On a german projectionists forum someone posted first results for a dual xeon 2687W machine - total 16 cores 32 threads at 3.1GHz (very expensive, each CPU costs around 1.500€), running under WIN64
The results are a bit disappointing, Sintel runs through in around 32min - which is so far the fastest machine - but still a lot less than to be expected from such an expensive machine. The user confirmed that total CPU load during the encoding is only between 30% and 55%, no matter how many threads …
[View More]he configured. That computes into something like 11fps. The fastest so far I think was a 6-core i7-3930K at around 5.5fps. From extrapolating earlier results, 16 cores should result in something like 20-22fps, so, more or less half of that machines theoretical performance is not utilized by DVD-o.matic.
I assume that, roughly put, dvd-o-matic is split into something like preprocessor (input, FFMPEG, Filters, etc.), J2k encoding, postprocessor (audio, wrapping, XML, filewrites, etc). And that probably only the j2k encoding can actually use multithreading, one thread per frame? Or is there a fixed limit on the number of encoding threads used, even if set higher?
So it may be that the 'pre- and postprocessor' running singlethreaded may be the bottleneck on 'multi-multicore' machines, and performance can only be increased moderately with higher clock rates. Said machine has three fast SSDs for system, swap and workspace, and 64GBytes of RAM. I think Asus Z9 P -D8 mainboard.
From this, to me it looks as if a single Intel CPU six to eight core HT machine at the highest available clock rate is the most economical sweetspot currently for DVD-o-matic. More CPUs/cores are wasted as price increases. A six core CPU sells around 500€.
To give a more practical number, a typical 2hr full feature, using this 'sweetspot' machine will be converted to DCP in around 4-5 hours at 10-12fps average (all referenced to SINTEL encoding speeds - as we know, J2k encoding speed is highly content dependent).
Of course, the mentioned user did not build this machine only for DVD-o-matic, he uses other video editing and rendering software on it as well so it will still payout for him.
Meanwhile if have checked other DCP software performance figures and, as most of them are using OpenJPEG, their results are more or less the same.
Some of them allowing only image series input with only preconformed image and audio data and thus a more simple preprocessor may use more than 6-8 cores more efficiently than DVD-o-matic. But then the preconforming from common video/media formats will need additional time ahead of the encoding as well.
- Carsten
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Hi all,
It has been suggested that it would be useful to have a list of
confirmed-working combinations of DCP-o-matic version and server/projector
models.
If you have witnessed the glorious sight of a DCP-o-matic-created DCP
working correctly on a DCI system, if would be great to hear from you with
details of:
The projector/media server model numbers.
The version of DCP-o-matic.
Any other interesting information that you can think of.
I'll make up a list to put on the website.
Thanks!
Carl
In a film-tech discussion, offering an inverse telecine option to DVD-o-matic was suggested for interlaced material at 29,97fps. As far as I know, recent versions of FFMPEG offer inverse telecine.
Maybe you can do some tests, Carl?
Personally I try to avoid to convert DVDs and usually stick to BluRays. However, I understand that sometimes BluRay with native 24fps is not available for certain titles.
If it's just a different processing flag for FFMPEG, it shouldn't be much work. Of course, not …
[View More]all 29,97 interlaced material can be inverse telecined, so it should be a manual option.
- Carsten
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I just set up a new theatre work-station and downloaded the latest
DCP-o-matic 1.34 for a cleanly and newly installed Ubuntu 13.10 64-bit.
Installation went well, but the program was not possible to start from
GUI-menus, no messages or program starting. No hanging processes visible in
top. Trying the command-line I got an error "libxml-something-ssl missing",
which when installed solved the issue, the program starts and runs as
expected from GUI-menus.
So I see 2 problems:
- libxml-something-…
[View More]ssl is missing from the installer
- Starting the program from a menu fails mysterisously without any messages
/Adam Klotblixt
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