Hi,
I help with a small film festival that is run once per year in January. Previously they have connected several Macs to the cinema projectors (in a commercial theater) via rgb/hdmi and separate audio. We've used VLC as a platform for queueing up and playing films for the three days of the festival. Although this works OK it is cumbersome. The cinema projects are about 8 years old and are DCP based. We'd like to use DCP and their management software for playing films.
I downloaded dip o matic onto a current iMac i7 on Sierra and converted a 23 minute (1,2G) .mov to DCP. It worked great, but took eight hours with a straight conversion at 30fps. No other conversion attributes set. It played fine on the cinema projectors at 30fps.
So, now we've faced with how to convert 80 + films that comprise about 40 hours of play time. Using my current system will take a lifetime.
What can anyone recommend as an affordable platform to perform straight conversions of .mp4/.mov to DCP that will provide better performance than a stock iMac? Been reading about the Ryzen processors, but don't know much about performance with dip o matic.
Any feedback you can provide is appreciated.
Regards,
What is an affordable platform for rendering?
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fredjonze
- Posts: 23
- Joined: Thu Mar 02, 2017 6:28 pm
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Carsten
- Posts: 2804
- Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 9:11 pm
- Location: Germany
Re: What is an affordable platform for rendering?
The most affordable platform currently is a second hand multi-cpu-multi-core-multi-threading Xeon machine. I have done extensive benchmarking on many different machines, and currently, the more cores/hardware-threads, the faster the conversion is.
The best entry is a machine with two CPUs with 6 or 8 cores each. A very solid, yet now cheap platform is HP Z600/800 or Z620/Z820 with dual 6 or 8 core CPUs. These can be bought on ebay for as little as 500-600US$ in working condition. They should feature a minimum of 8GB RAM, better 12 or 16.
As these systems use special modules that are hard or expensive to source individually, I would advise you buy a machine in a complete configuration, that is dual 6 or 8 core CPU, 12 or 16GB RAM. No problem to swap HD or other items. These Z600/Z800 are of exceptional build-quality - like the old MacPros.
These workstations have been sold in high quantities and are routinely exchanged for more current hardware after a few years. So they are offered in high quantities at low prices on ebay or from second-hand resellers. It's fun to open them and find how well they are actually built.
I would expect that a Ryzen 7 1800X will show nice performance, but before someone actually benchmarks it, you can not be sure how well it performs with DCP-o-matic. The 1800X can not be used on dual CPU boards, so I suspect that even a Z600 with dual Xeon 6core 5660 performs on par with a single Ryzen 1800X. So far, CPU Passmark has shown performance numbers that go nicely with DOM encoding performance. Two Xeon 5660 (Z600) will achieve about the same encoding speed as a single 1800X (Ryzen benchmarks have just appeared on the CPU passmark site). But remember, you can not put two 1800X onto a dual CPU mainboard, and for what the Ryzen 7 1800X CPU costs alone, you get a fully functioning Z600 machine with the same performance.
Install DOM, and off it goes.
You can easily add more machines to increase encoding speed, connected through Gigabit-Ethernet. However, if you start with a 2*6 core or 2*8 core CPU, it is of small value if you then add a few outdated dual core office machines, they simply won't add much to the overall speed. Better add a similar machine that you use for the DOM Master. e.g. another Dual CPU Xeon, or a Ryzen 7 1800x.
To give you a rough estimate, 40hrs of HD/2k playtime will need around 60-80 hrs of encoding time on a Z600 with dual x5660. Add another z600, and you get close to or above realtime. At around or slightly above 1000US$.
No, you shouldn't count on GPU aided encoding currently when making a decision to buy in the near future.
- Carsten
The best entry is a machine with two CPUs with 6 or 8 cores each. A very solid, yet now cheap platform is HP Z600/800 or Z620/Z820 with dual 6 or 8 core CPUs. These can be bought on ebay for as little as 500-600US$ in working condition. They should feature a minimum of 8GB RAM, better 12 or 16.
As these systems use special modules that are hard or expensive to source individually, I would advise you buy a machine in a complete configuration, that is dual 6 or 8 core CPU, 12 or 16GB RAM. No problem to swap HD or other items. These Z600/Z800 are of exceptional build-quality - like the old MacPros.
These workstations have been sold in high quantities and are routinely exchanged for more current hardware after a few years. So they are offered in high quantities at low prices on ebay or from second-hand resellers. It's fun to open them and find how well they are actually built.
I would expect that a Ryzen 7 1800X will show nice performance, but before someone actually benchmarks it, you can not be sure how well it performs with DCP-o-matic. The 1800X can not be used on dual CPU boards, so I suspect that even a Z600 with dual Xeon 6core 5660 performs on par with a single Ryzen 1800X. So far, CPU Passmark has shown performance numbers that go nicely with DOM encoding performance. Two Xeon 5660 (Z600) will achieve about the same encoding speed as a single 1800X (Ryzen benchmarks have just appeared on the CPU passmark site). But remember, you can not put two 1800X onto a dual CPU mainboard, and for what the Ryzen 7 1800X CPU costs alone, you get a fully functioning Z600 machine with the same performance.
Install DOM, and off it goes.
You can easily add more machines to increase encoding speed, connected through Gigabit-Ethernet. However, if you start with a 2*6 core or 2*8 core CPU, it is of small value if you then add a few outdated dual core office machines, they simply won't add much to the overall speed. Better add a similar machine that you use for the DOM Master. e.g. another Dual CPU Xeon, or a Ryzen 7 1800x.
To give you a rough estimate, 40hrs of HD/2k playtime will need around 60-80 hrs of encoding time on a Z600 with dual x5660. Add another z600, and you get close to or above realtime. At around or slightly above 1000US$.
No, you shouldn't count on GPU aided encoding currently when making a decision to buy in the near future.
- Carsten