To Build or not to Build.... « Videomaker Community Forums

NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

Thank you for "telling it like it is." I do understand that I will have to upgrade at some point. I also understand that 1080i is inferior to 1080p. I also understand what you said earlier, about having to justify one's costs. I would love to have 1080p (or even 2K), but I do not have the money, and cannot justify the cost at this point.

I have heard that the standards committees are looking to raise the HTDV standard to 2K in 2015. I am hoping to transition to a P2 (something like what Chad is looking at) in a few years. However, I will have to save for that, and am hoping that my 1080i will get me started for right now, because that will get me off of 'print only' and into the video world, which will be a huge breakthrough for our ministerial outreach. I expect it will change a lot of things.

I would guess that some 90-95+% of our views will be on the web, because the web video is free. Therefore I would think that de-interlaced 1080i should do great, at least until bandwidth increases significantly in this country, which it eventually will. Japan averages 30 mega DSL, and South Korea has 50 Mega DSL. People are already Tube-surfing with their Media Center PC's and an HDMI screen, and I would think that will only increase. However, since most of the stuff we are going to do is essentially web-based HD flash, I would think that de-interlaced 1080i is going to be 'good enough' for a long, long time, such that I do not have to go back and 're-do' anything I do now, based on resolution (at least not when most people are happy to watch SD on YouTube right now).

>>Vegas has the capability to deinterlace video. You just have to select deinterlacing when you set your new project settings. As is, your camera format at 1080i is fine for now.

I was hoping you would say that. So to de-interlace the 1080i, I just 'check the de-interlacing block' in Vegas? And then approximately how much loss do I get in the resolution? Will it be comparable to 720p?

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

A green screen question.

I have two Lowel Tota halogen lighting kits with umbrellas, for a total of six light stands each. I also have a ten foot wide 'non-reflective' soft fabric green screen from http://www.eefx.com, and we are trying to build a good frame for it (so there will be no wrinkles).

My filming space is somewhat restricted (my bedroom is doubling as the studio). Basically I will be able to stand about three feet in front of the screen, and that is about the length of the shot: so do I still do the 'key light' thing? Or do I want even lighting instead?

To get the most even lighting, I thought I would take four of the six lightstands, and make two of them just above face height, and then make two of them just above waist height, each with 500W halogens and umbrellas. Then I would put two on my right, and two on my left (one high, one low). Then I thought I would take the remaining two stands with 300W bulbs, to kill any green on my shoulders or hair. (I am also thinking about an eye-light next to the camera, assuming it does not make it too difficult to read the teleprompter). Basically I can shift left and right a lot, but there is not too much room for forward-and-backwards motion in the studio (which is probably fine, because I am just going to set the focus, and then leave it).

Does that lighting solution sound like it would work? Or do I still want to go with key-lighting (three-point lighting)?

Thank you,

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

Also, one of the features I am most looking forward to in Premiere/Ultra are the virtual sets. Does anything like that exist for Vegas?

Thank you,

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

I keep thinking about it, and at the minute, I think this poor little old HDR-FX1 is all I really need.

AVCHD would probably be a lot faster to feed in, but then I would still have to burn backups of the media, so I don't really lose any time, do I?

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

"I keep thinking about it, and at the minute, I think this poor little old HDR-FX1 is all I really need.

AVCHD would probably be a lot faster to feed in, but then I would
still have to burn backups of the media, so I don't really lose any
time, do I?"

Buying all of the gear you want, expensive.

Having the clarity of vision to make the best of what you have, priceless.

Norman,

The one real advantage of tape based workflow is being able to download your footage vice digitizing it. The disadvantages are it's currently expensive and finding the best way to archive the footage. I've worked with both and I do like having the footage ready to go, but I also like having a stable and inexpensive archival format like tape.

On the greenscreen make sure you have sufficient light coverage on the background. They should all be the same type of light and the same color temp. Yes, you will need a keylight on your subject. Two important items; make sure your background is wrinkle-free as possible and get your subject as far away from the background as possible. That's the best way to get rid of green spill.

Ultra is a neat little program for fast and dirty keying. Afx is a much better keyer and Ultra is kind of an unnecessary extra. What it's good for is on a laptop field editor so you can save the hardcore stuff for afx on your in-house editor. The keyer in Premiere is okay, but redundant if you get the production suite and afx comes with it.

H.Wolfgang Porter, Composite Media Producer
Dreaded Enterprises Unlimited, Inc.
http://www.dreadedenterprises.com

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

>>Buying all of the gear you want, expensive. Having the clarity of vision to make the best of what you have, priceless.

Funny.

That's well said. Lol.

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

>>On the greenscreen make sure you have sufficient light coverage on the background. They should all be the same type of light and the same color temp. Yes, you will need a keylight on your subject. Two important items; make sure your background is wrinkle-free as possible and get your subject as far away from the background as possible. That's the best way to get rid of green spill.

The screen will be wrinkle-free, and I don't think it will reflect much (it is foam); but how close to the color temps have to be? Are 3200K, 3000K and 2900K close enough? Or do they need to be exact (e.g., use only 3000K lamps)?

I read somewhere that one wants to put more light on the greenscreen than on the subject. Is that true? Right now the halogen bulbs I have are these:

300W 2900K EHZ
500W 3000K FCZ
750W 3200K EMD

Are those color temps close enough? Or should they be exact?

The 'studio' is my bedroom. I am somewhat constrained by the furniture (i.e., bed). Overall distance from camera lens to green screen will be about 12.5 feet. If I need a key and fill, here are some options that I see (along with some questions):

I can put two bright umbrella lamps (either 750W EMD's @3200K, or 500W FCZ's at 3000K: which?) on the greenscreen from about four or five feet away. That should light it pretty well. (Which would you use, the 750W's at 3200K? or the 500W's at 3000K?)

If I stand six feet away from the green screen, I can move left and right, because the bed will not block my lateral motion. However, if I need more room between me and the greenscreen, then I can maybe bump that to seven or eight feet between me and the greenscreen, but that will severely curtail my ability to move left and right (due bumping into the bed). (I suppose I could always stand the bed up, if it is important).

I can maybe put a 500W FCZ @3000K on me for the key light, and then another 500W FCZ a little farther away for the fill; or would it be OK to use a 300W EHZ at 2900K for the fill light, maybe a little closer?

I would really like to be six feet from the screen, if that will work, because it would be nice to be able to move left and right some. If I am six feet from the green screen, and I have the two umbrellas that light up the green screen about a foot behind me, then do I still need to put a pair of 300W EHZ's on my shoulders, to kill any green overspill? Or would I be better off to go with just one 300W EHZ for a backlight, and not worry about overspill?

Or should I use the exact same lamp in all the umbrellas? And if so, which one would you recommend?

Thank you very much for your help.

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

>>Ultra is a neat little program for fast and dirty keying. Afx is a much better keyer and Ultra is kind of an unnecessary extra. What it's good for is on a laptop field editor so you can save the hardcore stuff for afx on your in-house editor. The keyer in Premiere is okay, but redundant if you get the production suite and afx comes with it.

I apologize, but I do not have anything Adobe at this time, more than Acrobat (.pdf maker). What I have at the moment is Vegas, and Boris Red.

How is the Vegas keyer? Is it any good?

In his training DVD, Chris Vadnais talks great things about the Boris keyer. However, I would have to watch that DVD again before I could even begin to figure it out. I probably do want to watch that DVD again before I actually get going, but I have no clue as to whether or not the Boris keyer is any good.

On a separate note, I have a free pass to a beginners Adobe Photoshop workshop in Sacramento on Monday. The only trick is that it is not specifically geared for video, and I have no idea who the instructor is. I would also have to drive for three-plus hours each way, just to get there and back.

If you were me, would you drive for six or seven hours and fight traffic just to attend an eight hour workshop? Or would you purchase some trainup DVD's from VASST and Total Training instead, and then spend all fourteen hours poring over the DVD's?

Thank you very much for your help.

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

Norman,

Hoss, we are way off topic for this thread. If you want to know more about greenscreen tips and other stuff, start a new thread so others can give their input and or read up on the info.

Fire at will.

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

I see someone voted for 'pre-built' systems. If you would please give your opinion as there isn't much representation on that point.

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

>>Norman,

Hoss, we are way off topic for this thread. If you want to know more about greenscreen tips and other stuff, start a new thread so others can give their input and or read up on the info.

Fire at will.

OK, I will start a new thread. I apologize, I did not realize. Thank you very much for your help and advice.

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

OK, here is the new thread:

http://videomaker.com/community/forums/topic/need-advice-configuring-studio-with-greenscreen?replies=1

Thank you for your help and advice.

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

http://www.videomaker.com/article/14391/?utm_source=enews&utm_medium=email&utm_content=tbl_enews_2009_05_2&utm_campaign=traffic

Videomaker's latest review of the HP Z800 says that the Polywell Core i7 rig outperformed the Z800, even though the Z800 had twin Xeons at 3.2GHz.

It also says that two Xeon processors was not any faster than just one.

I wonder what tests he ran; and if it would make any difference to Vegas Video.

Do you know why a Xeon would not outperform a Core i7; and why two processors would not be any faster than one?

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

Norman,

Would have responded sooner, I've been chained to an edit bay for a while....

I read the review. It seems balanced enough but I would have liked to seen how it performed with nle programs despite what 'polywells' did in the benchmarks. I'd also like to know why there was no change in performance when one cpu was removed. That's just weird. As to why 2 Xeon's would not outperform an i7 (I look forward to the day when 'i' and 'e' are no longer in front of things for marketing purposes), my guess would be for the same reason two cpu's combined usually are equal to or less than a single nextgen cpu. I would have to have more info to give an educated assessment.

BTW, did you ever decide what you were going to do upgrade wise?

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Comp,

>>I read the review. It seems balanced enough but I would have liked to seen how it performed with nle programs despite what 'polywells' did in the benchmarks.

Yeah. I agree. What did they do for their 'benchmark'?

>>I'd also like to know why there was no change in performance when one cpu was removed. That's just weird. As to why 2 Xeon's would not outperform an i7 (I look forward to the day when 'i' and 'e' are no longer in front of things for marketing purposes), my guess would be for the same reason two cpu's combined usually are equal to or less than a single nextgen cpu.

Yeah, me too. I guess what really throws me is that I thought they were using the new Nehalem architecture on those Xeons (Core i7 style, which accesses the RAM directly). Each one of those Xeons should be way more powerful than a Core i7...so unless their Polywell was overclocked to about Mach 9 or something, how could one Core i7 outperform two Nehalem Xeons at 3.2GHz??????? And why would two Xeons not do any better than one??????? It just does not make any sense.

I wish I knew whom to write, to ask, because if it really does not make any difference, then why spend all that money? But I have a hard time believing it would not make any difference.

>>BTW, did you ever decide what you were going to do upgrade wise?

Yeah. Since Vegas works on the number of cores, I broke down and bought the Q9650 CoreDuo Quad at 3.0 GHz. Then I also picked up a BFG GTX 260 from Tiger Direct that comes factory (!) overclocked, with a three year warranty. (I just don't see how they can do that).

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4151772&CatId=3775

It works great. It blows my old 8600 GT right out of the water. SpeedFan says it was idling at about 50 degrees C. I ran some speed test on it (something like Furmark, only for x64) and it drew a maximum of 285 Watts or something, so I decided the factory 525W PSU will do me just fine.

The only thing was that the card is bo big it was blocking all the airflow in my case. So I put a 92mm super-quiet fan in the back of the case.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608005

Then I found a spare T3400 side door on EBay for about ten bucks, and then cut the middle of the door out, to within about an inch of the sidewalls (so there is about a 1"-wide strip of metal all around. Then I used some rubber cement to flue standard window-screen bug mesh into the sides of the case, to keep the bugs out. Now the thing vents!

Current configuration is:

T3400 chassis
Q9650 CoreDuo Quad at 3.0 GHz (stock)
8GB Crucial low-latency RAM
4GB Windows ReadyBoost RAM
GTX 260 with factory (I can't get over that) overclocking
2 x 500GB WD Caviar in RAOD 0 on C:\
2 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM in RAID 0 on D:\
All backups are external.

That's way more machine than I know what to do with at the moment, so I figure that ought to hold me while I get going with Vegas 9.0, the new Production Assistant, and the Boris Red. When I figure those two out, then I will try the Matrox RT.X2 (full size). I figure that will give me all the power I could ask for while I am doing Sony, Boris, and then Adobe. And unless I miss my guess, at the rate my brain work, and with the amount of time I am able to carve out to learn new stuff it will probably take me at least two years to get through all of that, by which time I will be ready for an Avid machine (which I am looking forward to very much).

And speaking of which, just for fun I went 'pre-shopping' for my next machine. First I went to the HP site, and then I went to the Apple site. The Apple machine actually priced out much lower than the HP??????? How could that be?

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

I read the Videomakere review of the Polywell Core i7 system that beat out the HP Z800.

http://www.videomaker.com/article/14387/

They used a Core i7 Extreme at 3.2 GHz (no overclocking), 2 Seagate Cheetah drives at 15,000RPM in RAID 0, and an Nvidia Quadro CX accelerator card.

As tested, the Polywell was $4,899.00, and came with 5 years labor, 3 years parts warranty.
The HP Z800 as tested was $10,787.00, and the warranty was not mentioned.
I would still really like to know what kinds of tests he did, and why the second processor did not increase the overall speed of the system.
Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

Norman,

As promised, I researched a comparable build to the Z800. To see their unit I based my build upon go to:

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/12454-12454-296719-307907-296721-3718645-3718646-3979020.html

To see what I could build for $1300 more check your messages.

Now to be fair, HP does include Adobe CS4 Production and techsupport for those who are not tech inclined. But you do have to pay for that. Let me know what you think.

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

I am really grateful for all of your help and continuing advice. It is such a wonderful blessing to be able to converse with a 'real industry pro.'

However, I am confused. You are telling me that for $1300.00 less I could get HP's machine with Adobe CS4 Production and three years' tech support?

I don't get it. If I get more for less if I go with the HP, then why would I even consider building? What advantages am I not picking up on?

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

"I don't get it. If I get more for less if I go with the HP, then why
would I even consider building? What advantages am I not picking up on?"

Norman,

Actually, for only $1300 more the build gives you an immensely powerful NLE for a lot less money. Two faster CPU's, a GPU that's 3x faster, 10.5x more memory, nearly 7x the harddrive space, e-SATA controller card, multiple media card reader, A Blue-ray reader and recorder with 2 giant HD monitors. To get anything approaching the same thing from HP you're going to spend $17k (64GB RAM, 3TB harddrive space, no blue-ray.) Yeah, you get tech support, but to buy a system with the same capacity you're going to spend over $25k-$30k. You figure after putting CS4 production suite or the Sony Suite on it your'e still under $12k and have a hideously powerful system. You just have to be your own tech support.

Think about it, you could build a complete system for less than half of what you could pay for as a pre-built.

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Oops.

I apologize if I misread.

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

>>You just have to be your own tech support. Think about it, you could build a complete system for less than half of what you could pay for as a pre-built.

How many hours a year do you figure you spend, either directly at tech support, or in preparation to be your own tech support?

In other words, how many hours a year does it take to be your own tech support?

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

"... How many hours a year does it take to be your own tech support?"

Norman,

That's a pretty good question. The majority of the time is spent during the build and testing phase. Unless you do something stupid like fry components (not yet in 9 years) or get a few 'lemony fresh' components putting everything together usually takes about a week. If you are not fortunate enough to have everything you want all at once, you'll have to spend a few days reconfiguring your expansion card arrangement or installing extra harddrives, RAM, etc. depending on how many add-ins you're installing. Unless something doesn't fit out of the box or is defective, it takes maybe a couple of hours to get additions in and test them properly.

The next phase that takes the longest is installing and getting all of the software to 'play nice'. This last go-round from 32-bit to 64 took longer than usual only because some of the components which said they supported Vista neglected to mention they didn't at 64-bit. So, the time it took to change out for comparable supported gear or waiting for a software update had to be factored in.

Lastly, the regular upkeep and maintenance is where the rest of the time goes. I never really thought of that as 'hourly tech support', but it is. With the new rig there's a lot less regular maintenance as the system defrags while idle and now with the major bugs worked out (I always leave room for conflicts with new software) the only thing to do is maintain regular back-ups.

Now, I do have a couple of small upgrades scheduled as I plan on putting in a faster CPU and adding a blackmagic pci-e multibridge card. That and keeping our other 'puters in good working order I figure without a build going on I spend no more than 150 man hours a year with 2 active NLE's, 2 admin systems and a laptop. With an in-house build that jumps an additional 100-200 hours depending on how meticulous I get. So 350 hours a year may seem like a lot, but the amount of time and money I save not having to send gear off and waiting around to get it back, I can't put a number on it.

As an aside, rarely does anything just go completely 'mam's up'. Recently, we had a large client drive nearly go down and it took about 20 hours to restore it. Mainly, because the older NLE wasn't capable of fully restoring it. The next day we hooked it up to the new system and it restored the drive completely in 5 hours. If I had to depend on outside techsupport, it would have cost me over a thousand dollars and days if not weeks to get that drive back.

Being 'your own tech support' once you've gotten some experience building your own rigs is an invaluable asset. However, on occasion you will run into things that are outside of your experience and you'll have to 'fight your way through it'. It's definitely not for the tech challenged nor for the faint of heart. When my associate techs and I run out of ideas and we can't dig anything up online, then I'll send it in. More often than not, there's someone in tech support who's just as stumped but on occasion you run into some real guru's. So I'm not against tech support at all. I just consider it a 'last resort.'

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

I really appreciate your help and advice on this thread.

I am running behind right now. If I had more time (or if I was looking to buy anytime soon) I would price a bare-bones Z800 (and probably also a Dell T7500; and to be honest, also a Mac Pro) and then price it out with adding my own drives and such. My goal would be to see what I could get a machine with a warranty for, that Avid would also support.

As earlier stated, Dell charges a fairly tight price for the basic model, but then where they 'make their money' is by all of the add-ons to the basic models. The last time I checked they wanted something like $506.00 for a simple 1TB Western Digital Caviar HDD, when one can get a 1.5TB Seagate for something like $129.00 through Tiger Direct (when the Seagate comes with a 5 year warranty). One can also get lots faster RAM from Crucial, and other aftermarket RAM houses. I would imagine that HP is about the same.

The last time I looked, Apple also charges a small fortune for their RAM. Right now they only want $6,100.00 for 32 gigs of RAM, which is down from the $10,000.00 they were asking a few months ago. Mercy!

My original plan was just to purchase the base model, and then trim it out with my own stuff. However, considering Charles Fulton's Z800 review, which showed that the first Xeon processor does not even 'break a sweat' when rendering Premiere and such, I am wondering whether I really need a twin-Xeon model after all, when I go to upgrade. Right now I am thinkin' the Z400 looks pretty good.

But I don't know. All of this is still in the majorly 'hypothetical' phase for me right now, because I am still trying to get my mind wrapped around all of the tools and codecs and gizmos that I already have. It has been good to dig into this kind of thing at the hypothetical level, but I cannot get too serious about pricing DreamWorks-class machines when I'm still only getting started....

Thank you,

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

"All of this is still in the majorly 'hypothetical' phase for me right
now, because I am still trying to get my mind wrapped around all of the
tools and codecs and gizmos that I already have. It has been good to
dig into this kind of thing at the hypothetical level, but I cannot get
too serious about pricing DreamWorks-class machines when I'm still only
getting started...."

Recognizing one's current limitations, priceless.

Norman,

You've hit upon the mantra I express to anyone in the biz no matter what their level. Recognizing your limitations at your current stage. Even if you have dumptrucks full of cash to throw at it, I would still say start small and build up as your skillset increases to take advantage of your current capabilities.

Concerning the 'Dreamworks-class' workstation build I priced out, I have to say initially it was just a curiosity. But now that I see for around 10k I could build one, it's not that far fetched a prospect. I'm just sorry that model would only fall short of the 1.92TB HP max RAM by 64GB. Still, 1.28TB isn't shabby.

The only real diff between a prebuilt and an in-house built system is how much you pay for it. Granted, with a prebuilt you get tech support, but you have to pay for it and you have to go on their time. Most times, you don't get 'the guru' on the line. Usually it's some poor sap working off a script. Depending on the firm, eventually you will hook up with a guru and get things worked out. With an in-house, you're the guru and depending on your depth of knowledge, skill and confidence handling the tech end can be 'a no biggie' or a nightmare which could get expensive. It's a choice that any working professional will have to make and both have their pos/neg effects on both your workflow, wallet and sanity.

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

>>I'm just sorry that model would only fall short of the 1.92TB HP max RAM by 64GB. Still, 1.28TB isn't shabby.

The only real diff between a prebuilt and an in-house built system is how much you pay for it. Granted, with a prebuilt you get tech support, but you have to pay for it and you have to go on their time. Most times, you don't get 'the guru' on the line. Usually it's some poor sap working off a script. Depending on the firm, eventually you will hook up with a guru and get things worked out. With an in-house, you're the guru and depending on your depth of knowledge, skill and confidence handling the tech end can be 'a no biggie' or a nightmare which could get expensive. It's a choice that any working professional will have to make and both have their pos/neg effects on both your workflow, wallet and sanity.

Well, I think this is just exactly it.

As I see it, my practical options are:

A. Build your own. This will save money, and possibly time if you know what you are doing.
B. Buy a Dell, HP or Apple prebuilt and add to it. This will cost more than a prebuilt, but less than buying the whole thing from Apple, HP or Dell. However, it comes with tech support (more eyes on the project) and Avid will also give you support.

At the moment I get the sense that you would go with option A. Since you know a lot more about troubleshooting than I do, this seems like a wise choice for you, and if I had your level of knowledge I would probably opt to save the extra bucks. However, at my level I would probably choose option B, because I believe I am going to want the support from Avid, and Dell Gold Technical Support has been awesome (but again, I do not recommend Home and Home Office).

But is this an appropriate place to ask how much practical difference there might be between 1.92TB RAM and a 'mere' 1.28TB? You mentioned earlier doing a build like this for use as a 'render farm.' I am curious to know about render farming, since I think I read that Vegas Pro 9 now supports that as an option. But with a twin-Xeon and 1+TB of RAM, would you really need to 'send it out' to a render farm? Or could you not simultaneously render in the background, since one would have so many cores and so much RAM that one could render and simultaneously edit?

Or where is my thinking off?

Thank you,

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

And unless one is doing full-on 3D graphics, how much might one be limited by having, say, a 'mere' 32 GB of RAM?

8GB is as much RAM as I have ever had, so 32GB, 128 GB and 192GB are all pretty much breaking the ceiling of my scale.

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
composite1
Moderator

"I get the sense that you would go with option A. Since you know a lot
more about troubleshooting than I do, this seems like a wise choice for
you, and if I had your level of knowledge I would probably opt to save
the extra bucks."

Norman,

You're correct in that I am an 'Option A' guy. However, it was not always so. When I started out, I was standing exactly in your shoes. As I tell those who attend my lectures, 'I learned how to do all of this stuff out of self-defense!' I initially did as you plan to. I bought relatively inexpensive workstations from computer companies overstock and learned quickly to 'improve them.' Once the 'arcane secrets of the computer' were demystified for me building 'my own' became the more reasonable path. Now, if I wanted a 'super computer' like a Cray I'd buy one because my level of expertise does not go to that level... yet. Also, when I research components I look for items that are documented as compatible with the major software my firm uses.

Now concerning tech support for software that's different. To get full support from Avid, they want you to use only fully approved workstations as they won't have to do any guesswork. Now that I know I can build a comparable system to the Z800, I would make sure the build would be as compliant as possible for Media Composer.

"But is this an appropriate place to ask how much practical difference there might be between 1.92TB RAM and a 'mere' 1.28TB?"

Yes as researching the practical limits of potential components for a build is very important. The 'practical difference' between 1.28TB and 1.92TB of RAM is 64GB. Just think about how much more data your 8GB system pushes than your 1 or 2GB system did. The more RAM you have, the less heavy lifting your CPU has to do. Having a RAM memory cache bigger than most harddrives would free a CPU up considerably. Then again, it's all relative to what you are doing. Eventually, these will become more commonplace as 2 and 4k video become more mainstream. Currently, if you are doing really complex motion graphics, visual fx and 3D rendering, you would be able to tell the diff in how much faster your render times would be using such high-end RAM bundles. Not to mention that currently, neither win or mac can support 192GB yet (Win7 192GB, Snow Leopard 16TB?)

Anyway, here's the seminal article on building your own render farm and a side article to show you what one outfit did with theirs.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1847365,00.asp

http://hackaday.com/2008/09/30/6-pcs-in-one-clear-case/

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

Hi Comp.

>>Having a RAM memory cache bigger than most harddrives would free a CPU up considerably.

Good point.

>>Then again, it's all relative to what you are doing. Eventually, these will become more commonplace as 2 and 4k video become more mainstream. Currently, if you are doing really complex motion graphics, visual fx and 3D rendering, you would be able to tell the diff in how much faster your render times would be using such high-end RAM bundles. Not to mention that currently, neither win or mac can support 192GB yet (Win7 192GB, Snow Leopard 16TB?)

Another good point. As everything drifts towards 2 and 4K, one is going to want more and more RAM.

I don't know really know for sure that this was a RAM issue, but when I was going through the Boris RED trainup DVD, I put together one 30-second effect with Boris RED; and then when I went to render my machine ran for something like 3 hours before I shut it down. I was really confused by that, because all I did was recreate a project that Chris Vadnais did in the Boris RED training DVD, and his laptop took something like twenty seconds to render before it played, so I figured mine would not take much more than that.

The DVD was made in 2004, so I think Chris Vadnais was probably working with an XP laptop with I am guessing maybe 2GB of RAM, and I had a Vista 32 box with 4GB RAM and 4GB ReadyBoost RAM (which in my experience is maybe 80-90% as fast). I turned the paging file off, and then tried it again, and still it took forever, and no finished product. Then I wrote the Boris team on Creative Cow and got two attempts at support from them before they stopped answering my emails.

That was all at the time when my Dell Precision 380 was down for the count, and Dell was busy figuring out that they had to send me a Precision T3400 to replace it, so I figured that when it came in I would get it all set up on 64 bit and then try it again (and I am almost there). Except that RED is supposed to be a 32-bit app. It is supposed to run under Vista 64 (they say), but John Rofrano (VASST, on Creative Cow) said he installed CS4 on his 64 bit and his RED no longer worked. He said he thinks it has something to do with the codecs that CS4 installs.

Boris is supposed to be working on a 64 bit version of RED (and the more I think about it, the more I want BLUE, actually), but what that experiment in patience did for me was to pique my mind to the very real possibility that I might want to render stuff some day that would take a really long time...and I had best seek ways to offload it off of my primary machine, unless I wanted to kiss it goodbye for the week.

I do have an XP laptop with a video card that I may load RED onto, and try that. It is probably similar enough to Chris Vadnais' machine that it should render if the new workstation won't handle it (because of compatibility problems, or whatever). But I would like to get into LightWave Core some time also, and I imagine that is going to take a long time to render. In fact, LightWave is probably what will push me into a second system, I am just guessing. But again I am still all in the guesswork and 'looking ahead' mode...which it is about high time in my life that I begin doing that.

I keep turning over in my mind that if I go Mac, I can have Avid, Premiere and Final Cut Pro all on the same machine. But then there is only 32 GB RAM (currently). Or one can go HP, or do a built-it-yourself, and stack the RAM from here to wherever (which sounds very appealing), and as long as you dedicate the machine for simply just video work, it is probably very stable (which is why I test everything out on my laptop, and then only install stuff on my workstation that I really want).

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

>>Anyway, here's the seminal article on building your own render farm and a side article to show you what one outfit did with theirs.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,1847365,00.asp

OK, so I read the article (I read the other one before).

So their comparison machines are relatively ancient.

>>


click on image for full view

A local render on one of the school's 2-GHz Dell workstations, which are equipped with nVidia Quadro4 XGL cards and 512MB of RAM, draws out the 800-frame piece in 52 hours. Using a one-worker farm, our time shoots up to 104 hours-unsurprising, considering the age of the machine. But after adding six more workers to the farm, the same render clocks in at just over 13 hours, more than three times as fast as in pre-farm days.

And unless you are going to wall mount, as in the other article,

>>http://hackaday.com/2008/09/30/6-pcs-in-one-clear-case/

then we also have to consider that the seven-machine render farm he is proposing has a relatively large 'footprint'; and I imagine it sucks down a fair amount of juice, too. So do you have a scientific wild-eyed guess as to how long it would take either a Z800 loaded with RAM or the Comp-Monster1 you are proposing to build to render this kind of thing, in comparison? And how much juice does a wall-mount six-machine render farm suck down, as compared to a single-footprint Z800?

Thank you,

Norman

Posted 2 years ago #
NormanWillis
Member

But I guess if I go with LightWave Core, then I can forget about Apple, because LightWave is a PC-platform application....

Posted 2 years ago #