Scratch owners: Is Scratch doing 2k yet?

[Simon Blackledge]

Any Scratch users seeing 2k playback? or is it still 1k? Direct from R3d files I mean.. not dpx seq etc..

Is it the processor speeds thats the bottleneck ?

cheers

Si

[PaulClements]

Hey Si,

Last time I met with Colm we were looking at 2K playback if I recall correctly. I think it is the graphics card that is causing the bottleneck mostly and perhaps we weren't looking at it's very highest resolution. I can't be 100% because the Christmas booze and food has clouded my memory :).

I haven't had a chance to play with it much though, Colm knows a lot more about it and will hopefully chime in.

Paul

[Simon Blackledge]

Cheers dude.. thanks for pm before xmas.. all good :)

I thought it was 1k currently at full rez ?

What system is he running? the HP or the red onset cube?

Cheers

s

[Simon Blackledge]

Ah.. so full quality extraction at 1k ala Redcine.. not a de-bayer of the 4k info scaled to 1k for playback ?

anyone?

[Rob Lohman]

you mean ala red alert?

We've seen 2K playback on an 8-core machine

[M Most]

you mean ala red alert?

We've seen 2K playback on an 8-core machine

At a locked 24fps? I don't think anyone outside of Red has. I know I haven't.

[Mark L. Pederson]

At a locked 24fps? I don't think anyone outside of Red has. I know I haven't.
We have not. But we are looking forward to it!!

[Arnaud Paris]

Using Scratch everyday at 2k realtime from R3D files without trouble.
Arno
www.locared.com

[Mark L. Pederson]

Using Scratch everyday at 2k realtime from R3D files without trouble.
Arno
www.locared.com

locked to 24fps? system specs please -

also, what Scratch build - I am stuck on a previous build as we have a project in mid-session -

[Arnaud Paris]

Sorry, when I say 2k I mean 1920*1200, we're on a PC Quad Core 2.8 (tweaked in our own fashion), RAM 4Go with Quadro FX5500 and Scratch 3.7 build 407. Storage 4To 8 Disks on Raid 5 through HighPoint card. And to be exact most of our projects are at 25fps and when playing 4K 2:1 we actually have a locked 24fps but we don't achieve locked 25fps (so close). And several other projects have been shoot as 4K 16:9 at 25fps and for those we get between 20fps and 23fps playback.
By the way, happy new year fellows!
Arno
www.locared.com

[Simon Blackledge]

Hmm.. I'd be needing 25fps

Also why is a SDI gfx card needed if you install a AJA card with sdi i/o ?

Do you use another app from Scratch to bring in footage? :?

We had issues with the highpoint card and switched to an ATTO R380 and the dropped frames went away...

Cheers

Happy New Year :)

s

[Arnaud Paris]

Can't get SDI realtime from an AJA; Scratch is getting all his power from staying within the Quadro GPU realm, sorry.
No other apps needed to bring footage but we're still using RedCine aside from Scratch, it's a great app by the way, Scratch little brother and for free.
Arno
www.locared.com

[Simon Blackledge]

Ah ok.. so AJA for in .. Quadro sdi is used for the output .

So single sdi 4:2:2 only out ?

[M Most]

Sorry, when I say 2k I mean 1920*1200, we're on a PC Quad Core 2.8 (tweaked in our own fashion), RAM 4Go with Quadro FX5500 and Scratch 3.7 build 407. Storage 4To 8 Disks on Raid 5 through HighPoint card. And to be exact most of our projects are at 25fps and when playing 4K 2:1 we actually have a locked 24fps but we don't achieve locked 25fps (so close). And several other projects have been shoot as 4K 16:9 at 25fps and for those we get between 20fps and 23fps playback.


I don't think you're talking about the same thing Mark and I are. We're not talking about your playout resolution, we're talking about your extraction/debayering setting. Are you saying that you're getting 24fps playback with the setting in 1/2 Resolution/High or 1/2 Resolution Medium? Or are you talking about 1/4 Resolution High (or medium)? And, just as importantly, are you using an FX5500SDI (playing dual link into a projector) or a non-SDI version (playing on your computer monitor)?

[Simon Blackledge]

Yes I was asking about direct from the r3d files.

MMost, does the way you view make a difference to playback? as in on the monitor or via sdi out ?

[M Most]

Yes I was asking about direct from the r3d files.

MMost, does the way you view make a difference to playback? as in on the monitor or via sdi out ?

Using SDI out steals some processor cycles and thus impacts maximum performance. This is a bit less of an issue with the newer cards (4500 and up), but back when we were using an FX4000SDI, we could not get locked 24fps playback with 2K DPX files if we added even one scaffold - but if we turned off the SDI output, we could do at least 2 scaffolds without playback speed degredation. With the new card (5500SDI), we can do about 6 scaffolds with SDI on, histogram displayed, and things like S-curve enabled on every scaffold with no hiccups at all - on exactly the same computer. Of course, it also helps that we're pulling those frames from a Bright Systems SAN now, but the video card is what really did the trick. In our case, we have a DI theater in which Scratch is driving an NEC 2K DLP Cinema projector, so we need to run with SDI enabled pretty much all of the time.

[Arnaud Paris]

I see, my mistake, sorry to have confused you. The realtime playback I'm referring to is with 1/2 Medium. Our 5500 is a non SDI version so indeed we're not using any CPU resources for conversion cause it goes straight to the DVI output to our Eizo.
So Mmost, what's the maximum debayering setting people are able to achieve right now? Is it affecting color information as well? Is there a significant difference between grading 2K High and 2K Medium on Scratch?
Thanks for the info,
Arno
www.locared.com

[M Most]

I see, my mistake, sorry to have confused you. The realtime playback I'm referring to is with 1/2 Medium. Our 5500 is a non SDI version so indeed we're not using any CPU resources for conversion cause it goes straight to the DVI output to our Eizo.
So Mmost, what's the maximum debayering setting people are able to achieve right now? Is it affecting color information as well? Is there a significant difference between grading 2K High and 2K Medium on Scratch?


The maximum we're able to get is 1/4 Medium. At 1/4 High, we get 21+ fps, but not locked 24. At 2K, even at Medium, we only get about 17 or 18 fps except for cached frames, which can play real time. Since Scratch caches only small sections, this is of limited use. The computer we're using is a dual Opteron Boxx unit, but it is almost 2 years old, so I wouldn't claim that it's exactly current state of the art in terms of pure speed. However, I've yet to see anything close to real time, 24fps locked playback on any of our almost-new 8 core Macs using Redcine, either.

Color is not affected by resolution. Color in 1/4 res is exactly the same as in 4K full res. You wouldn't notice any difference in terms of color correction between 1/2 Medium and 1/2 High, the only difference would be in the "noise" level in some areas of high detail (not really noise, but debayering artifacts).

[Rob Lohman]

Keep in mind that we've been upping datarates, so we'll have to do some new tests.

However, we have lots of optimization work to do, so it will get better

[Simon Blackledge]

Rob, if your upping the data-rates how much impact does that have on the de-bayer? if 4k is still 4k and the datarate is say 32MBs not 27MBs then isn't it just down to drive speed to read quicker?

[Rob Lohman]

no impact on debayer, impact on wavelet decode times

[Simon Blackledge]

thanks.

s