Is Edius already Quad-Core optimised?

[istvan]

Hi,

concerning my future system with Edius SP (without SDI) I have two options being suggested by the dealer:

1. Board: http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...000X/X7DAE.cfm
+ CPU: 2 x Quad-Core Xeon E5335 (each 2Ghz and € 270,-)
Total costs (with 750W Power Supply, 4GB RAM: € 1.315,- zzgl Ust.

2. Board: http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...400/X7DWN+.cfm
+ CPU: 1 x Quad-Core Xeon E5440 (each 2,8Ghz and € 550,-)
Total costs (with 750W Power Supply, 4GB RAM: € 1.330,- zzgl Ust.

If I understand it on a good way the option nr. 2 should meet the hardware requirements of Edius SP, as well.

Can Edius anyway exploit the power of Quad-CPUs? Wouldn´t it be better (and cheaper) to stay at Dual-Xeons?

In a certain time (some weeks) I would still use my NX for HDV (Vers. PCIe) with the new board. Do I mean well that the board is compatible with it? (NX-PCIe). I think yes ...

Regards,

I.

[SRsupport]

There is a way to explain this but I better leave it to Brandon.


(I think this will bring back Brandon's pumpkin pie work flow :)

[GrassValley_BH]

I keep seeing people say EDIUS/ProCoder doesn't use multiple cores, or isn't optimized for multiple cores.

True, there are some parts, especially in the case of ProCoder where there are parts we don't control (like the Windows Media Encoder) which aren't necessarily optimized for multiple cores, and there are parts that are optimized only for a specific number of cores (ex MPEG-2 encoder is optimized for 2 cores), but there is a limit to how much can be done concurrently!

Could you write before you could read? Okay, some who were "special" perhaps could..

Can you start driving before you get into the car? Remote control cars don't count.

Can you eat a cake before it is made? No, you don't get to use time travel.

Can you install the toilet before the plumbing is installed? Of course not, unless it's not a flushing toilet.

Can you finish the race before it has started? No!

See? Some things in life are sequential. You can't get your food before you order, and you can't order and get your food simultaneously - there is some amount of delay, even if the food is already made.

The same goes for processes. Most processes have some degree of sequentiality to them. There isn't an infinite amount of subtasks that can be processed concurrently, and when there aren't enough subtasks to occupy all the cores, then some cores will be idle. That's just how it works.

You could send a team of 10 people to drive 2 cars from point A to point B. It only takes 1 person to drive a car, so what do the other 8 people do?
They should do something else. But what if there is nothing else to do because the only task was to drive 2 cars from point A to point B? Oh well, they get to go along for the ride, or they can be left behind. Either way, those extra 8 people aren't doing anything useful.

To fully utilize all your cores, you must present enough tasks that can be processed concurrently in order to get all the cores busy. This is why the Queue Manager in ProCoder is key for processing efficiency.

When you have multiple jobs queued and enough Conversion Slots defined, there will be enough tasks to divvy out to the available cores.

When there isn't enough work to do, it's not like the spare cores can go take over tasks from the busy cores - in fact, they'd fight and slow things down.

In EDIUS, it's a matter of how many tracks have active content and whether that content requires processing.

If you want more core utilization, throw more work at them. Alternatively, you could get fewer cores, or slower CPUs. That's help ensure you see 100% CPU utilization all the time. But 100% CPU utilization isn't good, that means you're overworking things.

There's a fine balance between having enough work to do so you're not idle and being overworked and continually falling behind.

Would you be happy if your car ran at redline 100% of the time?
Wouldn't you be looking to get a new car with a bigger engine?

[shueardm]

That board is so new I doubt that anyone has even seen one. It is probably OK and I would be willing to take a risk if i was building now.
I think encoding between formats and not Real time edititng is the reason to go for the latest chips rather than old ones but why is option 2. only 1 x 54xx CPU? Is that because of insane pricing?

[SRsupport]

I still like the pumpkin pie work flow better :)

[Jerry]

Hi,

concerning my future system with Edius SP (without SDI) I have two options being suggested by the dealer:

1. Board: http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...000X/X7DAE.cfm
+ CPU: 2 x Quad-Core Xeon E5335 (each 2Ghz and € 270,-)
Total costs (with 750W Power Supply, 4GB RAM: € 1.315,- zzgl Ust.

2. Board: http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...400/X7DWN+.cfm
+ CPU: 1 x Quad-Core Xeon E5440 (each 2,8Ghz and € 550,-)
Total costs (with 750W Power Supply, 4GB RAM: € 1.330,- zzgl Ust.

If I understand it on a good way the option nr. 2 should meet the hardware requirements of Edius SP, as well.

Can Edius anyway exploit the power of Quad-CPUs? Wouldn´t it be better (and cheaper) to stay at Dual-Xeons?

In a certain time (some weeks) I would still use my NX for HDV (Vers. PCIe) with the new board. Do I mean well that the board is compatible with it? (NX-PCIe). I think yes ...

Regards,

I.

I actually liked this one better due to the Pci-e 2.0 (16x) and Pci-x slots
http://www.supermicro.com/products/m...00/X7DWA-N.cfm
If your going to spend that kind of money anyway, you might as well get the newest.

[shueardm]

It's got everything but a SAS controller option :(

[SoundFreak]

The X7DAE looks very similar to the Intel S5000XVN board (which i'm using)

Any known pro's or con's between the 2 boards ?

[SoundFreak]

a Quick off topic question for the Guru's here,

As this is only a "hobby rigg" of mine, I never went for the Quads yet (planned that as a later upgrade one they become cheap, but after reading here it sounds more like a waste of money !?)

I'm using the much cheaper 5050's with Hyper Treading.

My question now is should I use the Hyper Treading function or not ?

Any benefits from that, or would it be better just using the 4 "real" cores and disable the HT in the bios ?

Thanks ...........

[istvan]

Hi,

"Would you be happy if your car ran at redline 100% of the time?
Wouldn't you be looking to get a new car with a bigger engine?"

Ok. So you would basically suggest to buy Quad-Core, isn´t it?

"I actually liked this one better due to the Pci-e 2.0 (16x) and Pci-x slots"

There has also been a note on the german forum. 16x PCI would be useful für display cards (graphic card?!). In this case I would take the X7DWA.

"I think encoding between formats and not Real time edititng is the reason to go for the latest chips rather than old ones but why is option 2. only 1 x 54xx CPU? Is that because of insane pricing?"

Exactly. One CPU costs € 540,-. I do not need this "double" performance anyway ...

The X7DAE looks very similar to the Intel S5000XVN board (which i'm using)

I would like to buy a good board but not really a high end one. Could you suggest a good one for Edius SP (also for uncompressed SD!):

- not too old
- upgradeable / compatible with Quad-Cores
- Compatible also with Edius NX for HDV (I am stull using this card ...)
- Hat 16x PCI for graphic cards (enough GPU-performance???) At the moment I have "EVGA e_GeForce 7600GS". It could be ok ... !

Thank you for your help.

Regards,

I.

[GrassValley_BH]

"Would you be happy if your car ran at redline 100% of the time?
Wouldn't you be looking to get a new car with a bigger engine?"

Ok. So you would basically suggest to buy Quad-Core, isn´t it?

Well, sort of. I'm saying that it's better to have a CPU that's working at 70-90% load than a CPU working at 100% load and the mouse stops responding, etc.

My preference is for faster individual cores, over more cores. Or in simpler terms, I go for speed over quantity.

My question now is should I use the Hyper Treading function or not ?

Any benefits from that, or would it be better just using the 4 "real" cores and disable the HT in the bios ?

Hyperthreading can be useful in some instances, but in infrequent cases it can also "confuse" programs which then try to "overwork" the CPUs, causing things to slow down.

Case-in-point, say you have a dual-CPU with Hyperthreading, so there are 4 logical processors, 2 of which are physical (real) cores.

If a program optimizes its workload for 2 cores, then no problem - the 2 physical cores run along, and the 2 virtual Hyperthreading cores do housekeeping tasks in-between, so your system still responds and such.

If the program optimizes its workload for 4 cores, then it becomes a problem because the 2 physical cores get maxed out, the 2 virtual Hyperthreading cores also get the workload intended for a physical core and essentially you're loading each CPU with 2 CPU's-worth of work when it realistically can only do 1.2-1.5 CPU's-worth of work. Now everything's overloaded and the system responsiveness quickly heads toward nil.

That said, I'd try your normal operations with Hyperthreading enabled first, then try the same with Hyperthreading disabled, and see if there's a speed increase or decrease for the applications you normally use.

Remember too that you can also set CPU Affinity for processes via Task Manager to keep them using specific CPUs.

[SoundFreak]

Thanks for the reply,

Sorry my mistake, I was not really clear on the Core's, it's 2 x Xeon Dual core (that's 4 physical core's) and 4 HT Cores, that's a total of 8.

Anyway i have been testing but can't find any issues or "real" ground breaking improvements when HT is on or off.

With 4 logical cores running at 3 Ghz with each 4 Mb L2 cash, they are more than fast / powerful enough to edit DV in edius, also for any multitrack audio I have done (24 or more) it's no problem because the audio interface takes most of the processing load.

As I have no HD camera to borrow maybe I should just pay around with the sample HD footage that came with the installation disk to max the system.

So for now I think i'll keep the HT on, as reported ,it will most likely do no harm, if you use windows task manager it's also showing a constant load when using procoder, otherwise they pretty much sleep.

Even rendering in procoder leaves all the cores only running at 20 to max 30%, without HT it's 5% extra, so the system is basicly sleeping *LOL*

I only had the system running at 95% at all cores when using the preview render mode in procoder, it's faster thats for sure but the system sounds like a 747 taking of.

Will this "preview' render mode still give you good end quality or is it advised to just use the much slower 2 pass "master" quality mode ?

It's not a problem at my side, just a question to broaden the knowledge base.

Have a nice day ahead.

[STORMDAVE]

I have an 8 core Xeon system (that's 24Ghz total processing power) and Edius sees all 8 cores on launch, but doesn't use more than 2-4 cores during editing or filter use.

I think a regular Quad Core at 3.0Ghz would be a good choice. If I was building a machine right now, I'd go with a Q6600 (cheapest on the market) and overclock it to 3.0Ghz with a good CPU fan. Or if you're scared of OCing, just get the newer QX cpu's.

[GrassValley_BH]

Will this "preview' render mode still give you good end quality or is it advised to just use the much slower 2 pass "master" quality mode ?

It really depends on the nature of your footage and the average bitrate you choose. The more complex your footage and/or the lower the bitrate, the more benefit you'll see from using 2-pass Mastering over the DVD Preview target.

The thing is, the DVD Preview target splits the video into sections and encodes them simultaneously (it uses grid encoding), but the problem is that because they're now split "chunks" - the motion estimation and analysis can't see beyond the "chunk" it has, so the encoding isn't as efficient as it theoretically could be.

[SoundFreak]

Thanks Brandon, that was clear enough.