Anyone is running Scratch on MacPro with Success?

[Gabriele Turchi]

Hi,
I am close to buy Scratch Cine ,for various reason i had to buy another MacPro Last Week (2x2.23 Nahalem (corei7)),so i am considering to use this machine , that should be pretty powerful to Run Sratch.

Off course i am planning to add the 5600 FX.

I did some test ,but i am confused by the fact that Rendering out R3D to jpeg (just for the speed test and to be fast without huge raid 0 drives) using half res decode ,My Macpro render out at 10fps ...but the CPU stay at 35-40% usage...

At the Moment i have the standard Nvidia 120GT (but did not color corrected the images at all,no multy layers etc...( just exporting test)

is this card the the bottle neck that stop the system to render faster ?
Half decode R3D should use way more than 35% CPU , so maybe having the GT120 slow down the processing because scratch use the graphic card to resize etc...?

Or this 16 Cores is not the right machine ?,honestly seems that this 16 cores is running slower than the old 8 core in many application...

Anyone have scratch with Quadro FX5600 on a MAcPro?
Speed rendering out DPX? (or Jpeg if you don't have 350MB/s Drive ?)

Thanks a lot

G

[Juan M.P.]

maybe im missing something but as far as i know assimilate havent released a version for mac? am i wrong? (that would be great news!)

[Gabriele Turchi]

Sorry,

I meant using Bootcamp and XP off course...

G

[Tim Whitcomb]

Sorry,

I meant using Bootcamp and XP off course...

G

and therein lies your speed problem

[Gabriele Turchi]

and therein lies your speed problem

what do you mean?

G

[Barend Onneweer]

This has already been discussed here:

http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27274

[Gabriele Turchi]

Thanks,

i did a research and i din not found that thread...
MM... seems that Assimilate is very contrary to this solution ,

from my point of view is not about buy or assemble another PC machine ,is about have to possibility to have two machine in one , and the benefits when you travel are quite a lot ....

I understand that try to Use the SDI module on the Mac (that Work )is a bit risky , but for those who don't need SDI out from Scratch Cine(just grade using the second DVI)i think could be a very useful solution , considerign g that using bootcamp the Mac became a PC , we can install all nvidia Driver etc...

But As i said there might be some sort of little problem that i don't know yet,for this reason i am asking if anyone is using it with success...

Thanks

G

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

I used Scratch on my mac for a long time until i got my server PC. It worked really well with the 8800. In fact, it worked as good as the PC with the 5600. Yeah, no SDI output but i didn´t need it by that time.

Check your settings well. Try to do the same think in Redcine and see how fast it renders. DO NOT use the same drive where the R3Ds are stored. The best PCs from BOXX achieve faster than real time renders at 1/2 res, on my 8core 3,0Ghz, quadro5600 and 16drives at raid0 i´ve never seen such speed.

[Gabriele Turchi]

Thanks Miguel,

i am still trying,
now i have just ordered the 56000 for the MacPro,

Was you able to have the 2nd monitor out from the 8800?

So now you are using it with a 3GHZ 8 core PC and the 5600 ?

Can i ask you your rendering speed for DNxHD and DPX?
Realtime playback at half res high?

Thanks

G

[Miguel "Macgregor" De Olaso]

DPX render at 1fps with 16:9 r3ds and Max off. Maybe 2 fps with 2:1 files. Not very fast, i still don´t understand why.

Realtime playback if Max is off at 1/2 res high, in most cases.

I don´t think it´s worth to pay for the 5600 right now unless you have clients in front of you or you need the sdi output. The 8800 gave very good results. And since with F12 you can quickly render to see what you did in case you have +20 layers, saving 5k from the 5600 is something i regret. I say this because it looks to me you want to keep prices low.

[Charles Angus]

I think Deanan said that the Nehalems need to process more than one clip at a time to maximize efficiency; that could be the cause of your slowdown.

There was a long thread about this, maybe search for "nehalem problem" or "nehalem slow" or something like that. People have been finding their Nehalems slower than their old mac pros.