Jason Whetstone
Forum Replies Created
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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.
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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!
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You could try making the audio proxies movie files that do not contain a video track. This is what we do… but I use Compressor to make all my proxies which frees Worker up to do other things. I have Compressor create a movie file that contains an AAC audio track and no video track.
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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.
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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 WriteDisk Read Existing File Test
AJA system test on both systems
174 MB mp4 fileShare: Mac OSX via SMB
Mac: 99.0
Win: 54.2Share: Windows NT
Mac: 64.3
Win: 72.2Ok… 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?
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Wow, it looks great!
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They are being stored on a 6TB Sonnet SAS-connected raid 5 volume. The Xserve that hosts CatDV is also serving the proxies.
BUT! before you say “separate the CatDV server from the proxy share server” remember that I did try copying the proxies to another server – an actual Windows NT server, and there was a slight performance increase that could be attributed to the fact that those jobs had been split up… BUT it was not enough for sequence editing to actually become useable.
AND!!! remember it works FINE on the Macs, which are accessing the same share and using the same network pipeline.
However now that I think of it, I believe there would be a performance increase for everyone if I did share the proxies from a different location.
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We also thought of adding a few Macs in the producer’s area just for CatDV use, but had we known that we’d have to do that, we would not have purchased so many individual licenses of CatDV, we would have just bought the Enterprise Server and used the 10 that came with it.
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Thanks for feeding back. We can map the drive just fine on the windows clients, everything technically WORKS, it’s just so slow! All of our producers want Macs, and I think the leadership would be open to getting them all macs, but the problem is that all of our other systems are dependent on MS Office and MS Dynamics, which all must run on PCs. Office for Mac, while better than it used to be, still has problems as it really doesn’t have native Exchange support… And Dynamics requires Internet Explorer which is no longer supported on the Mac (they stopped developing it before the support for Dynamics was added). So getting them all Macs would have its own challenges on the other end. Blech.
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CatDV Server is running on an Xserve running 10.7.5.