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Real uncompressed, useable codec – please help
Dear AJa users,
I’m quite new to the Aja world, and i’m trying to look for the right codec to use in our post production studio. I’ve done some tests, but none of the codecs i have seemed to be right for the job.
Here’s what I’m looking for:Uncompressed – really uncompressed. not something that looks like one. we do lots of compositing, color grading, effects and 3D. i cannot lose image details in the workflow.
Realtime playable – HD and SD, no need to render.
8 bit is usually enough for us – 10 bit would be a nice and useful option.We get our footage from Digibeta and HD/HDSR in TGA or DPX sequences, (captured on different machines) RED footage and Canon H264 quicktime movies. I really don’t mind converting all these sources into one format as long as the format works.
The machine I use is a 2.66 QuadCore MacPro connected to an Xserve SAN (so bandwidth can not be a problem), Kona 3 with 6.0.2 drivers, quicktime 7.6, latest FCS.
I got the best results from Apple Uncompressed 10bit, but it doesn’t always play back realtime.
Coming from a DPS/Leitch Velocity background, where all of these requirements were natural features of the system it’s really hard to imagine that this is not possible.Please help with ideas. I’m slowly getting angry. (Clients get annoyed much faster)
thanks for your time
Andras Sarkadi
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23 Replies
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[Andras Sarkadi] “The machine I use is a 2.66 QuadCore MacPro connected to an Xserve SAN (so bandwidth can not be a problem)”
Bandwidth can absolutely be a problem. You make no mention of the storage size or type, number or users or how it is all connected. If you are using Apple Xserve RAIDs, uncompressed HD requires practically the full bandwidth of both sides of a unit. Your particular configuration and the number of users hitting the storage could very easily cause playback hiccups.
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The SAN is connected to two computers through fiber channel. We tested the bandwidth and it’s around 2 Gbytes/sec with two machines reading at the same time. I feel that should be enough. What do you think?
Andras -
[Andras Sarkadi] “The machine I use is a 2.66 QuadCore MacPro connected to an Xserve SAN (so bandwidth can not be a problem), Kona 3 with 6.0.2 drivers, quicktime 7.6, latest FCS.
“[Andras Sarkadi] “I got the best results from Apple Uncompressed 10bit, but it doesn’t always play back realtime. “
if your content cannot playback your storage is NOT FAST ENOUGH.
not too many people do 10bit UC on an Xsan. ( like damn near NO ONE)
it is a storage issue. 10bit UC plays fine on my systems- and is easier to handle than frame seq.
I use ProRes for all of my editing and captures now and I am not looking back.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production WorkflowsInside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php -
ProResHQ isn’t doing it for you?
If not, then your next best options are Uncompressed 8bit or 10bit. You won’t get real time effects as FCP is not an Uncompressed workhorse like other hardware based systems, and please forgive me for being a bit frank, but you should get used to that fact. On 2GB/sec you should be getting realtime playback of uncompressed HD and then some. I can playback UNcompressed HD on my raid that gets about 400MB/sec and used to do it on 180MB/sec fiber raid years ago. If you aren’t getting real time playback, I’d say something isn’t quite setup correctly in your system, your SAN is bottlenecking somewhere, or perhaps it’s as simple as not having your footage, timeline and output settings all match.
What have you tried so far, and how did you get to that point?
Jeremy
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[Andras Sarkadi] ” We tested the bandwidth and it’s around 2 Gbytes/sec with two machines reading at the same time. I feel that should be enough”
WHAT?? 2 GIGABYTES a second?
No, not on any xsan I have ever heard of.it took me 54 spinning disks in 2 arrays aggregated across 2-4gig fibre connections to be able to handle 1.25 GBps for a single user, (that is UC 4K at 24p)
I have an idea about how much it takes to be able to handle data at that rate and it is not on any Xsan I have ever seen nor heard about.
I think you need to recheck your through put,
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production WorkflowsInside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php -
Andras,
Please take a look. We have been filling this exact need for 10 years.
https://www.spectsoft.com/index.html
Native DPX so you can render right to the unit, or drop files from other sources and they just play. Uncompressed is what this unit has always been about.
Cheers,
Ramona -
[Andras Sarkadi] “We tested the bandwidth and it’s around 2 Gbytes/sec with two machines reading at the same time.”
Andras,
It was impolite of me to comment without offering some information on your problem.
https://www.aja.com/ajashare/AJA_System_Test_v601.zip
lets start with how fast your storage really is, this app can tell you how fast your system really is,
Setup using 512MB or 1GB for the file size like this.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production WorkflowsInside look at the IoHD
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php -
Dear Gary,
you were absolutely right, I stand humbled. I’m not getting 2Gbytes/sec. I get around 180-190 Mbytes. I ran the wrong test i guess…
So now I’m going to retest the codecs i have with that result in mind…
Jeremy, you also said ProRes would be my best bet? And yes, I am getting used to the fact that FCP+AJA is something different. 🙂 I won’t mind if i can have predictable, good-looking results after the images go through a complete workflow.
Have any of you tried Sheervideo codec? I think I will test it as well, but would love to hear your opinions about it.
Ramona thanks for the Rave idea, but I don’t think that my studio could afford something like that after getting the SAN 🙂thanks for your time and help
Andras -
Sheer is nice, but again, no rt in FCP.
Try ProRes or ProResHQ. I think you will be surprised. As Gary will tell you, use ProResHQ from 10bit or higher sources when doing software encodes.
180MB/sec won’t be fast enough for two seats doing Uncompressed 1080, but it should be fine for ProRes and HQ.
ProRes and HQ are both compressed 10bit codecs and hold up very well to multiple generations of rendering.
Jeremy
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Thanks Jeremy, i’m testing the ProRes way right now, but I already have something strange happening. I put a dpx sequence to After Effects, rendered it out in Uncompressed 8bit, Prores HQ, and Prores HQ with 4:4:4 Chroma filtering enabled (not quite sure what it means, but why not try.)
I imported everything into FCP, and they all look similar and good, me happy. But opening the same files in AE and looking at them at the video monitor shows different results. The uncompressed looks similar to the original, but the both Prores videos look much lighter, like it had a gamma correction applied to it.
what could be causing this?
Andras
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