Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Why is the GDC UI so slow on ingest?

This is topic Why is the GDC UI so slow on ingest? in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-14-2019, 10:26 PM:

When I first got my GDC SA-2001A it seemed reasonably responsive when ingesting files, but after a few firmware updates it really slowed down.

Now I just (today) got a shiny new SR-1000 and I'm loading what I want off of this week's trailer drive. That's quite a bit of data, but after I selected the trailers that I wanted and hit the ingest button it spent almost two hours doing nothing obvious before it started actually copying files. (Right now it's up to J so it'll probably be several hours yet.)

How hard can it be to populate an array with a bunch of file names? I thought this shiny new server would snap it up a bit on the ingest, but that doesn't seem to have happened.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-15-2019, 08:58 AM:

Sometings Wong! Assuming you are not using USB to ingest and that you have the latest Build installed, then something is very wong. I have a customer that has three of them and he loves his. He can either ingest locally or from his TMS

Mark

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-15-2019, 12:30 PM:

When we went to the media block server, it takes much longer to "open" a trailer drive - maybe a minute or so, but the actual copying is the same speed as usual. Must be some sort of issue, Frank. I would check those ingested files to make sure they're good too.

Maybe you have a trailer drive that's bad somehow?

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-15-2019, 01:37 PM:

I think it has to do with the number of files. As you say, it takes a long time between "open" and actually showing the list of trailers on the drive. Ingesting one or two or three trailers seems about the same as it was before, but ingesting 80% of what's on the whole trailer drive (when loading up a new server) takes forever. I selected everything that I wanted on the trailer drive then clicked Ingest and it took about two hours before it actually started copying files, then when it got about halfway through the list it just stopped copying and the UI returned like it had finished the job. I re-selected the other half of the trailers on the drive and left it for another hour or two and it was done when I returned.

The whole experience of working with the trailer drive seems very sluggish. Once it starts actually doing something (copying a file) it gets there reasonably quickly, but it takes a mighty long time to decide to start working.

My other two issues with this server (so far since I haven't really used it for much yet) are:

1. The text entry window for the offsets for cues in the playlist is too small and difficult to use. On Firefox at least, the text entry window is smaller than the text field that goes into it so it scrolls off on either side and the only way to verify that you got the right numbers entered for the time is to add the cue and check what it says on the list. And since the numbers entered seem to insert by default it's difficult to fix an incorrectly entered number. The spin box was better on the old server UI since you could actually read it and see what it said before adding the cue.

2. The whole UI is too tall. On a standard size laptop, I have to scroll down to see the bottom of the window on almost every screen.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-15-2019, 01:43 PM:

If I could have any wish on the servers:

I would like to be able to select a range of things to delete.

I would like there to be a tiny video window so you could test the content without having to fire up the projector.

Most of all I wish the silly thing was smart enough to "parse" the filenames and put it all into a nice-looking spreadsheet-type format so you could just glance and pick what you want without having to decipher the cryptic filenames.

I could probably come up with a few more things too, as could we all, I imagine.

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 05-15-2019, 02:23 PM:

This new GUI allows you to filter by text, so you could select, say "spider" and then delete everything Spiderman or whatever.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-15-2019, 03:55 PM:

It might be faster transfering from a satellite download server like the one DCDC provides, its also a lot cheaper too. But my customer in Wyoming doesn't have that. I know the DCDC catch server automatically deltes old crap too.

Mark

Posted by Arnold Chase (Member # 7988) on 05-15-2019, 07:00 PM:

I had a similar ingest problem trying to copy an entire trailmix drive when I first got my GDC. As it turned out, there is a limit as to how many CPL's you can copy at one time (about 30 as I recall). At some point you should have gotten an error message, but strangely not during the selection process!

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 05-15-2019, 10:09 PM:

You'd think in this age of computers they could get better performance out of these. Probably could but then it would be way more expensive. Not sure though. Just seems like its a matter of higher performing hardware and/or bandwidth of ingest speed?

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-16-2019, 06:56 AM:

Maybe they should have put something faster on the SR-1000 than a Raspeberry PI.

http://www.film-tech.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=003086#000000

- Carsten

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 05-17-2019, 11:36 AM:

To be fair, it is a custom pi.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-17-2019, 02:19 PM:

I guess it will also depend on how they handle the priorities between the different processes.

While in Windows, the main UI thread always gets the absolute maximum number of resources, in Linux, this isn't always the case. That's also, why under Windows, you will almost never witness a hanging mouse cursor, while under Linux, this can be quite common.

If GDC decided to give the maximum prio to the ingest process, then all that remains for the UI is whatever is not being used by the ingest process. That can result in a very sluggish user experience.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-17-2019, 03:45 PM:

I have one of those Pi's and it is actually pretty fast. It can run W-7 just fine. On a server its hard to say, but I have not had any reports of it being slow from my customer. Now, GDC servers ARE SLOW if you are playing back and ingesting at the same time. But all servers do this as playback takes priority. They still ingest, but at about 1/10th the normal speed. Also, opening a 2 TB trailer drive takes a while in almost any server. I really hate those YUGE trailer drives.

Also, be darn sure you are on SP-1000 Build 69!

Mark

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-17-2019, 04:03 PM:

The Dolby DSS line could ingest at full speed while showing a movie and never glitch. The IMS3000 has significantly increased their ingest speed while showing a movie.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-18-2019, 01:37 PM:

As I remember the Dolby ingested much faster after Version 4.0.3.234.567.021.75643.00467 After which is made full use of the now obsolete RAID card. Its still a good raid card though! I have a very similar one in my Desktop! GDC is the only other company I know of to make use of Hardware RAID.

Mark