Serious performance issue on dual opteron

Johan Lundberg wrote on 5/19/2006, 1:42 PM
We are having some serious performance issues with our new dual opteron editing station running Vegas 6.0d.

As you can see in the screenshots (links below) there's plenty of horsepower left and Vegas still only gives ~8 fps. It seems like for some reason it's only using one of the CPU cores and it really doesn't take much effects/tracks until it gives up on giving us realtime preview. A simple dissolve between two DV clips can be enough. Even projects that run pretty well on my laptop are having problems on this system.

The thing is that when rendering (exporting) Vegas uses all the CPU cores and everything goes quick, MPEG 2 exports from timeine is about realtime! When working on timeline though, it's like a totally different computer.

We have tried changing drivers for just about everything in the machine and tried both with and without our Decklink HD Extreme and FW800 cards with the same results. We have also tried replacing the ATI graphics card with a Matrox Parhelia, still the same results. Everything else on the machine seems to run fast and the projects open up in Vegas very quickly.

Is Vegas this poor on multi-CPU systems?

Does anyone have any ideas or further suggestions? Any help is appreciated!


Links to screenshots:
http://www.techcrew.se/vegas.jpg
http://www.techcrew.se/vegas2.jpg


System specifications:
O/S: Windows XP Pro SP2
Mainboard: Supermicro H8DCi
CPUs: 2x dual core Opteron 270
Memory: 4GB DDR PC3200 REG/ECC (windows can only use 3GB)
Graphics: ATI Radeon X1800 / Matrox Parhlia APVe (tried both)
Audio: STaudio DSP 2000
System disk: Western Digital Raptor 74gb 10.000 rpm
Raid controller: 3ware® 9550SX PCI-X (running raid 5)
Video disks: 5x Western Digital Caviar 320gb

Comments

fldave wrote on 5/19/2006, 2:16 PM
It is probably using all the CPU it needs, there is probably something else slowing you down.

ECC RAM is slower than Non-ECC RAM.
RAID 5 is slower than a single drive, I believe.

Also there was a recent thread on what time impact certain effects have on rendering, it may just be the effects you have selected.

Have you checked your Dynamic RAM Preview setting in Options \ Preferences \ Video tab? The default of 16 causes me some problems with rendering, but you have plenty of RAM to bump it to 512 without a problem.

You might check your drive throughput to see if anything is wrong. A diagnostic utility like SySoft Sandra is handy in instances like this.

Dave
Johan Lundberg wrote on 5/19/2006, 3:03 PM
Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply.
The performance on the disks are very good. An array with 5 disks in raid 5 is alot faster than a single disk. We actually benchmarked the raid 5 array and it turned out at a blazing 378MB/sec continous. I can't believe this is the bottleneck.

Regarding Dynamic RAM Preview, My understanding was that it was only used when doing a "Dynamic RAM Preview"? I will try to raise this setting though.

There's almost no load on CPU, memory or the disks but still something is really slowing it down.

Any more suggestions?
ForumAdmin wrote on 5/19/2006, 3:08 PM
Vegas 6 supports multithreaded rendering. Vegas 6 does not support multithreaded previewing (timeline playback, w/o rendering).

Ram previews will take advantage of a multithreaded machine, but cranking the ram preview value will ONLY give you more space in the ram cache- it isn't going to speed up playback on an unrendered timeline in general.
Johan Lundberg wrote on 5/19/2006, 3:17 PM
That explains some of this behavior. - Are you saying we should not expect full framerate preview of a few DV clips with some dissolves on this machine?

Will Vegas 7 support multithreaded previewing when it's released? Our ambition is to be able to edit 720P material (DVCPro HD etc) on this machine but if Vegas can't handle a simple edit with a few dissolves without rendering then I guess we will have to look somewhere else. I really hope this will be solved!
winrockpost wrote on 5/19/2006, 3:37 PM
maybe the next version,, but i wouldn't count on it.
I love vegas, but "realtime"preview is its weakest point. As I am reminded very often by my coworkers
IMHO
rmack350 wrote on 5/19/2006, 3:43 PM
Still, 7 FPS isn't normal. Of course it depends what effects are running but a dissolve of two SD clips ought to play much, much better.

There have been a few reports of audio card conflicts. You might want to hunt for posts along those lines, or better yet, start calling support.

Rob Mack

Spot|DSE wrote on 5/19/2006, 6:02 PM
What was used for capture? What are the file properties? Is this straight DV?
rextilleon wrote on 5/19/2006, 6:43 PM
I noticed that at the bottom of his preview window it says 720x536x32--I know he is is viewing PAL footage but what does the "32" represent?
fldave wrote on 5/19/2006, 8:01 PM
I've also noticed reduced preview rate when the source audio rate (say 44Khz) is different from the project audio rate (say 48Khz). Very noticeable in certain instances.
Marco. wrote on 5/20/2006, 2:32 AM
>> know he is is viewing PAL footage but what does the "32"

It's the display color depth. This is just o.k. Same here on my system.

But I really wonder how the clips were captured and what kind of fx are applied to the clips.

Marco
Johan Lundberg wrote on 5/20/2006, 4:20 AM
Hi all and thanks for your replies.

The clips playing on the screenshots have more effects on them yes, some color correction etc so I can see why it's slow with only one core working on it. But it doesn't take much for the frame rate to drop. Making a simple dissolve between two clips without any other effects drops the preview below realtime as well. Not as low as 7-8fps but down to say 15-20fps. It gets really bad when using other codecs like cineform. I think the big drawback is that it's not using all the cores. This system could really rock if it did.
Marco. wrote on 5/20/2006, 4:24 AM
Which way did you capture those dv clips?

Marco
apit34356 wrote on 5/20/2006, 4:41 AM
The playback issue is a pain when one has a lot of cpu power and can not use it. The design of vegas playback probably would do better with GPU rendering vs cpu for thru-put for the average vegas user.
Rodeomonkey wrote on 5/22/2006, 7:16 PM
Dear Johan,
If this is a preview issue and not a render issue, then I may be able to help as i had the same problem. Vegas has a strange problem when the internal dynamic ram preview setting is set high (Tools>preferences>video) regardless of the amount of ram you have installed. I have 2 gig of ram and if i set the Dynamic ram preview amout above 512meg i get the same problem you describe. Try setting this to below 100meg and work your way up till you find a maximum for your setup.
I hope this helps,
Jason