Dual Rocket transcoding data rates and FPS

[Nir Shelter]

Hi guys.
Wondering about your dual rocket systems performances.

With Epic R3D's, 5K, 4:1, RC2, 24FPS (or what ever footage you have that is similar) -

How many FPS are you getting when transcoding to 2D 1080? And how many FPS are you getting when transcoding to 3D 1080?

What is the estimated decode transfer rates on 2D and 3D transcodes at 1080? (can read this off the RCX logs)

And lastly what version of RCX are you using?

Would like to know if there is room to improve on my system.
Thanks for your help.
Nir.

[Michael Notar]

have heard a 2nd RR doesnt help out that much, very little. cine x pro is a bit faster than the previous cine x, and this is without a RR.

[Tom.Wong]

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?71788-6-ROCKETS-and-REDCINE-X-PRO-v9

these results would counter that. 2nd red rocket = twice the performance just about.

[Nir Shelter]

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?71788-6-ROCKETS-and-REDCINE-X-PRO-v9

these results would counter that. 2nd red rocket = twice the performance just about.

Yup! dual rockets are faster only question is how much faster and where is the bottle neck in the system.
Thanks for that Tom was looking for such a thread to compare with other peoples multiple Rocket systems. May be a good idea to have a sticky dedicated to RedRocket benchmarking tests with different setups and various hardware combinations.

Out of interest what decode transfer rates are you getting with your rockets (written in the RCXpro log)? just trying to get a good idea of standard rates.

Cheers, Nir.

[Tom.Wong]

I personally won't be diving into the realm of a second rocket till maybe end of this year. I think for optimal results you'd want both rockets in a pci expander (talking about being on a mac) and lock them in 8x slots so the card behaves 100%. it really doesn't matter what gamma you set it in, i see identical speeds. it's really the codecs that matter the most. pro res for example relies on cpu encoding on top of the rocket decode. the rocket really acts more for decompression. going to DPX you skip the cpu portion but it relies a lot on the drives speed you have and how fat the pipes are in your system.

but a single rocket, going to pro res 444 1080 from 5k full frame, i get about 20-22 fps on average at a 23.98 timebase. the second rocket should double those speeds and give you about 40-44 fps. but the link I posted, 3x rockets seems to be the sweet spot for optimal speeds at the moment, at almost 3x faster than real time. the 4th rocket offers the least amount of performance boost.

[Nir Shelter]

Cool thanks.
Come on Tom you know you want that second Rocket!

Yeah both the rockets live in a Cubix rack mount expander and of course disk speed read writes are a major factor am tweaking a few of my raid controllers and raid boxes now therefor would be good to know what speeds and rates other people are getting with their setups.

True about the Prores and DNX decoding, wondering if the machine would recognize and use an additional GPU (Quadro 4000 for instance) in a chassis expander for decoding? Would this speed up decoding into Prores or DNX or slow down? As the expander has a 16x switch all that means is that each card will get the full 16x link width for 1/4 of the time if 4 cards are installed or 1/3 of the time if 3 cards are installed in the expander, I'll give it a try next week and see.

Cheers, Nir.

[Nir Shelter]

Have tried transcoding with a Quadro 4000 in the chassis with the 2 X Redrockets no change in FPS. Have also upgraded to the latest drivers no improvements in transcoding time, still getting with 2 redrockets 27 FPS for 2D and around 17 FPS for 3D clips. The only time there was about a 12% improvement in transcoding time was when i used RCX501 to export funnily enough.
Am finding a strange thing in regards to using Redline it is not recognizing one of the rockets another strange error is when exporting from both RCXpro and RCX501, they display an error in the log: "Error reading from app update feed. Error 3", but they do both recognize and utilize both rockets and are faster than redline to transcode.
Also the volumes that the cards are reading from are all 500MBs and faster so it can't be the disk speed.

[Nir Shelter]

Have continued experimenting today with the system above added a third Redrocket to the expander tried putting one of the rocekts in the PCIe slots of the Macpro no change. Even with 3 Redrockets and a Quadro 4000 as we were getting 29FPS (decode transfer data rates of ~440MBs) transcoding 2D DNxHD 115 8bit, RC 4:1 via redline and RCX pro alike.

Am waiting for a response back on my support ticket request from Red but time is running out.
In the logs and system profiler the Redrockets appear in a 2.5GTs although they are in a 5GTs anyone know if this suppose to be the case or a problem? To that matter is any one else getting better performance than this? And what driver/FW and Redcien X version are you using? Via redline or Redcine X?

Thanks Nir.