Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: DCP Conversion System Info

This is topic DCP Conversion System Info in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Annli Com (Member # 8266) on 02-08-2016, 12:37 AM:

Dear All
I am using i5 with 16gb Ram plus 2 GB Graphic Card Intelbased Computer for using DCP Conversion,
But 60 Miniute Mov Content Finished After 8 To 10 Hours Only.
Kindly Sugest Best System Config For Dedicated Conversion PC.
Any Real Time Conversion Softwares Available ?

Posted by Bajsic Bojan (Member # 4928) on 02-08-2016, 05:05 AM:

what software are you currently using?

with similar equipment (CPU and HDD performance is essential), free software like DCPoMatic usually does it at 1:5 ratio, depending on content, so 1 hour of content in about 5 hours.

easyDCP is cheap (last i checked about 2000€, could be less now) and is somewhat faster for a software only solution. realtime i would guess it probably has to be a hardware solution for consistent results. or an extra graphics card with a lot of CUDA cores.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 02-08-2016, 07:34 AM:

Annli - the more processor cores, the faster the conversion.

Last year I bought a second-hand dual Xeon workstation for very little money, 2*6 core Xeon Z600. Very solid machine. You can get them for 500-600US$ on ebay.

If you have enough money for a new machine, get an i7 5820, 5930, or 5960 single CPU system. Although a dual CPU Xeon will always be faster, yet a lot more expensive with current hardware.

You can get near realtime performance with one of these.

Note, with many cores to use for encoding, you need enough memory as well. For a dual Xeon, get a least 12GBytes of RAM. If you are running out of RAM during encoding, the disc swapping will throw you back into the stone-age.

When buying a used Z600 or Z800, make sure you get the necessary RAM with it, as it is not easy to source suitable RAM afterwards, they are a bit special.

This is for using DCP-o-matic and the likes, using OpenJPEG encoding.

'FinalDCP' uses the Kakadu SpeedPack, and is blazingly fast (and expensive), though not as user-friendly as DCP-o-matic. You can easily get near 2-4 times realtime encoding rate with it even on on 'commodity hardware'.

You can also use networked render nodes to increase encoding speed, both with FinalDCP and DCP-o-matic. Speed increase is considerable, pairing two identical machines will give you nearly twice the encoding speed, as far as the network throughput can sustain (Gigabit-Ethernet absolutely necessary).

- Carsten

Posted by Pietro Clarici (Member # 4937) on 02-08-2016, 10:19 AM:

I wonder if a Xeon D board could be a good solution for a new cluster: you could theoretically have a complete 45W 8-core/16-thread node for 1200€, and scalability wouldn't be much of an issue with 10GbE.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 02-08-2016, 11:52 AM:

I have no direct comparison, but as DCP-o-matic/j2c scales very good with the number of cores, it seems a full Dual-Xeon 5660 Z600 system at around 600US$ is about on par with a Xeon D.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+D-1540+%40+2.00GHz&id=2507

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+X5660+%40+2.80GHz&id=1305&cpuCount=2

Note this would be a complete system at this price, including case, discs, Memory, etc. For the price of the Xeon D board alone, you could buy two of those systems running probably twice the speed of a single Xeon D board. I would always try to start with a dual CPU capable system.

Carl Hetherington put a few pages up with DCP-o-matic benchmarks, but there are no numbers for the most recent mainstream CPUs yet.

http://dcpomatic.com/benchmarks/

The reason is simply that these HP Z600 or Dell Precision dual xeon workstations were an industry standard and are available now second hand at very low cost, because there were so many of them sold.

They are also of exceptional build-quality. Just that some components are not standard PC stuff, so you have to make sure you get them fully equipped or become knowledgeable yourself to source the proper items. If you buy them with Dual CPU and enough RAM right from the start, that's the best way to get them to work quickly.

The Z600 is also very quiet.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_alltime.html

- Carsten

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-08-2016, 01:23 PM:

Setting up a stack of encode servers, I've been able to get greater than real time speed with DCP-O-Matic. It's also magnificently well designed from a user standpoint, VERY flexible in what it can do and works on every type of server with every firmware revision I've come across every time.

There does come a limit though to how many servers you can put on a gigabit connection before you hit that point of diminishing returns. The PCs I used were just regular typical average build with 4GB of ram, nothing fancy.

Posted by Annli Com (Member # 8266) on 02-08-2016, 09:29 PM:

Thanks For Your Great Info
And What About Qube master pro ?

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 02-12-2016, 06:29 AM:

You mean, that is the software you are using now and want to speed up?

The specs say:

'Intel Core i7 Processor 2.3 GHz or faster CPU (16-core Workstation with Dual Intel Xeon Processor E7s preferred)
8 GB RAM minimum (20 GB preferred)'

'Encoding of Compositions into JPEG2000 can be performed in software and, where speed is of the essence, optional distributed processing capability is available to achieve performance limited only by source file throughput. QubeMaster Pro fully utilizes every CPU in a multi-core system and processing throughput increases linearly with the number and speed of the processors.'

So that suggests it is using multiple cores to speed up encoding. So the same applies as written for DCP-o-matic above. A cheap solution would be a second hand dual xeon Z600/Z800 or Dell Precision. Or you spend several thousands on a current E5/E7 workstation.

http://www.qubecinema.com/products/QubeMasterPro#tabs-3

- Carsten