Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
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A GTX-680, by far – as long the computer can handle it (enough power, cooling, adequate CPU and memory).
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“Curb your enthusiasm, Alex!”, the voice in my head said.
5D suffers serious performance deterioration on random I/Os and in “performance maintenance” mode (while the brain is doing some internal data organization shuffling – which can take hours and sometimes days.
The Dual Parity mode sees write performance dropping 50% in one case, although I’ve seen no reliable tests yet.
SSD caching is great on paper but in some cases seems to be eating through SSDs like french fries – in some cases bringing an SSD to “10% life remaining” within a few months. Yet in some cases the SSDs remain healthy after using the box heavily for several months.
Bottom line: 5D should not be used as media storage for editing, as its performance is unpredictable and spiky. Archiving, backup, replication – sure. If you’re looking for a fairly small yet consistently performing direct-attached storage box, the “usual suspects” are ProAvio EB400CR, Promise Pegasus RAID (Thunderbolt), CineRAID CR-H458.
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[Jeff Schaap] “This makes me suspect that we are hitting a network bandwidth limitation.”
… or storage?
[Jeff Schaap] “disk I/O topped out”
[Jeff Schaap] “the system can’t get quick enough access to the files…”
Couldn’t agree more. Seems clear to me: move the file to an SSD or other faster storage, retest. Congrats on figuring out the bottleneck.
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[Eli Garrett] “I moved the files local to the machine and it only made about a 2 sec differences in render time. “
How fast is that local storage? Is it a single spinning HDD?
[Eli Garrett] ” I put normal AVCD flies on the timeline and all 32 threads took off without an issue as I would expect them to. “
With AVCHD, does the Z820 render much faster than older Mac Pros?
Have you tried using Resource Monitor (Task Manager in Win8) to monitor network throughput and “active time” on the disks while rendering?
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[William Edwards] “I looked at those products you linked, and I was surprised about the price. Most solutions seem to be in the thousands of dollars.”
Most solutions are in the thousands? Are we reading the same posts? 🙂
The two from my last post are under $300 for both. High-end RAID controllers (Areca, ATTO units) are indeed around $800, yet some of LSI and Areca models can be had for under $400. HBAs (no RAID) run $200-400. The Addonics unit is under $200, and is likely one of the cheapest HBA there is.
[William Edwards] “Does that Startech work just by plugging one cable into a 6gbs port on the Mobo?”
That one doesn’t directly – does with an adapter cable – it plugs directly into the Addonics unit. They do have a model that does (plug directly into the motherboard with simple SATA cables).
That said, you don’t need any of this stuff to try it. Open the case, put three SSDs on a piece of anti-static plastic somewhere, connect them to mobo’s 6G SATA ports, run some tests. If it works, you could then get something to mount them better.
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[Ken Hall] “I then installed BMD desktop video 9.7.7. I re-launched Premiere and looked at Playback Preferences. The system showed Blackmagic Playback as well as the three Adobe options. All were still grayed out and none could be chosen.”
Have you tried resetting Premiere Pro preferences? (Re-install may not have cleared them.)
“To restore default preference settings, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while the application is starting. You can release the Alt key or Option key when the splash screen appears.”
(Sorry if this has already been tried and/or suggested.)
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Eric has a good point, accessing drives one by one. Tried putting just one drive in?
Any way to try the drives in a different system?
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Freebies and lightweight packages like Microsoft Movie Maker and Premiere Elements perhaps?
Premiere Elements needs 2GB RAM, Movie Maker – 1GB, will run on 32-bit XP systems. There’re also similar lightweight editors from Sony, Pinnacle Systems. Look at their specs, see if they’re OK with 1GB RAM and try them out.
You could also look at older versions of popular software – older than 5 years, perhaps even 10, but watch out for HD support and codec compatibility. From what I remember, Vegas Pro and Edius were relatively lightweight.
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[William Edwards] ” I need this in a solution that I can keep everything in the box for now”
In a box that is external to the computer? Or inside the PC?
Also, two 6G SSDs won’t sustain 1GB/s. They may hit it here and there but won’t do it consistently. It should be at least three, on 6G SATA ports of course. I’d stripe them in Windows, test speeds – if you get over 1.2GB/s, that should be good enough. If not, get something like this Addonics unit and perhaps Startech SATSAS425BK.
(Too bad 12G SATA/SAS and NVMe SSDs aren’t here yet – those would have made it easier to get to 1GB/s w/o too much pain.)
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
Have you tried Areca 1882x?
Also, describe this a little more: how many SSDs are you looking to stripe and what speeds do you need or want to achieve.
(If you’re striping less than 10 SSDs, you may not necessarily need a RAID card, just a good SAS/SATA controller or HBA that has good bandwidth to the CPU; striping can be done in the OS with good speeds.)