-
question about the AJA Kona System Test (to test your hard drives performance)
Downloaded this test from AJA’s site. Nifty little thing to test out your system’s performance with its varioius drives. I noticed a couple strange things though:
1- it gave me more streams for 23.98 material than 29.97 material. Perhaps this is the case if you don’t preview externally, but I would think it requires a bit more to do on the fly 23.98 to 29.97 conversion to a NTSC monitor.
2- It gave me more than 1 stream of ntsc 10 bit material. I’ve tried to play back 10 bit uncompressed digibeta captured material and external firewire was not happening at all and the internal canvas would play for 10-30 seconds then start to stutter.
So, is there something I’m missing, or are these tests sort of a best case scenario?
Thanks for any thoughts! -
3 Replies
-
[mus man] “1- it gave me more streams for 23.98 material than 29.97 material. Perhaps this is the case if you don’t preview externally, but I would think it requires a bit more to do on the fly 23.98 to 29.97 conversion to a NTSC monitor.”
23.98 is a lower data rate, thus more streams. For DVCPro HD it’s something like 5mb/sec vs 13mb/sec for 59.94 (29.97)
[mus man] “2- It gave me more than 1 stream of ntsc 10 bit material. I’ve tried to play back 10 bit uncompressed digibeta captured material and external firewire was not happening at all and the internal canvas would play for 10-30 seconds then start to stutter.”
The test is just a guideline for best case scenario. No Firewire 400 drive can playback 10bit. Some FW800’s can play back 8bit and a few can play back 10bit. Tests are always best case scenarios. Your mileage may vary.
The only way to truly know what your drives can handle is to simply test them on your system. Stack up streams of video, although I think a “streams” test is pretty useless. I’m more concerned with how many transitions, graphics and filters I can stack up.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Creative Genius, Biscardi Creative Media
https://www.biscardicreative.comNow in Production, “The Rough Cut,” https://www.theroughcutmovie.com
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
-
[mus man] “1- it gave me more streams for 23.98 material than 29.97 material. Perhaps this is the case if you don’t preview externally, but I would think it requires a bit more to do on the fly 23.98 to 29.97 conversion to a NTSC monitor.”
remember –AJA sells video hardware and this test app assumes that you are working with the aja boards. so doing telecine from 24p material to 60i is done in realtime by your hardware device not the CPU so YES you would get more streams and you also get LIVE preview.
Your drive issues have nothing to do with Mac or PC it has to do with moving larger amounts of data in realtime than you did on your PC. 10bit video with an alpha channel (10 bit animation codec files from AE) are nearly 35mgs a second – or about 9x the amount of data than DV25 (which is 3.75mgs per second with audio)
gary adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation -
Okay, this is starting to make sense. This is a best case scenario and if I had the hardware then external preview of 23.98 material would be easier to deal with than 29.97.
Walter, good point about how useful measuring things according to streams really is. Guess I’ve only used it in the past as a broad measuring stick then saw what kind of performance I would get the way I edit. Thanks for the reminder and good luck on the new movie!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up