Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Ingest Time: Ext2 vs NTFS on Doremi

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Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 06-04-2017, 10:14 PM:

Earlier this week I had to ingest a lengthy movie (over 2hrs) into a Doremi DCP2000.
The content arrived on a USB mini-hard drive, so I had to ingest via usb. This
particular ingest seemed to be taking much longer than usual, even for a Doremi.

I know I've ingested similar file-sized features in less time, so after the ingest
I decided to figure out what was different with this content.

What I discovered was that on a Doremi:
Ingesting from a drive formatted NTFS takes longer than drives formatted EXT 2 or 3.
I confirmed this using two copies of the same DCP on two identical usb mini-drives.
The only difference was that one drive was formatted EXT2 & the other was NTFS.
The NTFS drive took longer to ingest. For a two hour feature, there is a difference
of almost 10min.

My test consisted of 2hrs of content, but it was all one reel. In "the real world" the
difference would be even greater, because on my Doremi, I get the following text
for EVERY asset file of every reel on the Ingest Manager:

copy_file::Failed to open file
src: /media/usb0/(asset file UUID)
reason: invalid argument (22)
retry with cache memory enabled

The system then re-trys with cache enabled and then successfully ingests the file,
whereas with a properly formatted drive, the ingest of all assets happens without
any 'arguments' from the server. Each re-try only takes a few seconds, but over the
course of a long feature, the cumulative delays add up to additional ingest time.

I'm not sure if this is unique to Doremi, or if it happens on other brands of servers
too. I'm going to try it Dolby & GDC servers later this week.

I'm also not sure there's any point I'm trying to make here. I just wanted to share
a possibly interesting and informational ingestational anecdote.

- - now go back to whatever you were doing........

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-04-2017, 10:28 PM:

Interesting - thanks. I often noticed the "Trying again with cache memory enabled" error, but never twigged that it was only happening with non-ext formatted drives. We had a DCP2000 in our smallest screen at my now former workplace, which was retired around a year ago for a DSS200. It didn't have a built-in SATA CRU bay, and so all ingestion had to be via USB, and was excruciatingly slow. That was just one on a very long list of reasons why I was glad to see the back of it.

I haven't noticed a time difference between NTFS and ext2/3 ingestion on a DSS200. A couple of weeks ago I ingested a 250GB I made at home and took to the theater on drive in a CRU cartridge (I made the DCP in Adobe Premiere/Cute DCP and couldn't be bothered to reboot into Ubuntu to put it on an ISDCF "street legal" drive, and, knowing that the DSS200 is OK with MBR/NTFS drives and that the DCP was for that one venue only, just put it on one of those). It ingested in around 45 minutes, which is around the time a Deluxe/Technicolor DCP of a similar size took on that server.