Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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[Simon Blackledge] This shows speed over single Gig-E from a server to client using a single EnhanceTech 4Bay. Was quite suprised with the result. AJA test showed similar.
From all the folks we’ve talked to, you cannot solely rely on disk read/write speed tests to determine if a SAN or NAS setup will allow you to reliably capture and edit video.
Have you captured and edited with this setup without issue?
There are things like latency and jitter (don’t ask me what they mean…only IT engineers know!) that can affect performance beyond sustained read/write speeds. So while a DIY setup may indeed work. You can’t solely rely on a disk test to make that determination.
As an example, our Apace vStor originally tested at around and 55-65MB/sec for read. But we were able to get 4 real-time, uncompressed video channels stacked one on top of the other, each with a DVE move…with that segment copied and looped for 10 minutes. During all this, another workstation could edit a couple channels of DVCPro50 footage (about 8MB/sec each) without any dropped frames, pauses or stutters.
Theoretically, we were moving 20MB/sec per channel x 4 channels = 80MB/sec; plus 8MB/sec on 2 channels = 16MB/sec. So that’s 96MB/sec. and that’s not taking into account any overhead needed to process all this. All that when the disk speed tests showed sustained speeds of only 50-60MB/sec.
I’m all for DIY systems if they work and are reliable…so I’d be interested to hear how the system works in an editing and capturing environment.
By the way…with some software tweaks from Apace, we were able to increase both our read & write speeds by about 20-30% over what’s listed above. So we get nearly 100MB/sec write, and about 75-85MB/sec read speeds.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
[Terence Curren] You obviously don’t work in LA. How much repeat work do you think you would get out here by telling producers and directors what stinks in their shows? I can see it now….
I didn’t say I tell them “what stinks in their shows.” What I said was “we actually tell them our real opinions about their ideas and plans.” That can range from telling them we think the concept needs more work…to suggesting a a script change and on and on. There’s a big difference.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Ron wrote:
That largely depends on your personal preference in setting the height of the bar while determining your relative definition of what is “good.”
Not sure I understand your “height of the bar” reference. So if I fail to google a prospect’s name I’m lowering the bar for my company?
Ron wrote:…our mouths either do service for us, or they hurt us. In most cases, it is arguably some of both. It is the rare individual that can bridle their tongue or think far enough ahead to weigh the relative merit of what they are about to say. Sometimes, the words carry with them an aftermath — which is what I think John was alluding to.
Our clients love the fact that we actually “tell” them our “real” opinions about their ideas and plans…without filtering it and watering it down.
That’s not to say they listen to us. But they appreciate working with a company that isn’t worried about being politically correct and isn’t preoccupied with producing ads that win trophies and awards…and oh yeah…they like that we don’t use the word “synergy”… EVER.
They appreciate that we focus on producing ads that get results. I tell them exactly what I think. I’ll tell the CEO. But I’ll also do exactly what they want or ask, without argument…even if I disagree with it.
I don’t think you have to muzzle yourself to be successful in this or any business. I think clients want to work with people that challenge them, but respect the final decision.
Ok..this time I’m agreeing to disagree for real!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
John Davidson wrote: Now, if you’d like to back up your argument by making a list of all your best paying clients and detail the stupid notes, decisions, and demands they make, be my guest. At this point, I don’t think anyone here will stop you :-).
That’s not the point I was making. There’s a difference between someone posting on a forum asking advice about a perceived problem…and talking up a client’s silly requests.
And I’m not arguing that people don’t or shouldn’t use google searches for employment background checks, only that taking the information and letting it by itself sway their decision, is irresponsible. That’s why I brought up the Howard Dean reference. I loved the guy in 2004. He didn’t even do or say anything inappropriate. He said appropriate things but yelled them in a funny sounding voice. And “poof,” the media pounces on him. He goes from being on the cover of Time Magazine to dropping out of the race.
It’s taking a person’s life and accomplishments “out of context.” We all do and say stupid things. We sometimes do them at inappropriate times or post them in inappropriate places. So I’m saying give Aaron a break. The guy was looking for advice. For what it’s worth, I originally posted that if he were asked to do his boss’s “personal” projects during business hours or within his regular schedule, he really didn’t have a beef.
So guess we can all just agree to disagree. Good discussion though!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
John,
Both the links just make me believe more strongly in my disagreement with people’s responses to this thread.
It’s downright scary when, regardless of their job or community standing, a person cannot go out on the 4th of July with friends and drink beer on the lake, without fear of losing his job! I don’t care if he was a public official. Does becoming a public official instantly prohibit someone from having fun? Who draws the line on what is or isn’t “acceptable?”
The only thing the guy did wrong was initially deny he’d been out on the lake drinking beer…something that’s perfectly legal and ethical.
The googling of people’s names is Orwellian. We once hired a young guy who had a tremendous reel, interviewed well, and had all the right credentials…but others in the production and advertising community warned us that he was “trouble,” saying he couldn’t and wouldn’t take direction, that he was argumentative, and that he hated making changes to his designs. One even forwarded us an internal email the guy wrote complaining about the way a project was handled at his previous job!
We went with our gut and hired him anyway. He was a joy to work with and a truly nice guy. So who was the problem employee after all?? The employee we hired who turned out to be a great worker? Or the oaf who forwarded one of the guy’s internal emails complaining about an issue at his previous job?
The point I’m making is that if a company uses some post or some set of silly photographs or some innuendo from an email, a forum post or a google search to make their hiring decisions, they’re going to miss out on a LOT of good people.
Additionally, if they formulate their overall opinion based on what they find on that same information, they’re scary.
It’s like when Howard Dean went from Democratic frontrunner in 2004 to dropping out of the race weeks later because he whooped it up at a campaign rally. (The “Dean Scream”) Many journalists now admit they were wrong to do what they did to Dean, who did nothing more than show a little joy and excitement on the campaign trail. The guy is a Doctor, a two-term governor of Vermont, probably one of the smartest guys in politics, and the press and public decide he’s “not presidential” because he gets a little excited at a Democratic Caucus.
Stuff like this reminds me of the witchhunts we all read about in school. I just can’t beleive people would take an otherwise ideal job candidate, then base their final decision on a handful of random ramblings or posts or photos that show up on Google or MySpace.
Perhpas the original poster on this thread is a “bad egg.” But for people to make their judgement and subsequent admonition of him based on his views is just wrong in my opinion. People come to The Cow for help, advice and direction. Not to be admonished and warned and scolded.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
We’re testing it now on our Decklink HD Extreme based PC. It’s an HP xw series (one recommended by Blackmagic on their site and it has (2) dual-core CPU’s…so 4 computing cores.
In a few hours of testing with Vegas, the speed isn’t the problem, as it plays back most things in real-time or near real-time…it’s the output to NTSC that’s harder to get used to. With the codecs it can’t play back in real-time, it naturally reduces the resolution, so we’re constantly looking at the output and saying, “why does that look like crap?”…or “why does the motion look so weird on that?”
Then we render it out and say, “oh…that’s why.” It’s just a different way of working and I guess you get used to it. But I agree that whatever works best for workflow is the direction to go…and for us, hardware based, real-time systems are our bread and butter.
It’s just that with Harris discontinuing the Velocity line (for post-production houses…they still make a line of editing systems that use Velocity software for news operations), we need to be evaluating which direction we’d go down the line.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
John Davidson wrote:
never, ever, ever, ever (ever?) ever play the “that’s not my job” card using your real name on a public forum that will show up for all eternity anytime someone googles your name.
I have to disagree. I believe these forums are exactly the place to post these sorts of questions. His post has generated a huge number of responses and a lot of differing opinions about the issue from facility owners, freelancers and employees.
I also don’t think you can post on the Cow without using your real name…or without a reader having access to your name somewhere in the post. The person who posted brought up some great issues, and perhaps the advice he’s been given will help change his view of the situation.
Also…if HR assistants and HR directors are resorting to “googling” a person’s name to evaluate them, then we’re in bigger trouble than I thought. Who on this list believes that an employee or freelancer agrees with them 100%…or for that matter, even 50% of the time? I know people disagree with my opinions and decisions. But I’m the person with the money and risk invested in this business, and ultimately the person held accountable for those decisions.
So I think being criticized or questioned is a part of being a leader. Should we blacklist or discourage people who publicly criticize political candidates and corporate CEO’s? I certainly wish someone in the financial world would’ve questioned the strategies, decisions and policies at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Wachovia, AIG and Washington Mutual.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Rob,
Thanks for the reply. Your view is pretty much what we’ve concluded in interal discussions. Final Cut, Premiere, and Vegas provide flexibility with formats and codecs, and allow you to do a lot of compositing and layering directly in the timelines, which saves time on the front-end of editing, but on the back-end, you have to render your final movies.
We’re so used to that instant, real-time feedback, in terms of video layers, effects and critical NTSC monitoring, that moving to software based systems is a tough sell. Even with hardware cards like Blackmagic and Kona installed, Final Cut is still a slower system to edit on (in our eyes) than our VelocityQ systems.
We’ve also come to the conclusion that the Edius turnkey systems are about the closest thing to our current setups. And we’ll never buy a Matrox based system after some really bad experiences with their hardware and drivers a few years back. I’ve never had much confidence in their products and it seems they always have some nagging problems with their systems.
It’s also hard to adjust to having a lot of different formats and codecs on our video drives. To us it makes keeping track of things very difficult and just opens up a big can of worms when it comes to quality control.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bob…you’ve capsulized what I’ve been trying to figure out how to say about this thread, as well as other financial/ethical threads.
There are times in people’s careers, either as employees, freelancers or business owners, where the opportunity to do high level work for a particular client overshadows the importance of setting up deposit and pay schedules, and taking a hard line with getting invoices paid on time.
I’m not saying we should let that happen, but it’s easy to have it occur.
Our company has gotten the chance to work with national companies with 8 figure advertising budgets on two occasions. In each case we had no business getting the accounts. Our reels paled in comparison to our competitors, our experience level, while extensive, was mostly regional in nature, and I’m sure we’re not even the most creative company in our own city.
We were chosen because we’re very fast, we do solid, consistent work, we’re fun to work with, we’re fair, we’re affordable, and we deliver on time. In each case, we got so busy doing the client’s work, that keeping up with their billing didn’t seem as critical as it should be.
Bills often were sent 30-45 days after a project was completed, following up on invoices sometimes was overlooked, and we rarely complained because there was almost always a stream of revenue coming in at regular intervals.
So I think there are times when a company might not have the status or stature to make some of the demands that so many write about on these forums. I know most of you would argue I’m full of crap, but like Bob said, the opportunity to do work you really have no business doing makes the hassles of getting these “grinders” to pay you almost worth it.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
One other thing I’ve read is that on systems that have multiple
PCI-E slots, the decklink cards might need to be in a certain slot. Something about some PCI express slots only working at 1x speeds (or something like that). I believe on a Mac you can change which slots work at top speeds in the bios, but not sure about PC motherboards, especially when there are so darn many of them out there.We put ours in one of the handful of systems that Blackmagic recommends on their website (HP xw8200 series). It’s an older PC with a motherboard and technology that’s a couple years old, but often those are the boards that work best since their drivers and hardware is more stable.
That said…we still found it difficult to install and get working correctly…and on our system it doesn’t work very well with Premiere CS3…and that’s after a complete reformat and reinstall of the OS (by HP service techs), and clean installs of Premiere CS3 and the Blackmagic drivers. We thought that perhaps there was something on the original installations that was causing our sluggish performance. But even after getting a new motherboard, new RAM (all under warranty from HP), and a professional install of the OS (with all updates on drivers etc.), we got the same poor performance in Premiere.
We gave up with using it with Premiere and are now testing Sony Vegas with it. Although our editors are not enthusiastic about testing it after their initial frustration. Naturally, a lot of this could be Adobe’s fault and not Blackmagic’s…so I’m not dogging their card or drivers here…just reporting that we were very disappointed in Premiere CS3 coupled with the Decklink HD Extreme.
Vegas seems a lot more responsive (in limited tests) with the Blackmagic card, although getting it to work correctly also took us numerous tries.
Hope that helps some.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com