At this stage, with Mac Pros having only 40 lanes, I would suggest the following:
Lanes 1&2, GPU cards. One for GUI monitoring and the other for pipeline processing.
Lane 3, RR
Lane 4 Decklink.

That leaves you without external storage unless...

If you're a one machine house, run SATA-eSATA cable out through the spare optical drive to an eSATA RAID 5.

If you're a multi machine house with a SAN? Well it's a PITA thanks to Apple but here's what I think will be the way we'll go. Using the eSATA solution above, it's going to be an overnight xfer of pulls from the SAN, via Gigabit, onto the eSATA RAID, do the grade and then another Gigabit xfer back to the SAN. That's for longform. Short form? Well the xfer will be shorter...

When (IF?) Apple pull their fingers out and give us a decent pro spec machine (Southbridge?), we can add not only a FC HBA but, perhaps, another GPU card or two. Then we'll be cooking. Of course, by then we might all have Linux Resolves and can enjoy our iPhones and iPads with a smile.
 
CJ Roy said:
Thanks Kaku,

Is there anything to avoid? Anything you wouldn't put in a Magma? I remember there being some heat issues with a red-rocket put in one.

Thanks again.
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CJ,

The magma I have is the ExpressBox2 runs and connected at x8 speed and it is always working fine with Mac Pro. It might have problems with some RAID cards especially when it's connected to Mac Book Pro, but with Mac Pro, when connected to x16 lane slot, my Small Tree 10Gb ether card is working fine, RED ROCKET is working fine, eSATA card, Matrox MXO2 host card is fine.
 
Problem is, with Resolve, you can't connect a Magma to a 16 lane slot because you need that slot for the second GPU card.

And is it me, or is there something ironic about heat concerns with a product named Magma? :emote_head_explode:
 
Shane Betts said:
Problem is, with Resolve, you can't connect a Magma to a 16 lane slot because you need that slot for the second GPU card.

And is it me, or is there something ironic about heat concerns with a product named Magma? :emote_head_explode:
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I don't think RR needs x8 speed per card because it works with x1 connection with Mac Book Pro. So it might be worth trying to connected to x4 lane with two RRs. I will try that and report as soon as I get the Resolve.

Are you serious about the naming? LOL.
 
Shane Betts said:
Problem is, with Resolve, you can't connect a Magma to a 16 lane slot because you need that slot for the second GPU card.
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Why do you need a 16 lane slot for just the GUI GPU card?

I would at least try putting the CUDA card (GTX285 / FX4800 / Quadro 4000) in the one 16x slot - and put the PCI extender in the other 16x slot. You don't get a 16x PCI extender/expander thing do you? EG Magma and Cubix GPU-X are only 8x, right? Still, it's better than 4x.

Maybe:
slot 1: GTX285
slot 2: Magma or GPU-X

Now the only question is: which cards to we put on the PCI extender to share the 8x connection, and which cards do we put in the 4x PCI slots?

I'd think that the REDROCKET and RAID cards would want the most bandwidth, followed by the Blackmagic, then then GUI card last.

Main thing is to figure out which cards are most stable when on the expander. If the RAID card were stable, I'd be tempted to put the REDROCKET and RAID cards on the expander because if you aren't using the REDROCKET (eg playing back DPXes) the RAID could run at full speed - and if you aren't using the RAID (eg playing back on set from a FW800 drive) then the REDROCKET could run at full speed.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
 
PCI-E is 250 or 500 MB/s per lane (depending on version). That means four lanes should more than cover commonly deployed RAID systems (300-600 MB/s) or 2K 10-bit 4:4:4 24p video output (~220 MB/s). Or the Rocket, I would think, if you're only having it feed 2K back to the host computer (which I think you generally would be, if you were going for real-time performance with Resolve on a Mac).
 
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