[Ramona Howard]

Bob,

Not without some specific tools added on and then it still won’t get you very far. Now 10GB is another story and could give you considerable performance with the added benefit to set up some throttling permissions for users. We don’t have anyone doing 10Gb on a large scale, say to replace a SAN so I can’t chime in there too much.

Bernie comments:
For those working with a combination of Mac and PC, it can also be painful to setup a reliable network protocol that satisfies both types of clients.

Network protocols between OS platforms is not a problem if you simply need a mount point, we have many studios doing it daily with Mac, Windows and Linux and a combination (pretty basic stuff). With this, depending on the file type (what raster) and connection (Gigabit, Bonded Gigabit, 10GB), some are streaming with no drop-outs but it’s from a single mount point where no one else is hitting the connection.

Where the problem lies is treating this setup like a SAN, which I think is what he meant. Over standard Gigabit, in todays HD world it isn’t going to happen (in real-time) and or work very well. We did demo 720p over Gigabit many years back, but not something we recommend to do as we were on the edge of the cliff with that.

A 10Gb LAN will get you pretty far but you better have an excellent knowledge of hardware because not all manufactures are equal in this implementation. Everything from switches to Motherboards play a role in just how much you can squeeze down that 10Gb pipe.

To answer your original question.
A NAS can dish out files to as many users as needed, the problem lies with real-time performance and how many need it. You can do a single stream in real-time for example with everyone else throttled down to a trickle. All depends on how much hardware you want to throw at the problem with the outcome still not a SAN.

Hope that helps
Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Loud and clear 🙂

It’s pretty straight forward because RaveHD has all of the benefits of a Linux system. Some of this I will leave out (for security) and can be found in either the manual or one of the support staff (they have been scheduled to call)

Here’s all the standard stuff for Linux networking. Call if you get stuck.

Cheers,
Ramona

Setting up the Network
——————————

1. Log into the box as “root”. The default password is _______
2. Run the program “netconfig”
3. You will be prompted to enter a hostname. If you don’t know what to enter, use “ravehd”
4. You will then be prompted to enter a domain. If you don’t know what to enter, use “spectsoft.local”
5. You will then be prompted to enter the network type (static or DHCP). More than likely, you would use DHCP.

Using a DHCP network:
6. You will then be prompted to enter a DHCP hostname, if your network admin assigned on enter it here. If not, just leave it blank.
7. It will then ask you to confirm everything is set correctly.

Using a static network:
6. You will then be prompted to enter the IP address for the machine.
7. You will then be prompted to enter the subnet mask for the IP address.
8. You will then be prompted to enter the gateway address.
9. You will then be asked if you use a nameserver. If you enter yes, you will be asked to enter the address of the nameserver.
10. You will then be asked to confirm and accept all of the settings. If they are correct hit accept.

Now that the network is setup, you will now be able to start the network. To start the network, type:
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart

Once you have restarted the network, you can double check the settings by typing:
ifconfig

NFS and Samba Mounts
——————————

By default NFS is enabled and has read/write priviliges for everyone.  The mount points are as follows:

/video/v1 – for the first video array
/video/v2 – for the second video array

For Samba, by default it is disabled.  Here’s what to do to enable it:

At a root console, type the following:
chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.samba
/etc/rc.d/rc.samba start

This will enable samba on bootup as well as start it now.

You should now see a “video” export under Samba.

Configuring the IP address for Rave
——————————

1.  Start a console (Under K->System->Terminal Program)

2. If you aren’t already logged in as the root user, type “su”.  You will then be prompted for the root user password.  The default password is __________

3.  Run the network configuration program, netconfig, to set the system’s network parameters.

4.  Now restart the network subsystem with the following command:..
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart

5.  You can now check your network settings by typing: ifconfig

NOTE:  You will need to restart the rave daemon after changing the network configuration.

[Ramona Howard]

Michael,

sorry, I’m not kidding. Just curious and I guess I don’t fully understand what the difference is. I’m learning, and admit that I’m not always aware of what I don’t even know. Please go easy.

Will guarantee that I will be a bit gentlier on you than Bob but not much 🙂

Difference is about 200mbs sustained, per stream:) (given we’re talking 4:4:4 here)

The other factors are bus/lanes, not every motherboard is created equal. You try piping that down one bus/lane and see what you get (dual streams). A handful of hair because you get frustrated.

OS plays a huge role. You got overhead in your OS, good luck in getting your machine to perform without hickups…and this is about doing it flawless 24/7, right?

Can any Joe build a system and get it to work, sure just like they can make a movie with a digital H8. Talent and expertise does go along way with this stuff and the secrets of getting it done right are not easily shared, hey we got make a living too 🙂

The goal is to put solid performing tools into the hands of serious people. Ever tried using a screwdriver to hammer in a nail, why would this be any different.

Thanks for letting me bring my tools to the party. Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Inexpensive 🙂

When you consider your getting 2 SR’s on steroids in one box, 36K is a drop in the bucket….in fact that’s less that most cheap decks on the market.

Seriously.

There are many things possible with this hardware but it takes the synergy of the Hardware, OS and the app to make it all work and to work well , we are lucky enough to get to write for all of the above, getting us far more than the next guy. Not writing for the masses helps (every joe who owns a video camera). RaveHD is written for professionals and to address the workflow needs of that environment.

Dual SDI as in Dual Link is not the same as (Dual independent streams of SDI) in regards to how the AJA boards handle them or how the info is passed down the SDI wire. Our app and driver was written to handle dual streams in a manner that we can do both. We wrote the RaveHD app to adjust for these type of changes. The industry never sits still so we wrote our app to adapt.

Watch for info on our Quad, HD system, now that’s a hard one to wrap your head around 🙂

Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Andy,

Hate to jump in late.

This may be a bit overkill for you app but something to keep in mind.

RaveHD operates as an uncompressed source and that can sync multiple units and be controlled as one. So yes, one interface will control them all.

Works in many configurations but essentially each unit is feeding a dedicated stream, regardless if they are going to different displays or to one, say like a 4K projector. It all works the same, in sync every step of the way.

Although there isn’t much info out there we just did this for the Comcast keynote at CES where we feed 2 1920×1080 images to a multi projector setup to display as one very large image. here is our link.
https://www.spectsoft.com/RaveManual-Company-PressandNews-CES.html

Rental info will be posting soon.

Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

We have an announcement in regards to this (should see the official press release next week but here it is the workflow part of that).

The good thing is this gives options as StorNext is widely supported.

Cheers,
Ramona

“Working closely with current client Cineworks in Florida the focus was SAN as everything else with RaveHD fit exactly to their needs”, adds Howard. “Transferring from film in 4:4:4 RGB, 1920×1080 HD dual link video for independent features directly into the SAN thru RaveHD has saved them tremendous amounts of time”.

The Cineworks workflow – in a nutshell
“In the past, we were using another product to ingest the dual link video from an SR deck”, comments Mike Most, Chief Technologist at Cineworks. “We wanted to streamline this workflow for a number of reasons. Efficiency was one primary reason, but we also wanted to eliminate any video compression if possible, even though the compression used in the SR format is very light and has very minimal impact on the image itself. We also wanted to be able to share the files for things such as visual effects and title work, something that we were finding ourselves doing more and more of. It was clear that a high performance SAN was a central part of the solution, but we also needed a device that would work with our DaVinci based telecine controllers and allow the dual link video to be converted to a DPX sequence on the fly under the DaVinci TLC editing control. It was vital that the device look like a standard VTR to the DaVinci, but actually function as a real time DPX recorder. Ideally, the device could also be set up as a client on the SAN, allowing us to go directly from telecine to the SAN, writing the DPX files with proper time code embedding directly to a SAN
volume.

“The RaveHD and BrightDrive systems use Quantums StorNext file system, which makes it completely transparent across multiple operating system platforms. This was critical for us, as we use both Windows PC’s and Apple Macintosh computers, and it was critical for operation of the RaveHD, which is a Linux based device. The BrightDrive system is designed specifically for dealing with large file” sequences and is “sequence aware,” allowing for optimization and maximum performance for things like the DPX file sequences that are at the heart of our workflow. In addition, the RaveHD has 6 TB of its own local storage, allowing us to use it as a standalone VTR replacement as well as a gateway to the SAN. When space on the SAN needs to be conserved, we can record to the Raves local storage and do a very fast copy to the SAN volume when needed. And finally, the RaveHD can be used to play back sequences that are stored on the SAN, giving us another way to record rendered sequences from projects to tape without having to use other systems and applications”.

” The combined efforts of SpectSoft (RaveHD), Cinesys (integration, installation, and support of the SAN and all connected devices), Bright Systems (SAN supplier), and Quantum (StorNext) made this workflow possible for us”.

[Ramona Howard]

Mike,

First, love the cat 🙂

ADIC is what we are announcing first. The list is long of vendors using this solution 🙂

Cineworks (Mike Most) was kind enough to give a very detailed outline of how they put it all together and what’s in the mix, which will be in next weeks press release.

Our new Bravo unit (officially announcing just before NAB), combined with our current stereo solution makes for a pretty versatile solution and we are excited to see RaveHD make this big jump. Working with uncompressed content has come along way and to think that a studio can do it without having to move a single frame at this cost is rather cool.

Congrats to Cineworks for being the first to put RaveHD to work in this fashion.

Cheers,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

Starting with the best format they can get their hands on before they compress the hell out of it is why. We saw this shift happening two years ago with some of the major networks, others are taking a bit longer and it shows. I hate television today.

It’s a shame they turn great work into compressed pieces of crap. It’s getting to the point of just waiting for the DVDs to hit and watch the whole season that way (when/if we have a season again).

Other than football, which is looking pretty damn good and I hate football there are only a few networks that seem to be doing justice. Now I must point out that I have a 74″ screen at home that shows every little issue so I may be a bit over critical but I think not. Panasonic just unveiled a 150 inch plasma that sports 4096 X 2160 rez., just think how that’s going to look.

Sorry for the rant,
Ramona

[Ramona Howard]

will respond off list

[Ramona Howard]

Dave,

Sounds very similar to the same project we are doing at the moment and writing some new tools for 🙂

Think of this much like any other post production workflow. Work with a proxies for the edit and then conform to the original content.

I ask because we can already do a conform on RaveHD, so if you have the master files (the really large ones) sitting on RaveHD (We act like a standard file server so moving frames on/off is all standard network protocols and these are standard DPX frames that can come right from AE). You can then either render out smaller 1920×1080 frames to use for your edit and standard viewing (yes on a standard display) without the scaling, giving you a very good representation of the outcome. The re-rendering or converting from the large format frames to the HD frames can either be done again in AE or right on RaveHD, as we also have those tools built in or you can just render the HD ones initially and then render out the larger frames after the edit. There isn’t one set way of doing it here and only that you have a kick ass render engine/farm to get those massive frames done quickly 🙂

On the conform, RaveHD can be responsible for conforming to the edit and splitting the large format frames up as two for playing out the dual VTR engines and SDI connections (not to be confused with Dual Link).

Let me point out that the HD frames can also be handed off to RaveHD for viewing and even downconverted to view in SD and or converted to a number of other formats (i.e, compressed Quicktimes, AVIs, etc) for sharing.

I’m sure there are a number of solutions and applications that do all this, our goal is to try to keep it all in one neat package.

Hope that gives you a few options on some ideas to get around these massive frames with or without RaveHD.

Cheers,
Ramona