Sequences unusable on Windows when Proxies are on a Networked Share

[Bryson Jones]

Have you done raw speed tests on the client systems?

Just looking for network issues in here.

This seems like it should be sortable without a platform change but to be honest I’m far better on OS X than Windows. It would seem that if this was a basic issue with CatDV Pro we’d have seen it here as there are tons of deployments with Windows clients.

Try speed testing the volumes on OS X and WIN and see what you get, taking CatDV out of the equation.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Jason Whetstone]

Bryson,

Here’s what I get.

All units on all tests are MB/s
Read/Write test: I used AJA system test on the Mac and LAN speed test on the Windows machine. I tried using AJA system test on the Win machine but it wouldn’t let me use a network share like the Mac version does.

Read/Write test

Share: Mac OSX via SMB
Mac: Read 100.6, Write 88.6
Win: Read 59.21, Write 105.3
(weird, on windows, read is almost 1/2 the speed of write? I double checked…)

Share: Windows NT
Mac: 62.8 Read, 40.7 Write
Win: 112.4 Read, 81.9 Write

Disk Read Existing File Test
AJA system test on both systems
174 MB mp4 file

Share: Mac OSX via SMB
Mac: 99.0
Win: 54.2

Share: Windows NT
Mac: 64.3
Win: 72.2

Ok… so if I were going by numbers alone, looking at the read existing file test, I should have a faster experience with Windows CatDV when the proxies are shared from a Windows NT server. Nope, CatDV functions just as well when working with sequences on a Mac whether the proxies are shared from an OSX server or a Windows NT server. However on a Win machine, it’s unusable unless the proxies are stored on the C: drive.

Any other suggestions?

[Bryson Jones]

Speed is not the issue, clearly.

The only other factor I have is the player. Have you tried both Xuggle and Quicktime? That might lead us to see if it’s a qt issue as we saw in the past.

Also, can you play these proxies in the QT player on the respective machines? Is playback only an issue in CatDV?

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Jason Whetstone]

I have tried Xuggle and to be honest, it makes CatDV a lot more responsive overall, even on the Macs. Clicking around between clips is faster, they show up in the view window right away. The problem I’ve had with Xuggle is that often the A/V sync is way off during playback… sometimes by multiple seconds. The other problem is that you can’t use Xuggle with sequences. It will work in the preview player window but not the sequence player window. Try it – change your player to Xuggle and then open a sequence. You’ll see the yellow X in the left preview viewer, and on the right sequence viewer, you’ll see the blue Q.

The videos play back fine in QuickTime Player on Windows over the network. Playback is not an issue at all, once the videos are showing in the play view window in CatDV, playback is always smooth as expected. It’s operations such as opening the Sequence window, adding clips to the sequence, and changing in/out points of clips in the sequence that make it unusable.

[Jason Whetstone]

Would someone who is using a Windows client on a regular basis be able to tell me a bit about their configuration? I’m still not getting anywhere with this.

Keep in mind, once again, that if the proxies are local to the Windows machine, sequence editing is working fine for us. So if you are storing proxies locally or on direct-connect storage, I already am having success there. Where it falls apart for me is when the proxies are shared over a network. If you’re having success with usable sequence editing in CatDV 9 with proxies stored on a network volume, I’d like to know:
What version of CatDV you have
What kind of network share you’re using – tell me about the server sharing the proxies
What version of Java you’re using
What version of QuickTime you’re using
What format and wrapper are your proxies?

Thanks for the help!

[Bryson Jones]

I have to bow out on this one. I have no clients using the sequence editor in any substantial way.

That’s a bummer about Xuggle on Windows with the sync. I’ll bet the JB&A guys have some specifics on their windows deployments. I know I’ve heard they’ve done quite a few.

bryson

bryson “at” northshoreautomation.com

northshoreautomation.com

[Jason Whetstone]

I have an update on this in case anyone else has had similar problems. Last week I had an opportunity to do some more testing with this. I have been told that Apple’s own SMB implementation in Lion leaves a lot to be desired, and it was recommended to me that I try using Thursby DAVE. I installed the trial version and gave it a try. DAVE allows you to create SMB shares several different ways, with several different user authentication methods. I tried all of them with the same result, the sequence editor in Windows CatDV did not work any better with proxies than it did when sharing over Apple’s SMB. I decided to again test the performance when the proxies resided on an actual Windows NT network share. I had tried this a few months ago but did not think the speed increase was that great. However after trying it again, the performance difference is greater than I remembered. It is still very slow on Windows, but usable to the point where if one did not know any better, they would probably accept it. Still takes 3-6 seconds of waiting when opening a sequence, adding a clip to the sequence, or changing its i/o points. But that’s better than 15-45 seconds. I also tested the performance from a Mac running CatDV and using proxies from the Windows NT share. (no surprise) CatDV is as responsive as if I was working with the online hi-res media over FibreChannel. So, I guess this is as good as it gets for now.

We will in the next month be moving all of our proxies over to a Windows NT share. Just following up for anyone reading this thread who may have had similar experiences.

[Carla Vidal]

Hi! So glad I found this post. I am in a similar situation.

The situation is the following:

We are working in a MAC/Windows environment. MAC for editors, WINDOWS for producers/journalists. We are establishing the new workflow. We have a SMB Network to a server where we PC/CatDV logguer and MACS/Editors share:

– HiRes location.
– Proxies.
– Shortcut to internal MAC 1’s final cut pro x events and projects,
MAC 2’s final cut pro x events and projects etc

Cat DV PC is for ingesting, trascoding, renaming, logging and archiving new material ready for new FCPX projects. Everything great so far. Indexing and playing back from different cat dvs was great until this new server set (before was temporarily external hard drives which contained hi res media).

We also need producers to be able to preedit raw footage in sequences and be able to play back XML FCPX sequences but I can’t get a proxy of them.

So, I am testing all this series of tasks but server becomes so slow to build proxies, fails and sometimes even crashes. In short, the performance isn’t very good in networking…