Drop frames with only 3 layers of Prores422?

VGurcu

VGurcu

Well-known member
Just wondering if it is normal for a Macpro 8 core (16GB ram, Ati readeon gcard) to not handle 3 layers of Prores 422 29.97fps video clips playing on top of one another on the same sequence? No filters at all, V2 &V3 layers are %50 reduced in size and sitting on top of full sized V1 layer.
It plays for 3-4secs, then drops frames.
Cant increase the system performance any further; OS runs from dedicated SATA, scratch disks are on a separete sata, safe RT, projects are on external esata.
If i drop the playback frame rate half it manages, but it doesnt look good.
 
dedicated SATA RAID or just off the shelf drive. That is a fair amount of bandwidth...

Noah
 
Noah,
No RAID, project is on the off the shelf(G-drive 2TB) drive connected with esata card... I know G-drives are made up from 2 1TB drives in RAID 0 configuration.
 
You need a RAID 0 to increase the drives throughput. Prores requires a certain amount MB/s data rate to play smoothly. I can't recall what it is but you can look up the prores white papers.

We run 3x 2TB western digital RE4 drives on our two Mac pros at work. They average 340MB/s read/write. Plenty of speed for 3-4 streams of 1080i30 ProResHQ.
 
Prores requires a certain amount MB/s data rate to play smoothly. I can't recall what it is but you can look up the prores white papers.
Click to expand...
Thanks, i just read the prores white papers, and according to page 16 I should be able to edit "11 multistream in unlimited RT"! Funny, on the next page a macbook pro chart outperforms my macpro.(3 stream of real time HD editing with a single 320GB hard drive)

http://images.apple.com/finalcutstudio/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper_July_2009.pdf

. ..They average 340MB/s read/write. Plenty of speed for 3-4 streams of 1080i30 ProResHQ
Click to expand...

In theory my esata connection provides upto 600mB/s according to the manufacturer. I'll double check tomorrow, does Activity monitor do the job?

Keeganxt do me a favor pls and try reducing 2 streams to %50 in size (by motion tab) in a 3 stream edit scenario and play the sequence in full quality; does it play for more than 5 seconds?

Can the video capture card (matrox mox2 mini) be the culprit?...
 
You missed the fine print. In the Apple White Paper the Mac Pro is using the Apple RAID card connected to storage in RAID 5 and in both instances the RT settings are at "Unlimited" not "Safe" which makes a big difference.

Do your sequence settings and clips match exactly?
 
Hi Adkimery,
Actually i read the fine print, i thought if it is 11 streams with that set up i should be able to get at least 3 streams with mine ;) Did you see the macbookpro example? Has no raid whatsoever and plays 3 streams of Prores422 at 147MB/s.

Ok I'll switch to unlimited RT to see the difference.

Yes my sequence settings match. To be clear drop frames happens before rendering. {When i resize a clip to %50 naturally it shows up with green bars above it.}
I dont render in this stage as what i am doing is basically a multicamera editing with simple cuts. I need to see the all 3 angles at once and choose the shots. Problem is I cant play the sequence for more than 4-5 seconds.
 
Yes, the video plays back for more than 5 sec. , though I may be cheating a bit, we're running KONA LHe on both systems as well. But along with that, we used to run just the KONA's and un-striped SATA drives, and with the drive running only as fast as the max throughput is rated for (say 90-100MB/s), we couldn't play back proreshq at all without constant hiccups and drop frames...that's when we went with faster drives. That solved the problem.

also we are not using any raid card, the raid 0's that we have set up are done entirely with the built in software on mac OSX...also note that with this setup, we have ZERO redundancy on the system, but we only keep media for 1 month at a time then it's wiped.

also the eSata connection is good, but the drives have to be able to push it as well, fix the weakest link.
 
With three available internal SATA bays, why are you using external SATA for media?

I soft raided two Seagates on my machine and go 205/195 MB/s read write.
 
With three available internal SATA bays, why are you using external SATA for media?
Click to expand...

I keep the archival data(original footage) in internal sata drives with backups*, and use external esata drives for FCP projects. This way 2 machines can access to any projects with a simple cable switch.(Yeah i should look into networking) So it is more portable.
*Backup sata hard drive is removed and kept in another location for safety
 
Yes, the video plays back for more than 5 sec. , though I may be cheating a bit, we're running KONA LHe on both systems as well. But along with that, we used to run just the KONA's and un-striped SATA drives, and with the drive running only as fast as the max throughput is rated for (say 90-100MB/s), we couldn't play back proreshq at all without constant hiccups and drop frames...that's when we went with faster drives. That solved the problem.

also we are not using any raid card, the raid 0's that we have set up are done entirely with the built in software on mac OSX...also note that with this setup, we have ZERO redundancy on the system, but we only keep media for 1 month at a time then it's wiped.
Click to expand...

Thanks for checking it. I'll do further checks in my system today.
I cant do built-in disk utility Raid O as i explained above i move the internal drives quite often. First i need to figure out read speed of the external drives...
 
Sure thing. If that's the case, you'll need a RAID controller card which is a whole 'nother can of worms. And do not buy the apple raid card...

easiest solution is to buy an external box with a built in controller and the eSATA connection...this is just my opinion. there's actually kits to remove the optical drives and fit 6-8 total SATA drives on mac pro's...but it's complicated.
 
How did it go w/the RT setting at Unlimited?

Have you had problems playing back ProRes files in the past? How full are your drives? Have you run a speed test on your drives? AJA has a free utility called the AJA System Test (scroll down for it).


-Andrew
 
Unlimited RT didnt effect the outcome, i still have the same problem.
Couldnt get the 'Quickbench' for hard drive test either, buy now page doesnt like a Canadian postal code by the looks of it. Any other programs out there?
Activity monitor shows Read in/sec 137 and Data Read/sec 36MB when FCP is running. When it is on problematic area Read In/sec spikes up to 170 and FCP drops frames. These numbers dont make sense to me although prores422 speed is exactly 137MB/sec according to white pages...
I also realized problem only happens when the V3 stream is from Canon DSLR(other 2 stream is from Sony). If I put 3 Apple prores422 streams from Sony AVCHD converted footage it plays fine.
This brings the question 'does my canon footage match the sequence'? Yes, as I use MPEG stream clip to convert the canon footage only difference is in the field dominance, which i correct in browser.
(My sequence field dominance is set to NONE as it is true progressive timeline. For some reason MPEG stremclip doesnt let you choose the 'NONE field dominance option)
I still think problem lies with the MATROX MXO2 Mini box, which was quite troublesome from the first day...

EDIT:Andrew forgot to answer your questions: Again the problem of not being able to play without dropping frames is only on the green timelines which needs rendering, no problems when they are rendered but i cant do that as it is such a waste of time. I should be able to play them when they are green; streams have no effects, no filters, just resizing.
External HDs are always at least %30 empty. Couldn't run the the speed test as i explained above. Would AJA system test work without AJA card presence? I'll quickly give it a try.
 
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UPDATE:
Andrew,
AJA Test works, thank you.
I am really surprised though; For 1920x1080 8 bit video, 1GB file size and
My internal sata's are barely making 72 MB/sec, external esatas are around 130MB/s and OS Drive sata 105MB/s...
How come they are so low?
 
Thats just the way they are. When we were shopping for drives hardly anything that was affordable could break 105MB/s. We finally settled on the RE4's. But that's the whole point of running a raid 0 or 5. They can really up the speed, especially the 0.
 
Keeganxt,
I am reconsidering my storage workflow at the moment. I am convinced to use raid option as you all suggested. You mentioned using 3x2TB in a soft-raid configuration, so i am assuming your OS is separete on the first sata drive(on the stock 640GB drive perhaps) Or, are you running OS on this raided combo?
I am thinking to have a soft-raid internal raid, and additional 1 external RAID set up for the projects. i'll keep the external esata drives for manual back up of the projects.
Also, after some research i tend to believe RAID 0 is the way to go over RAID 5.
 
You assume correctly, the OS is installed on the drive in bay 1. And yes, the 3x 2TB Western Digital RE4 drives are merged to create "Media 1" on this computer using a OSX Raid 0. And we've been running this setup on our two mac pro's for about 3 months with zero stability issues. We also keep them pretty empty with the kind of work we do, but that also keeps the speed at it's max. I believe (might be wrong about this part) that if you exceed 50% capacity on certain RAID configs) that you begin losing performance. Worth doing some research on that.

Here's the article I referenced when setting it up initially.

RAID 5 has it's benefits, as it does have redundancy but only at the cost of speed when you lose a drive. Unfortunately, there's not much of a way to do a RAID 5 without a card on a mac pro. Wiki has the best explanations of all the RAID setups. For us RAID 0 is still the best option, and to compensate for lack of redundancy, we just have the media backed up on two other computers.
 
the OS is installed on the drive in bay 1. And yes, the 3x 2TB Western Digital RE4 drives are merged to create "Media 1" on this computer using a OSX Raid 0.
Click to expand...

So in your confg. you didnt increase the speed of your boot drive(BAY1). Is 105MB/s enough for smooth FCP operation? I am even thinking should I boot from the external esata since it is the fastest?

I was thinking the RAID 5 versus RAID 0 for the external raid, this RAID enclosure seems nice:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other World Computing/MEQX2KIT0GB/

Just like you I can sacrifice redundancy since we have backups anyway so i thought I'd choose the fastest performance; RAID 0
 
yeah for the external setup, raid 5 is a good choice.

and yes, the system drive is only accessing the project file...and from my experience, I haven't seen any slow down other than when loading a project for the first time and only if it's really big. once it's open, it's good.

one other thing that can slow down playback (and occasionally fcp will actually warn you of it) is where the media is placed on the media drive(s)...as in how deep in the file system it is. FCP will tell you that media is not optimized for fcp or something like that.

basically...your file hierarchy should look like this...

media 1>capture scratch>"project title">...the media files...

...if that makes sense. You just don't want a whole bunch of folders within folders within folders when it comes to the capture scratch, render files, etc...that the computer needs really quick access to.
 
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