I've posted this question on the media composer forum but did not receive the answer I'm looking for. Maybe by asking here I might have a bigger chance.

Hi guys,

I've been searching around on the forum on the performace (improvement) of MC v3. In basic I understand that v3 performance is very good and I understand that it is taking advantach of the extra processors. I have tested this in the past with Xpress pro HD 5.1.8 on a dell precision 650 and a lanshare by adding a second processor and found that improvement of performance was close to nothing.

Avid keeps telling us to buy faster HP's everytime HP updates their machines. And as HP stops making the old one's you have no choice except second hand. But buying a dual quad core (most extreme) and then using only 1/8 or 2/8 of the processing power seems a waste to me.

My question is to users that use several different types of HP machines on unity on how their experience is on perfrmance. Is avid MC v3 on a 8400 or 8600 faster then on a 8200 on a unity or lanshare? If avid and/or the connection manager practically use only a single core I would expect it to be faster on a single 3.4Gig xeon then on a 2.4 dual core. But there are other factors also at stake. HD speed, PCI bus speed. Graphic card speed, Fibre or Gigabit connection and memory capacity. etc..

What's the practicall experience in the field? Randall, Doc?

Multi threaded tasks apply to some FX and features but not all. Legacy FX (basically those that came from Meridien and ABVB) seems to be still single threaded. DNxHD and OpenGL accelerated FX seems to be threaded well.

In regards to Unity speed - your PC has the least impact on that. In a shared storage environment, performance bottleneck tends to be the connection and storage itself. If you are using 4Gb fibre, then you should be able to push several streams of uncompressed SD or DNxHD - depending on your Unity config and client count.

So if you are using a lot of FX, DNxHD and etc- then yes go with 8400 or 8600 with a good NVidia card. If you are cutting 15:1s or 14:1p, mostly straight cuts and connected via ethernet then the computer is not the bottleneck.

Also, if you are using Adrenaline or Mojo (analog or SDI) you will still experience the DNA firewire lag no matter what version of the software (it tends to be less in newer versions) or HP you are on.

HTH

 Thx dom.

So in my environment where I use a Lanshare Ex 4T with one MC adrenlne connected thru 1G fibre and 4clients, 1 with mojo, thru ethernet, all on xw8200, all projects are SD, I will not see any improvement except the effects? If the dual or quad core is a proc.where one sngle core is even slower then the 3.4 I already have I might even see a slow down.?

Are you looking for quickness or bandwidth increase (acceleration or top speed)? If you are looking for quicker response from your setup, ethernet connection and DNA firewire is not the ideal setup. Both connection type inherently introduces higher lag compared to fibre and PCI-e (DX).

If you are looking to increase stream count for FX then better Unity connection and processor will increase it.

Clock speed is an outdated barometer for CPU comparison. Newer generations CPUs at slower clock rate can outpace older ones with higher clock rate. So yes, multi core Xeon will outpace older ones for multitude of reasons.

 I'm looking for quickness as I do not plan to go HD any time soon. (you'll see next project will be HD) so my bottlenecks are firewie 400 and 1Gig ethernet. The cpu speed difference from 3.4 to 2.4 will not make a big difference. adding multi core cpu's also not...

So if I want to update I'm better of going to DX hardware and a new 8600 and going to 4g fibre on anew lanshare, then to upgrade only one part of the chain. In my case the HP pc. That will bring me virtually nothing?

jveekeres:

Avid keeps telling us to buy faster HP's everytime HP updates their machines. And as HP stops making the old one's you have no choice except second hand.

jveekeres:

Is avid MC v3 on a 8400 or 8600 faster then on a 8200 on a unity or lanshare?

Sometimes storage is not a bottleneck, sometimes it is. Depends on the number of simultaneous clients and compression ratio of the media they access.

Sometimes the multi-core processor is a waste, if you are doing cuts only with uncompressed media. Other times, with lots of effects and compressed media, you can't go without it.

It really depends on the project, better yet, on the actual time line.

does anyone know which effects are the faster/accellerated ones in MC 3?

i noticed that in an HDV project, I can get 5 streams going in PIP in full green mode.  But on just 1 stream using the Avid 3D effect, the video starts to stutter....which actually doesn't seem right for some reason.  for my single stream with the Avid 3D effect, i'm only showing CPU utilization at about 33%.

 Thx andrei,

What you write for both points makes sense. I had already realized when i wrote ny question that a simple answer is not possible as there are so many variables. But maybe some of you have a situation where different HP machines run the same MC software connected to the same Unity or Lanshare at the same speed of connection. Then any practical difference might show.

 My workflow is most of the time dv25 or dv50 SD using some effects but not a lot.

As the HP's are falling fast from the list of MC's supported machines I concluded that in a year or so I have to upgrade my xw8200 to be compatible with the next MC versions... but I wonder if spending on new HP's will improve performance in any way or if it is just a waste of money if I do not also upgrade my lanshare to 2 or 4 gig fiber and change from adrenaline to DX   

 jveekeres, (sorry, I don't know your name)

there are many different strategies as far as upgrading is concerned.

One philosophy is to by a turn-key system, use it as long as it does the job, depreciate the value completely and replace it with a new one whatever happens to be new at the time. This is similar to driving the same car for 15 years or as long as you can still find the parts for it, then taking it to a dump and walking away to a new car dealer.

Another school of thought is to upgrade continuously and incrementally. This will cost more, but you will be always running relatively current system.

I don't know which way is better.

However, if I was to do incremental upgrading, I would be putting priority to the oldest systems (or subsystems) first. Right now I seems to me that the oldest part of your facility is 2GB fibre. Upgrading the fiber backbone can be costly, but if I were you I would try moving forward to 4GB backbone.

BTW, Avid currently has a promo for MediaNet 5 - unlike in the past, they will upgrade LanShare now.

Oh that's news! thx very much andrei. By the way my name is Jeroen. I'm dutch living in greece.

I checked out the LP chassis in the past will do so again to find upgrade programs. Just a bit worriied about MN5 after reading all the issues on the forum. Jeff clearly states to stay away from version 5 and stick with 4.1.x or 4.2.x.

What's your opinion?

jveekeres:

I'm dutch living in greece.

I guess you prefer swimming in warmer seas...

jveekeres:

worriied about MN5 after reading all the issues on the forum

What issues? There are no show-stoppers with MN5.1. The nuisance I know of is that you can't any longer connect vie Ethernet with Fibre Client version of Connection Manager, but that's minor and may get fixed in later releases. I have a bit of info about MN5.1 performance on my Web site.

 You can get 1TB drives now, which helps. Vista support, if you decide to do 64-bit with Nitris DX.

 I'll check it out