Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: USB3 ingest to DSS200?

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-23-2014, 06:22 AM:

Forgive me for thinking out loud and probably stupidly (trying to kill a few hours at Heathrow, en route home from visiting family), but does anyone know of any official or unofficial way of ingesting content into a DSS200 using a USB3 connection? I recently got a new laptop and the astonishingly (compared to USB2) quick time that the entire contents of a 128GB flash stick go into it via USB3 put this in my mind.

Quite a lot of the arty and independent movies we get arrive on consumer portable hard drives (i.e. not in full-size drives in CRU cartridges) that are USB3. But obviously, the cat915 board on the front of the DSS200 is USB2 only, and, compared to CRU ingestion, is painfully slow. If the DCP is 150GB plus you're looking at several hours, and if you're ingesting a festival-load of content on several of these drives, it can actually turn into a logistical problem.

Does anyone know if Dolby or anyone else make something that would enable USB3 ingestion? I'm wondering if there is some sort of SATA to USB3 gizmo that I could attach to one of the spare SATA slots on the motherboard out there, maybe.

Just thinking aloud...

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-23-2014, 08:54 AM:

You can find USB3 to eSATA adaptors on the Net, never used them. May be worth a try.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-23-2014, 11:16 AM:

Why not skip the whole USB thing and just do a direct FTP transfer via Ethernet? That is about as fast an ingest as you are going to go and it is pretty easy.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 12-23-2014, 11:28 AM:

Steve,

Can you clarify exactly what you mean by this? Are you suggesting connecting the portable disk to an ordinary pc (via USB 3?) and then doing a FTP from that pc to the server. Most of the Move Dock things which these disks fit into seem to offer USB 2 and e-SATA, but not USB 3; I think I've only ever seen one of the newer ones which offer USB 3, but not e-SATA.

What exactly happens when a package is ingested? There seems to be more involved than just copying files. Do you need to go through another step after copying the files to the server by FTP?

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-23-2014, 11:30 AM:

Stephen,

You don't have to do anything on a Dolby, just copy the whole lot on the server - maybe in a folder to keep everything tidy but that is not necessary.

Leo mentioned that most drives nowadays are arriving with an USB port, I believe he was not referring to the CRU drives with caddy.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 12-23-2014, 11:30 AM:

My mistake...for some reason I thought Leo was talking about his laptop or something.

So yeah, USB2 speeds it is.

Even if you get a USB3 to eSATA...there is no guarantee that it will mount it.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 12-23-2014, 11:40 AM:

well, if Leo has a USB3 computer it does make sense - even though I guess that by the time you reach the server the speed won't be the same you'd have by directly connecting to a USB3 capable server. But I'd give it a go.
Obviously you'll need a Gigabit link with the server.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 12-23-2014, 11:45 AM:

I there any way of doing a faster ingest into a Doremi server.

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 12-23-2014, 01:07 PM:

Not by USB. You can add a dock and an ESATA port. That will be much faster. I did that on all of our Doremi servers.

Posted by Edgar Prass (Member # 7558) on 12-23-2014, 04:13 PM:

I have never even touched a Dolby server, but with our Alchemy module which doesn't a CRU built-in dock I'm using several different methods for fast ingest.
1) Two USB3 ports on Alchemy itself for consumer grade portable HDD's and thumb drives.
2) External USB3 CRU dock (cost about 70EUR) connected to Alchemys USB3 port.
3) Ingesting from theatres ftp server (a simple Synology server with RAID1). Local network is a 1 Gigabit network and Alchemy has three 1 Gigabit LAN ports).
4) Ingesting over internet from some far away distributor ftp server. Our internet connection is 300Mbit/s.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 12-23-2014, 07:38 PM:

If you're in for some adventure, you might try an USB 3 extension card like those. I've never tried it on a DSS200, but I know that most recent Linux kernels support those cards out of the box.

Depending on how automount has been configured on the Linux distribution used by Dolby, it *might* just work...

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 12-26-2014, 01:59 PM:

SATA->USB3.0 converters are not possible, as SATA lacks the communication options that USB needs. USB->SATA, yes, but not the other way round.

There are some NAS adapters available that will allow to make a USB3.0 mounted drive accessible through FTP. I think that is the only way to achieve higher transfer speeds towards a USB2.0 only server (if the NAS adapter performs well). Some larger NAS devices offer this as well, e.g. QNAP.

Our Sony server offers USB3.0 and we regularly achieve around 75-85MByte/s from ordinary laptop-style/2.5" external USB3.0 ingest discs. A typical feature ingests in around 30-45min.

Did anyone try this one?

http://www.addonics.com/products/nas40esu.php

Would be interesting, though, to plug a PCIe->USB3.0 card into the typical range of servers and see what happens. Looks as if Dolby servers use more up-to-date linux kernel versions than Doremi. I think the standard Doremi kernel does not have USB3.0 support.

Does a DSS200 offer free PCIe slots at all?

- Carsten

Posted by Richard May (Member # 2627) on 12-26-2014, 02:50 PM:

I have checked with Doremi in the past. It doesn't support USB 3.0

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-27-2014, 07:21 PM:

Apologies for radio silence over the last few days. Came down with a bit of a bug on Christmas Eve (picked up on the plane coming home from England, probably) and only just back in the saddle.

quote: Steve Guttag
My mistake...for some reason I thought Leo was talking about his laptop or something.

Sorry - to be clear, I was just wondering if there was a relatively easy way to ingest at USB3 speed from DCPs that arrive on portable hard drives in a USB3 external caddy/box. The impression I get from this thread is that putting a USB3 PCIe card in the actual server is about the only way that stands a chance of working: to be honest, I'm reluctant to try this in case it causes any side effect that might disrupt playback. I would, in that scenario, be changing the overall hardware configuration to something that hasn't been tested with the Dolby software.

Not a major issue - just wondered if someone had come up with something in the past. Thanks for everyone's suggestions.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 12-28-2014, 09:01 AM:

quote:
The impression I get from this thread is that putting a USB3 PCIe card in the actual server is about the only way that stands a chance of working:

No, that is the only way that is more or less sure to fail. The only way to achieve higher ingest speeds than USB2.0 is the method I mention above, using a NAS device/converter with reasonable throughput. It also needs no modification to the server and thus doesn't void the warranty. At less than 100US$, It's also comparably cheap. If I'd had the need, I would have tested it already.

The device I linked to is quoted with around 75MByte/s performance. If it keeps that promise, it would be considerably faster than USB2.0. Don't know real-word figures for a QNAP or other 'real' NAS devices.

- Carsten