Underperforming new Davinci Resolve

DaVinci Resolve

Underperforming new Davinci Resolve

Posted by Bill Macomber on August 7, 2013 at 4:27 am

Hi guys!

First off, please forgive me if this is something that has been answered 1,000,000 times. But I can’t seem to lick this problem!

Here’s our setup:

New off-the-shelf 12 core Mac Pro: https://store.apple.com/us/mac/family/mac-pro
32 GB ram
SSD System drive
Nvidea Quadro 4000
CUDA 5.0.32 (current build?)
eSATA RAID @ 375 mb/s
Davinci Resolve (not lite)
OS 10.8, updated
Blackmagic SDI out

The problem is slow rendering. We are processing 2k ProRes 444 dailies from Alexa, and they are going at 11 FPS. Strangely, we were getting 11 FPS even before we upgraded to this new tower, adding a bunch more RAM. In fact, I’ve done multiple fixes thinking that they would improve performance (upgrading memory, clean installing the system, etc) with no effect on FPS! The CPU is not bogged down (~300-400%), and the drives are plenty fast – rated at 46 FPS.

I am new to the DaVinci world (we have a Digital Vision Nucoda) and would be so appreciative if anyone can give me some ideas of things to try.

Many thanks

Bill
Fancy Film Post Services

Bill Macomber replied 12 years, 9 months ago 6 Members · 9 Replies
9 Replies

Paul Provost
August 7, 2013 at 4:44 am

That q4000 is an old slow card. Get a gtx680 in slot 1 for processing and a gtx 640 in slot 2 for gui

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Mike Most
August 7, 2013 at 2:36 pm

You only have one video card, you have it doubling as your GPU, and it’s a slow card. If you only have one slot available, you might want to try a GTX680. If you have a second slot, or an expansion chassis, you can use the 4000 to drive the GUI and a second card (again, the 680 is a good choice) as a GPU.
Bill Macomber
August 7, 2013 at 3:29 pm

Hi Mike and Paul!

thanks for responding.

Mike, we are using two video cards- the standard ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB GDDR5 as the GUI and the Quadro 4000 for GPU. Do these cards get along?

I like the idea of getting the GTX 680, but since it’s a double slot, I might have to get an expansion chassis. Would an inexpensive one work? I saw some in the $500 range and that makes me feel like they are too good to be true 🙂

Otherwise, I will swap out the double slot ATI for a single slot GUI card and use a single slot in PCIe slot 2.

Anybody in the LA area want to earn some consulting money? 🙂

Thanks!!!

Bill
Paul Provost
August 7, 2013 at 4:32 pm

Pull the 5770 and replace with gtx680 (slot 1) keep the 5770 though on hand for later use in case.
Get a single slot gtx 640 which needs no power connector in slot 2, and hook your monitor to that.
And go to liftgammagain.com and search the threads. Tons of opinions on graphic card setups without getting an expansion chassis (which is the best solution if you have an extra few grand to spend and want 3 or 4 graphic cards and red rockets etc)

http://www.4Kfinish.com | owner-colorist | Hollywood, CA
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Twitter 4kfinish
Eric Johnson
August 7, 2013 at 11:46 pm

Mike:

Do I understand correctly that a 680 and Q4k can co-habitate a Mac Pro? Without the need for a Cubix or some other Chassis? I was under the impression there were power issues with that type of setup…

If so, that is great/interesting news… might be time to get rid of my 5770…
Bill Macomber
August 8, 2013 at 5:19 am

Hi guys –

Just a follow up. It seems like this might be a multi-track audio problem. Other projects are going smoothly – just the dailies project with WAV files sync’d are slow.

Looking into switching the nVidia cards, but we bought it from our normal vendor in Burbank and so we don’t have the regular 30 day return policy you would get from a nameless giant vendor…

Thanks again!

Bill
Paul King
August 8, 2013 at 3:01 pm

Hi Bill

Turn off the BM SDI out card and recheck the performance.
If you have mismatched settings between the project settings and the output settings it will choke your performance.
Neil Sadwelkar
August 9, 2013 at 4:36 am

I have the exact same setup except 8-core, 16 GB RAM, G-Tech RAID and I get way more fps doing 2k ProRes4444 to HD ProResLT dailies. I think close to 50fps.

I always read from one drive and render to another. So the ‘read’ drive is a location G-Drive over eSATA and the ‘write’ drive is the RAID. But reading off a RAID, processing, and then writing back to the same RAID will likely be slower than reading off the RAID and writing to a single internal SATA drive.

Also, since you’re doing sound sync, sound and video files off the same drive and then write back result to the same drive will slow things down. Try keeping video, audio, and result drives on different drives.

Maybe Disk I/O is your problem.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India
Bill Macomber
August 15, 2013 at 5:47 pm

Hi guys!

Sorry for the delay – I was on vacation! Sweet while it lasted…

The latest is that we think this is a multi-channel audio issue. We’ve finally slogged our way through the dailies job, and at the same time we are having good success with the system on coloring work – the drive is fast enough to cache DPX’s (1080p23.98) and so it is very useful.

Neil, I will keep your advice re: drive I/O in mind, but it really doesn’t look like we are near any measurable limits on that – CPU is at 300%, drive speed is 350 and we are pulling ~20 mb/s.

Thanks again to all of you who helped me out on this. I will keep this thread updated to help those in the future!

And any advice on the multi-channel audio issue would be welcome!

Regards

Bill

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