[Brendan Blair]

Thomas,

Did you ever figure this out??? I have the exact same problem as you, but the really lousy performance is even more embarrasing because I have:

New Dell T7400 running WinXP 64 bit
32 GB of 800MHz FBDIMM RAM (Yes, that’s true!)
4 SAS 15K drives in Dual RAID 0 configurations
Dual Quad Core 3.2 GHz processors.

Just like you, I have a much slower system (a Dell Vostro with a dual core at 2.16 GHz and 4 GB RAM) that can do about 18 fps on the exact same footage that I do about 3.2 fps with on this incredibly fast system!

So I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong (I’ve only had the system for a day now).

There are three things I can think of:

1) Make sure the video driver really is up to date (mine definitely isn’t so I’ll be upgrading it once I get home today – yes, that’s my home system!)

2) Try changing the number of cores that AE works with since there have been some issues when you go over 4 cores. There is info about this I believe in the readme that comes with it. I might try making it see only 4 cores or 6 maximum instead of 8 since the potential problem can happen when going over 6 cores

3) Use Adaptive Resolution in the preferences

These are the things I’m going to try tonight.

A few other points: I noticed with this setup that AE was barely using any of the other cores even when multi-processing was turned on (checked using Windows Task Manager under Processes). Also, (and this would definitely be a problem), each AE process was only using anywhere from 200 – 400 MB when I should have been doing as much as 3 GB each! (8 cores * 3 GB per process = 24 GB RAM out of a total of 32 GB)

When I downloaded the trial of Nucleo Pro 2 and did a Fast Render it rendered far faster and each process consumed a full 2 GB. However, the speed was only about 2.31 times faster than my dual core 2.16 GHz system so it still doesn’t seem right.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Again, have you found out anything else?

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Sorry, I had meant to say that sometimes CS3 runs into problems when there are more than 6 cores (not 3 as I had said).

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Folks,

I don’t think you understand. There is a real problem going on here. It is not about how complex your layers are, what formats you are using, etc. If it renders faster on a SLOWER system then there is a problem.

I have had a new system for just one day:

Dell Workstation T7400 with dual quad-cores at 3.2 GHz
Win XP 64 bit
32 GB 800 MHz RAM
4 15K SAS drives in a dual RAID 0 configuration

and to cut a very long story short I am getting the same pathetically slow rendering speeds as Dillon (and Thomas Honeyman from another post). How about 3.2 frames per second on just the playback of one DVCPRO100 P2 stream? I get 18fps from my other cheap Dell Vostro system (Win XP 32 bit – dual core 2.16 GHz with 4 GB RAM!!!) And yes, I have multi-processing on.

Finally, each of the 8 processes only consumes 200-400 MB of RAM and the cores are barely being touched. Nucleo Pro 2 makes all the cores go to about 74% utilization with 2 GB used per process. It is far faster with its “Fast Render” feature but it still doesn’t seem to render as fast as I would have hoped.

Anyway, if anyone has been able to solve this problem I would like to know too.

For now I can think of 3 things:

1) Try Adobe’s “fix” to only allow it to see 4 or 6 cores instead of the full 8 since there are sometimes issues when it tries to use more than 3 cores (see the readme with CS3)

2) Ensure you have the latest video driver for your card (I know I don’t so as soon as I get home tonight it will be the first thing I update)

3) Use Adaptive Resolution in preferences

That’s it for now

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Thomas,

Did you ever figure this out??? I have the exact same problem as you, but the really lousy performance is even more embarrasing because I have:

New Dell T7400 running WinXP 64 bit
32 GB of 800MHz FBDIMM RAM (Yes, that’s true!)
4 SAS 15K drives in Dual RAID 0 configurations
Dual Quad Core 3.2 GHz processors.

Just like you, I have a much slower system (a Dell Vostro with a dual core at 2.16 GHz and 4 GB RAM) that can do about 18 fps on the exact same footage that I do about 3.2 fps with on this incredibly fast system!

So I’m trying to figure out what’s wrong (I’ve only had the system for a day now).

There are three things I can think of:

1) Make sure the video driver really is up to date (mine definitely isn’t so I’ll be upgrading it once I get home today – yes, that’s my home system!)

2) Try changing the number of cores that AE works with since there have been some issues when you go over 4 cores. There is info about this I believe in the readme that comes with it. I might try making it see only 4 cores or 6 maximum instead of 8 since the potential problem can happen when going over 6 cores

3) Use Adaptive Resolution in the preferences

These are the things I’m going to try tonight.

A few other points: I noticed with this setup that AE was barely using any of the other cores even when multi-processing was turned on (checked using Windows Task Manager under Processes). Also, (and this would definitely be a problem), each AE process was only using anywhere from 200 – 400 MB when I should have been doing as much as 3 GB each! (8 cores * 3 GB per process = 24 GB RAM out of a total of 32 GB)

When I downloaded the trial of Nucleo Pro 2 and did a Fast Render it rendered far faster and each process consumed a full 2 GB. However, the speed was only about 2.31 times faster than my dual core 2.16 GHz system so it still doesn’t seem right.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

Again, have you found out anything else?

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Actually, I had read something about that at some point as well. However, I just don’t accept it. If both PCs and Macs have Firewire and USB then why should the camera care which computer it is connected to when it also has the same generic output jacks?

In addition, this only angers me in a way because Panasonic loves to always say how their P2 cards can transfer 80 MB/s. That means absolutely nothing if I am forced to use USB 2 where about the best I can get is about 15 MB/s (and by the way, 15 MB/s in their compressed format is about the equivalent of the real-time playback rate so it’s not like the camera itself actually needs that transfer speed to send it’s live compressed footage to the card). If you can only use Firewire on a Mac then this should be bluntly stated rather than finding out later. It makes a huge difference in transfer time.

Then again, this is also like Apple and their $800 raid card which has a cap of 320 MB/s when using expensive SAS drives in RAID configurations. Their card has no such cap with their SATA RAID configurations. My Dell workstation has no such imposed limitation other than the typical 3Gbps per channel, but I digress…

I searched around and it appears that Firewire transfers between the HVX-200 and a PC might be possible but it seems like it is just a hit and miss scenario depending on system patches, etc.

Again, anyone else had any experience with getting this to work on a PC?

Thanks,

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Thanks for the real-world information you obtained.

In numerous tests I’ve done it seems to me that the best way to utilize more RAM is to work with uncompressed images (that is, pre-render the video tracks) and put them in a RAM disk. Of course, this only works if the total length of all tracks is very short since the availabilty of RAM is limited (and you would still need a lot of it). Otherwise, a RAID array would be the next best thing for performance of course, and then tracks could be as long as needed.

The reason I mention using a RAM disk is that if the source files are already compressed in some format then the speed of a RAM disk compared to a RAID array, or even just a single drive would be largely irrelevant. This, of course, is because even a single hard disk could keep up with a few streams of this type of data. However, the overall rendering process would be significantly sped up if actual uncompressed frames were in a RAM disk where they could obviously load significantly faster than even the fastest RAID array.

So the way I see it, you copy the uncompressed images from a hard drive to a RAM disk just once per session, and then as you spend hours refining the effects work, all rendering happens incredibly fast. This would be a great way to utilize more RAM (or else maximize the RAM per core and use a RAID array as the other alternative like I mentioned above. Of course, if going the route of a RAM disk you would also want to ensure the system is battery backed!)

I realize, though, that this works great for my workflow but many others might be working on much longer video tracks so perhaps it wouldn’t be of benefit. In one such case I was working on a 33 second segment that would take about 10 minutes to render each time. If I had had uncompressed frames in a RAM disk then every time I had made slight alterations to an effect then I could have seen the results so much faster.

So this is why I’ve been considering a lot more RAM. Not just to increase the RAM per core, but to provide a RAM disk for doing rotocope work that requires an entire video track to be re-rendered each time, just to see the results of even a small change. Of course, if this were also combined with the background rendering of Nucleo Pro then the results would be even better still.

Anyway, just my thoughts…

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Thanks for such a detailed response Kevin!

My only question when thinking about what you and Jimmy have been saying, is that if the RAM were increased from 16 GB to 32 GB (I realize this really starts getting expensive though), would there be a further performance increase that is even worthwhile, or, once each core and rendering process has a certain amount of RAM then perhaps no further benefits can even be gained? I am wondering where that sweet spot might be, if there is one. So in other words, would there continue to be a gain going from 16 GB of RAM to 32 GB (even if you can’t quite use all of it amongst the cores), or would this be overkill because 16 GB would actually be about the best performance you could get?

An example would be creating larger and larger buffers for DVD burners. Eventually there just isn’t a point in increasing the buffer any further because no more performance gains will actually be realized.

I have only seen tests done with 16 GB of RAM on the Mac, but no one seems to have tried 32 GB (the Mac can now be further expanded to this, otherwise XP64 bit would do).

I just mention this because the more cores that are added, then the smaller the memory speed becomes because the “pipe” must now feed 8 cores, rather than 4, or just 2. As a result, having a lot of RAM would create a buffer that might help alleviate this memory speed bottleneck, but to what degree?

Any ideas? I’m looking to purchase a PC or Mac system near the beginning of February after hearing the results of Steve Job’s keynote address. I know the FSB should be going to at least 1600 MHz, and the corresponding RAM speed to 800 MHz, (note that Dell’s workstations can already be configured for this – even though their website “configurator” is actually messed up at the moment), but I’ll also wait to see what Apple comes out with as well.

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Ahhh, I see! I obviously didn’t quite understand the way CS3 would launch separate processes to accomplish the rendering…

Thanks!

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Thanks for the information Jimmy.

From what I understand with the way a 64 bit OS works, however, I don’t think it would actually be possible to supply CS3 with 1-2 GB of RAM per core, DIRECTLY (when there are more than 2 cores – actually 3 but you can only ever have multiples of 2 cores). This is because even under a 64 bit OS CS3 can still only see up to the 4GB addressing limitation of a 32 bit app (and of course as we know, CS3 itself can really only see up to 3GB of that 4GB address space). As a result, it would theoretically supply each core with only up to 384 MB of data (3072 MB RAM divided by 8 cores).

My own guess about how to improve the amount of memory allocated per core might be to either create a large RAM disk in the 64 bit OS which CS3 could then leverage for a source drive (it’s not quite the same as directly dedicating a certain amount of memory per core but you have to admit that access times wouldn’t exactly be much slower either). Another way to handle it (or even in addition to the above), would be to locate the CS3 cache directory in a RAM disk as well (though I’ve never actually checked to see just how large that cache directory can get).

Anyway, these have just been my thoughts after reading this interesting article:

https://blogs.adobe.com/scottbyer/2006/12/64_bitswhen.html

Brendan

[Brendan Blair]

Hi Jimmy,

Yes, what you have said does make sense now that I think of it. I actually plan to do compositing and rotoscope work with full motion images so Premiere (or most other video editors) wouldn’t have this kind of robust functionality to meet my needs.

However, as you mentioned, it would really be about the RAM and the processing power of the computer itself, and not the actual graphics card, that would make all the difference. I will therefore stay focused on that. I just thought that maybe I was missing something by not looking at the video card in all of this.

Thanks!

Brendan