Magma ExpressBox 3T

[Jamie_Guy]

Thanks Shiblon, really good info.

 

[Jamie_Guy]

So now we have the Rocket and the Express Box installed. The Rocket is in the 8x Slot next to the Thunderbolt card. We are getting 5k HD exports out of Resolve at 10-14 fps. 4k HD yields about 12-15 fps export to ProRes 4k. Is there anything that we can do to get more speed? RedCine X sees the Rocket as 4x.

We have it hooked up to a new iMac 27" 3.4 Ghz 32gb Ram & 2gb Nvidia card.

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

Check your system preference and see if the rocket is at x4 or x8 link speed, it can only show up as PCIe x4 over TB. You'll only get 14-15 FPS speeds if you are using a single volume drive instead of an HBA raid controller and a fast raid, due to I/O latency and overhead, and it will be slower if you read/write from the same drive. Ideally you want to read from one raid/drive and write to another raid/drive.

You just have to remove or address any possible bottlenecks in the throughput or workflow.
Resolve won't process R3D files as fast as RedcineX, which is why I usually go to a 16bit Redlogfilm ProRes 4444 1080p or 4k HD sometimes, and then create the 1lites/dailies in Resolve. If we have TC sync, it's easy to marry sound later in Resolve as well.

To maximize transcode speeds I run the Magma with only the Rocket and HBA controller at x8 link speeds, still TB Gen2 PCIe x4 lanes, with two raid5 units (one per Mini-SAS port) with 15k rpm drives. I read from one raid unit and write to the other. In RedcineX 5k HD to 3k ProRes 4444 redlog runs around 25-29 FPS.

 

[James Peach]

In response to the red rocket not running at PCIe x8 lanes in the Magma case, remember its Gen1 x8 lane, which is the same bandwidth as Gen2 x4 lane (thunderbolt), and in Redcine X it still has the warning and shows up as a Gen2 x4 lane PCIe connection, however, in the real world with 5k HD material I get around 28-29 fps transcodes with the rocket in slot_1 at the x8 link speed (around 65% system resources used) and only 23-24 fps transcodes when I have the rocket in slot_2 at the x4 link speed (around 40% system resources used).

MBPR SYSTEM SETTINGS/RESOURCE INFORMATION

ExpressBox 3T:
Vendor Name: Magma
Device Name: ExpressBox 3T
Vendor ID: 0x19
Device ID: 0x2
Device Revision: 0x2
UID: 0x0019000000002460
Route String: 1
Firmware Version: 26.1
Port:
Status: Device connected
Link Status: 0x2
Port Micro Firmware Version: 0.2.5
Cable Firmware Version: 0.1.18
Cable Serial Number: ####
Port:
Status: No device connected
Link Status: 0x7
Port Micro Firmware Version: 0.2.5


RED Rocket:
Type: Video
Driver Installed: Yes
Tunnel Compatible: Yes
MSI: No
Bus: PCI
Slot: Thunderbolt@19,0,0
Vendor ID: 0x1a55
Device ID: 0x0070
Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x1a55
Subsystem ID: 0x0070
Revision ID: 0x0000
Link Width: x8
Link Speed: 2.5 GT/s


When the red rocket loses thunderbolt connectivity, that's usually right before the card dies altogether, usually works for another couple days in a MAC or PC tower, then nothing. At least thats what happened to my previous two rockets, each lasted a little more than a year, but I didn't expect to get more than that with such heavy day-in day-out field/onsite use.

So i am def not the only one.
My RR just stopped to day. Its crazy it was working in my mac pro tower, and I was trying to decide to send it in because of random not working in the Magma 3T.

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

It looks like Magma just added the option for an internal (x4) 2.5" cage to the T3 box, might work well with a controller for temp/on-site backup. Nice and quiet with a solid state raid0. But I'm not sure if that will limit the use of full length PCIe cards like the rocket.

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Yeah, as BenzO and I found out, that nifty drive enclosure will limit card length and we believe it will require a host card in one of those slots to run the drives.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Questions for Magma-

How soon might we see TB2?

Will the RedRocket-X still fit even with the drive cage installed? (realize you may not have a RR-X to test with just yet)

Cheers - #19

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

From what I've been told by the various vendors, all the TB expansion cases should be upgradable to TB2 by swapping out the PCIe interface card, I think most cases (magma, mlink, sonnet, maxx) are using the same interface card, upgrades are probably near the end of the year. The new sonnet case and the magma case supply power already, but the rocket-x looks at least as large as the current rocket, I don't think it will fit with a drive cage installed.

 

[Matthew Love]

Rocket X is a full length card (so longer than the current rocket )


Not sure why you're seeing such slow speeds Jamie_Guy,

I can run a Rocket in a sonnet thunderbolt enclosure and in resolve get 33FPS transcodes from 4K HD to 1920 Preores 422(hq). In Redcine I get at least 24-26fps.

This going to either a single usb 3.0 g drive. Going to My own 8 bay RAID I dont see much of a difference if at all, but that's because I've hit the render speed limit of the Rocket itself.

 

[Jamie_Guy]

Question. Do you think if I took the Thunderbolt Card out of the Magma Chassis and installed it on a Windows 8 machine it would work? The reason I ask is we have a promise drive that we would love to use on the PC and it is Thunderbolt only.

Thoughts?

 

[Jamie_Guy]

Anyone have any Thoughts?

Question. Do you think if I took the Thunderbolt Card out of the Magma Chassis and installed it on a Windows 8 machine it would work? The reason I ask is we have a promise drive that we would love to use on the PC and it is Thunderbolt only.

Thoughts?