The ever changing world of Post Production

[Walter Graff]

I'll just say yes to that last one since I do that no problem, but the rest I'll let you take to a computer forum :)

 

And when these are available shortly, a MAC or PC will become a darn fast computer processing video like never before.

 

 

http://www.ambric.com/products/am2045GT.php

 

 

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/02/04.1.shtml

[Paul Bruening]

Hello Tyler,

 

There's no need to defer to computer forums. Computers are unavoidably an integral part of movie making, now. They are a significant part of what cinematographers must know to do their job. I'd rather hear the real scoop on performance from a movie person like you than get some nutbag, computer geek instruct me on why God loves Mac users more and will come to earth and smite all PC users. Please, scoop me. I want to hear your stuff.

 

 

Oh, and Tyler... ceiling cat is watching you...

[Phil Rhodes]

To be honest the question isn't a very good one - playing back uncompressed 2K is more to do with disk and graphics bandwidth and the buses that connect these subsystems together.

 

This, in a large part, is why people can get a bit impatient with Apple. "Eight core Mac Pro" is a meaningless piece of marketing babble which tells you nothing about the subject. "Quad dual-core 3.2GHz Xeon" is quite a lot more meaningful, and if you find that uncomfortably complicated, well, get used to it. This causes endless problems right up to the level of someone like S.Two who call the disk packs for their HD recorders "D.Mags." This is an extremely bad idea because now not only do you have to teach management what a RAID array is, you also have to teach them what each individual company calls it, and you have to do this to an audience who's already bored and frustrated. I mean "SuperDrive" for god's sake. It's a bloody DVD writer. Get over yourselves and stop confusing people.

 

Rant over.

 

Even very modest computers can play back, and even perform a primary grade, on 2K material if they have the disk bandwidth. 10-bit 2K frames are about 12MB each and the required disk bandwidth is about 300MB a second. Six modern SATA disks in RAID-0 will do this comfortably, eight or ten even better, and then you can add a better RAID controller so, for the price of a little space, you don't lose the lot if one drive dies. The disk controller needs to be connected to the system via a fast bus such as PCIe, under which a four-lane bus (which most RAID controllers use) is more than ample. The PCIe controller, memory management systems and other principal system components need to be connected together with a fast bus such as HyperTransport.

 

This can all be done on very modest systems, including almost anything with a spare 4-lane PCIe slot. Many last-eighteen-months, low-cost desktop PCs could be upgraded to do it by plugging in a RAID controller and disks.

 

What becomes interesting is what you want to actually do with the material other than just play it back. Performing grading operations, particularly things which can't be done in a 1D LUT such as hue rotation and saturation changes, is extremely processor intensive and bogs systems down quickly. This is where your eight core Mac comes in handy - it should, on paper, do at least one realtime 2K primary or secondary grade per core and composite windowed grades on another. Effects such as blurs will always be difficult - even hardware systems have a few (often three to five) frames of delay for blur effects, and large-radius blurs will eat systems for breakfast even when using cubic or quadratic blurs to approximate the vastly intensive Gaussian blur.

 

What's actually more promising for basic grading is the use of stream processors, which are subsystems of most modern graphics cards intended to allow 3D games to do effects such as glow, flare and colour grading. They comprise, typically, an array of small, fast sub-processors which can be instructed to run small, simple software-defined "fragment programs', which must be individually simple but are intended to be run repeatedly over a large number of pixels - perfect for colour grading and simple compositing. Modern high performance gaming boards can have hundreds of them clocked at hundreds of megahertz and capable of processing several pixels per clock. It is easy for a high end graphics board to outperform the system's main processor at this sort of work and some systems can even have more than one in parallel. I don't think we've seen the best of this sort of technology yet but I suspect it's where the future lies.

 

Phil

 

PS - this is a recent computer game demonstrating stream processor glow, flare and colour grading effects.

[Paul Bruening]

Thanks for the poop, Phil. Can you crush my head over another question I have?

 

Three of my boards are Abit KL9 SLI. I'm running Dual Core 64 bits in them. Two of them have 4 gig RAM. Those two also run an EVGA 8800 GT for the two, 2K CRTs and FX3500 for the 4K, DG5. The KL9 has 6 SATAII plug points directly on the MB. Are these the fastest points to stripe up to 6 drives or am I better off distributing the same Raid from the remaining PCIe slot? As well, do you think there will be a significant gain by pumping up the CPU to Phenom? They're selling for about $200.00 on Tiger. That's not bad, frankly.

 

Lastly, is there any configuration on the market or on the horizon that can realtime 4K, 10 bit/per to a 4K monitor at 24fps?

[Phil Rhodes]

I don't know about the specific boards you're talking about - I've never used them. Most of the time, though, I would expect you to get workable HD performance out of a six-disk array.

 

It's difficult to really recommend this, though. What you should probably do is to get an Areca 8-port RAID controller and throw it in a PCIe x4 slot. You'll need to assure yourself that the PCIe slot you're looking at isn't solely reserved for doing SLI multi-GPU work, which some are, especially the x16-physical connectors one removed from the traditional graphics position. You'll also need to check that the FSB replacement is up to the job, although I suspect on an AMD64 board it will be hypertransport.

 

4K RGB is about 1.2GB a second - four times the 300MB a second for 2K. Areca do make a 16-port PCIe x4 RAID controller and you would want I suspect at least 24 disks, even in RAID-0. Whether the frontside bus and memory management would deal with it is another matter. I suspect it could be done - clearly it can be done, Sony regularly demo 4K projection from disk-based servers - but even then, what software are you going to use?

 

The biggest display I know of is the Sony SXRD LCOS projector, which accepts four HD-SDI links, and I presume there is some sort of software solution to drive it using combined SDI output boards. Astro have a 4k by 2k monitor. The Toshiba P56QHD is 3840×2160 and 56" diagonally into the bargain, although I have no idea what the colorimitery is like as it's effectively a big TV.

 

Back in practicality-world, the Apple 30" cinema display, or a comparable Dell device, are about 2.5K equivalent and you will have to sit very close indeed to see the pixels. Driving these displays is relatively straightforward although you will hit DVI bandwidth limitations at certain frame rates.

 

P

[Paul Bruening]

Thanks Phil,

 

The IBM DG5, while an older LCD, is 3840 x 2400. Unfortunately, the largest SATAII card I've found is only 16 port. Adding 6 ports from the MB puts me up to only 22 stripes. My thinking was: the DG5 refreshes at 25Htz when dual lined from the FX3500. If I could run 10 bit 4K at 24fps out of the DG5 and shoot it with my NC in realtime, then I could get an entire features worth of negs shot in less than three hours. I could shoot reversal in the same time. With a run through a contact printer with the sound roll, I could conceivably produce a limited number of release prints per day and bypass the extra layers of sandwich to get them. If I could ramp the monitor's brightness up and LUT-force the image, there's a small chance that I could expose to the much cheaper print stock in realtime. Though, I figure that the monitor won't deliver the light, but, that won't keep me from proposing the idea. If that actually worked, I could put 4K res film directly on the screen. It might look pretty damn good. Might.

 

What do you think? How mad am I?

[John Sprung]

.... Effects such as blurs will always be difficult - even hardware systems have a few (often three to five) frames of delay for blur effects, and large-radius blurs will eat systems for breakfast even when using cubic or quadratic blurs to approximate the vastly intensive Gaussian blur.

Since you're going to NAB, be sure to check out Sony's new eight core processor, which they build into a 1 rack unit box. Apparantly you're supposed to be able to put a rack full of them together to make a gonzo render farm. The chip is one that came out of their consumer game line. Let us know what you think....

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Paul Bruening]

Correction: KN9 SLI. Sorry.

 

It has 2 PCIe X 1 short slots. I had to just look it up. Yes, I'm a sad, pathetic bastard. So, I could stripe up to 16 through a X4 then another 8 through the two X1 slots. If I was awake in my second grade math class, that adds up to 24 stripes.

[Phil Rhodes]

> The IBM DG5, while an older LCD, is 3840 x 2400.

 

I wonder if it's even an 8-bit display, let alone 10 - most aren't, although frankly it'll be more than dithered out by the film grain anyway.

 

> Unfortunately, the largest SATAII card I've found is only 16 port. Adding 6 ports from the MB puts me up

> to only 22 stripes.

 

I'd personally prefer to see it done on symmetrical hardware, that is: not a motley collection of stuff. In any case I suspect you will struggle for exposure at full rate.

 

You would invariably need to LUT the hell out of it anyway. Most filmout LUTs I've played with make the image look extremely wrong and you would be making a good few test runs to get a ballpark accurate result.

 

It's not mad, it's just one of those things that is talked about a lot more often than it is done. I don't think you really need - or in fact technically can - go full rate anyway.

 

What's your 4K image source?

 

> 8 core processors

 

Really depends what software they run. I have read that the games development folks have been having hours of the sort of fun we'd rather do without trying to get the best out of the Cell processor on the Playstation 3.

 

P

[Paul Bruening]

Thanks Phil.

 

4K realtime was mostly just musing. All I really need is striping 4 SATAIIs off of the MB connectors. I only need 1.5 TB per 2000ft roll shot. More likely is 1000ft of negative AB contacted over to IP/IN or Reversal over to IN. The MB connectors would be enough with hot swapping or transfer back and forth from the other 16 drives that are available onboard. The NC has a stepper motor and GUI software to sync it to the computer and monitor. Exposure times are adjustable at the monitor. I guess, with the NC like this I could run the much slower print stock through it if I had a week to wait on the job to finish. I could forget about the RAID 0 as well. Slow but damn cheap. That's my style anyway.

 

Thanks again for the observations, Phil. I appreciate it.

[Guest tylerhawes]

clearly it can be done, Sony regularly demo 4K projection from disk-based servers

 

Sony demos are JPEG2000 compressed streams, though, not uncompressed. Wouldn't even need your 6-drive RAID0 to play that back - just a single fast drive is all.

 

The only DI vendors that have proven to me they can play uncompressed 4K DPX streams are Quantel and Baselight. Everyone is coming very close, now, but most are a little hesitant when asked if there is a possible configuration to playback realtime 4K. This time next year I expect that it'll be old hat for all the serious DI systems, though. The big problem is a lack of 4K support from Nvidia / ATI and no standard interconnect for a 4K signal.

 

The biggest display I know of is the Sony SXRD LCOS projector, which accepts four HD-SDI links, and I presume there is some sort of software solution to drive it using combined SDI output boards.

 

It also can use four DVI signals. Quantel and Baselight each support this in their own way. Quantel using 4 x DVI outputs, Baselight using 4 x SDI outputs, if I'm not mistaken. But then you have to calibrate and 3D color manage each signal seperately. Uggh.

 

The IBM DG5, while an older LCD, is 3840 x 2400.

 

And it has a really slow refresh rate, so unless you want a great motion-blurr preview capability, it pretty much sucks for video. Blacks aren't good on it either. This monitor is primarily for scientific/medical visualization and other forensic, high-res imagery. You could make a case for photography as well, though the color is not great.

 

Unfortunately, the largest SATAII card I've found is only 16 port.

 

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/products/raid...ives/SAS-52445/

 

28 x SAS/SATAII ports and Adaptec is bullish in its claims of being the absolute fastest RAID card.

[Mike Nichols]

I guess to bring this sucker back on topic, I will map out my post path!

 

I am using the wonderful guys at Cinelab for direct to disk dailies for my 2perf 35mm feature to uncompressed 10-bit SD files. I am going to "offline" on my macbook pro with the uncompressed 10-Bit files and do some basic grading in Color for a "higher quality" workprint and reference.

 

Hopefully, by this stage, I will have some more scratch (I am self financing!), then I am going to postworks to do a transfer with handles of my "offline" to SR and do an HD Conform and finish to SR.

[Phil Rhodes]

> direct to disk dailies ... uncompressed 10-bit SD files ..."offline" on my macbook pro...

> uncompressed 10-Bit files and do some basic grading in Color ... going to postworks to

> do a transfer with handles of my "offline" to SR and do an HD Conform and finish to SR

 

OK, that'll work. I assume you are getting the SD stuff very very cheap. You ought to look also at having it all transferred (very flat graded) to HD and making your offlines from that. This may be cheaper than transferring it all twice, especially if you can get your HD stuff direct to disk as well.

 

Also there's no real reason to work uncompressed for the offline. And your Color work won't translate to the HD stuff since it's being retransferred, whereas it might if you were to derive your offline from the full HD data.

 

p

[Mike Nichols]

> direct to disk dailies ... uncompressed 10-bit SD files ..."offline" on my macbook pro...

> uncompressed 10-Bit files and do some basic grading in Color ... going to postworks to

> do a transfer with handles of my "offline" to SR and do an HD Conform and finish to SR

 

OK, that'll work. I assume you are getting the SD stuff very very cheap. You ought to look also at having it all transferred (very flat graded) to HD and making your offlines from that. This may be cheaper than transferring it all twice, especially if you can get your HD stuff direct to disk as well.

 

Also there's no real reason to work uncompressed for the offline. And your Color work won't translate to the HD stuff since it's being retransferred, whereas it might if you were to derive your offline from the full HD data.

 

p

 

I am getting a great deal on the SD stuff. I would LOVE a situation where I transfer everything to an HD format (preferably SR) and have it go direct to disk and making my offline from that, but I have been pricing it and it is VERY costly.

[Phil Rhodes]

Yeah.

 

It would be somewhat less costly if you didn't have to go to SR.

 

P

[Rolfe Klement]

My post path but never tried on longer format is

 

Swing a del on neg dev to include a one light TK - usually a couple more pence or cents / ft

Get the TK to miniDv, DVCAM, disk - whatever

Load into FCP - make sure reels and timecode match

Do Edit

Take EDL to post house - do super quick transfer to DPX of EDL (I get charged the same price if I go to PAL DPX or 2k DPX)

Use Gluetools to downconvert (if required)

If required take DPX into Color and regrade

Add titles, SFX etc

Output

 

Then you have the Neg, the EDL and a 2K DPX cut

 

Depending on what happens you then have more options and can take the DPX files in and spend hours on LUT and film out tests

 

thanks

 

Rolfe

[Mike Nichols]

My post path but never tried on longer format is

 

Swing a del on neg dev to include a one light TK - usually a couple more pence or cents / ft

Get the TK to miniDv, DVCAM, disk - whatever

Load into FCP - make sure reels and timecode match

Do Edit

Take EDL to post house - do super quick transfer to DPX of EDL (I get charged the same price if I go to PAL DPX or 2k DPX)

Use Gluetools to downconvert (if required)

If required take DPX into Color and regrade

Add titles, SFX etc

Output

 

Then you have the Neg, the EDL and a 2K DPX cut

 

Depending on what happens you then have more options and can take the DPX files in and spend hours on LUT and film out tests

 

thanks

 

Rolfe

 

Rolfe, if the money permits, I may go a similar route, with a 2K datacine of finished cut and then a grade in Color with the DPX files. I am getting such a great deal on the uncompressed 10-Bit direct to disk daillies, so I may as well utilize that high quality SD format for my edit. Even if I proxy THAT down to a more mobile format and then to an uncompressed conform, I still have a nice, broadcast quality file for my offline edit.