DV500 with Dual Processors

TokyoU15 · Post by **TokyoU15** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 3:38 am

This question is mostly directed to Ermac, but anyone else who knows about Dual Processors and the DV500 are more than welcome to answer.

Anyway, I have a DV500 on my primary editing machine (which is 1GHz), but I'm thinking of removing it from there and putting it on my Dual AMD Athlong MP 2000+ with 528MB of DDRAM. The reason why I haev it on my slower machine is because it's in MY room. The faster, better, bulkier machine is in the living room, basicly...the family computer (a damn powerful one too...too powerful for a family comp.)

Well, I was wondering if the DV500 would take advantage of the dual processors and increase render times and smoother editing with avisynth?
The reason why I don't try it and find out myself is because I don't want to take apart, re-format and reinstall all the programs/drivers on both computers. I'd like to know from people with experience if it is a good move or just stick to my current setup.

Thanks in advance.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 4:12 am

DV500 only works with DV footage. It will not speed up AVISynth on any computer.

TokyoU15 · Post by **TokyoU15** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 12:08 pm

Well, I'd assume the DV500 works with DV footage, hence the name, but ohh nevermind.

Thanks anyway.

NicholasDWolfwood · Post by **NicholasDWolfwood** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 1:58 pm

Like klinky said, it only works with DV footage, or BMPs I believe. It will not speed anything else up, I've got a chat log with ErMaC from a while back to prove it.

TokyoU15 · Post by **TokyoU15** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 5:19 pm

Well, ok, but does having a dual processor have an advantage over a single processor? I'm going to be primarily editing with AVISynth, but when I do get my cam to edit DV footage, THEN will it have a significant difference?

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 7:38 pm

I am going to say that dual-cpus is probably not going to make a big enough difference to make AVS editing a dream come true. It'll still be slow and clunky. I am not sure how SMP-Aware AVS is, but I am going to say it'll still be slow.

When you get a DV camera and it's captured in the DV format and you use the specific DV500 special effects included with the DV500. You can acheieve REALTIME speed. So basically 29.97fps. You can do up to two streams at once. So it's pretty nice, but for anything other than DV editing it's not that great.

SiberWolf · Post by **SiberWolf** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 8:35 pm

...

Ran a DV500 on a dual Athlon 1800 setup for awhile. Beautiful results, except that something of that combination, along with the gig of RAM, and Premiere 6.0, caused a major memory leak. Had to shut down Premiere every once in awhile or it would reach about 1.8 gigs of RAM/swapfile in use and crash out. All editing was done using DVD footage and AVISynth scripts.

Tried to do some editing without the DV500 on my single P4 1.7ghz machine. Extremely sluggish with AVISynth, almost impossible to work with. Dropped in the DV500 and saw almost the same speed as the dual AMD box (not quite, but it did lack the memory leak, although I also switched to Premiere 6.5). Proof enough for me that the DV500 speeds the job up. Not really slow and clunky at all. Each section has to be rendered as it is added to the timeline, but it only takes about 2 seconds per second of video.

Soon I'll be moving the DV500 over to a Dual Xeon 2.4ghz box with 2 gigs of RAM and an Ultra320 SCSI Raid array. I'll let ya know the results of that project.

TokyoU15 · Post by **TokyoU15** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 8:57 pm

Sounds very interesting SiberWolf.

Your memory problem could be with using excessive amounts of AVISynth files, it's been known to do that.

Soon I'll be moving the DV500 over to a Dual Xeon 2.4ghz box with 2 gigs of RAM and an Ultra320 SCSI Raid array. I'll let ya know the results of that project.

That sounds beautiful. Can't wait to hear the results on that.

I guess the best hting for me to do is do what you did, experiment.

NicholasDWolfwood · Post by **NicholasDWolfwood** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 9:13 pm

*goes to digout chat logs with ErMaC*

ErMaCStudios: well here's the deal
ErMaCStudios: first off, it's a firewire card
ErMaCStudios: so you can run any firewire device through it, be it dv cameras or hard drives
JasonPassman: k
ErMaCStudios: second it's also a capture device. It's got Analog in (Svideo/composite/RCA audio)
ErMaCStudios: it's capture driver, however, only works from within Premiere, and it encodes directly to DV
ErMaCStudios: so no capturing in VirtualDub or anything like that unfortunately
ErMaCStudios: third it's a video output device. It's got another set of Svid/comp/audio connectors which output to a video monitor or VTR
JasonPassman: okay, I'm following you..
ErMaCStudios: these outputs will display any DV encoded material, or stuff which can be rendered in realtime on the premiere timeline
ErMaCStudios: fourth is it's a realtime effects accellerator for Premiere
JasonPassman: Meaning...?
ErMaCStudios: it can take 2 DV streams, or a DV stream and mix them in a few ways in realtime and output them through video
JasonPassman: okay
ErMaCStudios: i.e. I can laydown a whole bunch of video with just cuts going between them
ErMaCStudios: and it will never have to render anything
ErMaCStudios: as long as I'm working from DV files
ErMaCStudios: if I'm working from other material like AVISynth or non-DV AVI files, I will have to render said footage to DV (which is assisted by the card in hardware) and then it will output
JasonPassman: okay
ErMaCStudios: I do that by hitting enter and letting it build a preview
JasonPassman: That really is a nice card...
ErMaCStudios: yup
ErMaCStudios: for instance
ErMaCStudios: since Soul of an Angel's source was all prerendered to DV beforehand
ErMaCStudios: (it was captured analog or converted digitally to DV beforehand)
JasonPassman: okay
ErMaCStudios: I can render the majority of the video in realtime

JasonPassman: humm...
ErMaCStudios: basically you get up to 2 tracks at once
JasonPassman: How do you render it to DV?
ErMaCStudios: Well when you install the DV500 drivers
ErMaCStudios: they add another Edit Mode
ErMaCStudios: you know how you have Video For Windows or Quicktime?
JasonPassman: yep
ErMaCStudios: it adds "Pinnacle DV500"
JasonPassman: Oh
ErMaCStudios: and using that enables Realtime
ErMaCStudios: and automatically sets your codecs and resolution etc.
JasonPassman: okay..
ErMaCStudios: now the thing you'll have to remember
ErMaCStudios: is that you're working in DV
JasonPassman: So you can only use that edit mode to render in real-time?
ErMaCStudios: so everything is 720x480 and 29.97
ErMaCStudios: yes
JasonPassman: Okay
JasonPassman: So if my source is widescreen, what do I do?
ErMaCStudios: turning that on enables the Pinnacle RealTime tools
ErMaCStudios: you feed it in through an AVS file that resizes it
JasonPassman: Oh, okay..
ErMaCStudios: remember the only things it'll work with in realtime are DV files
ErMaCStudios: and DV files have to be 720x480 anyways
JasonPassman: So no MPEG?
ErMaCStudios: not in realtime, no
ErMaCStudios: you can import anything
ErMaCStudios: but the realtime only works with Bitmap, Targa, or Photoshop stills or DV video

SiberWolf · Post by **SiberWolf** » Sun Aug 17, 2003 9:29 pm

Yep, that's pretty much correct. You're editing it in the DV that it's converting to (which is pretty fast). But the source files remain the same. So when you go to create a final output, you just render a final MPEG file (or whatever format you desire), which is taken directly from the AVISynth files, which of course are fed from the DVD source files. No loss of quality, no extra conversions for final output. But fast conversion to a DV form for editing, which is still extremely high quality. Obviously not realtime, but still plenty faster than without.