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Questions about building own machine -- especially about playing true uncompressed HD resolution

Discussion in 'Archive: Scifi 3D Forum' started by darthdastoli, Aug 24, 2006.

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  1. darthdastoli

    darthdastoli Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Aug 4, 2000
    I am going to be building my own machine and I have a couple questions. The most important is:

    What are the specs I need to be able to play uncompressed video at HD resolution of 1920x1080 at realtime? I am talking about an AVI or Quicktime movie with compression selected as NONE that is rendered out of After Effects or 3D Studio MAX. My main concern here is if a 7200rpm hard drive is fast enough. I'd like to stick with 7200 rpm because it seems that I can't find higher capacities at 10,000 rpm, and all of my external drives are 7200 rpm.

    My other questions are basically just advice on what to get. I've already compiled a list of specs and I'd like to know your input on if i makes sense. Basically I need this to render at HD resolution from 3D Studio MAX and After Effects with incredibly complex scenes and compositions made up of hundreds and hundreds of objects and layers upon layers upon layers in nested compositions as far as the eye can see. I also have to edit and mix, but that should all be taken care of with the greater memory requierments of AE and MAX. Anyway, here they are. Thank you for any input:

    2 Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processors 5080 3.73GHz, 2 X 2MB L2,1066

    4GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (4 DIMMS)

    300GB SAS Hard Drive 1 inch (10,000 rpm)

    512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4500, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA

    16X DVD-ROM AND 48X/32X CD-RW

    3.5 inch 1.44MB Floppy Drive

    Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card

    Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 THX Certified Computer 3-Speaker System
     
  2. darthviper107

    darthviper107 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 26, 2003
    One thing I have to say, the complexity of scenes in movies is mostly an illusion, they NEVER ever ever actually use thousands of full quality models in a shot, they always have some kind of trick to make it work. That's just for working and animating with the models though, for rendering that isn't as much an issue since a render farm could handle way more than any single computer (except for maybe the Apexx computer from Boxx) what you have put down looks like a very good configuration. For realtime HD, it isn't so much the hard drive speed that allows you to play it quickly, but the proccessor speed and amount of RAM. On my old system I could never play HD video at realtime, but with my new system, I can do it very easily while doing other things also. Also, remember that in Max the viewports go much faster if you have it set on direct3D instead of OpenGL, even with good video cards.

    So, looking at what you have down, I would say you have an extremely good configuration, you should be able work quite well.
     
  3. darthdastoli

    darthdastoli Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Aug 4, 2000
    When I said hundreds and hundreds of objects, I was mostly referring to particle related situations, for a good example, modeling a tree for a close up with a series of planes in the absence of hair in the older versions of MAX. But my After Effects exaggerated scenario is not too far off the mark.
     
  4. darthviper107

    darthviper107 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 26, 2003
    There shouldn't be an issue with After effects, it would still go much faster than rendering in 3ds Max.
     
  5. darthdastoli

    darthdastoli Jedi Master star 3

    Registered:
    Aug 4, 2000
    I'm saying that After Effects crashes on me all the time because of the complexity of the projects just as 3D Studio Max does.
     
  6. darthviper107

    darthviper107 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 26, 2003
    3ds Max has memory issues, but with a setup like you listed, there shouldn't be any issues like crashing.
     
  7. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2001
    That's just for working and animating with the models though, for rendering that isn't as much an issue since a render farm could handle way more than any single computer


    Of course it's an issue in rendering as well, imagine rendering full detail models that just cover a few pixels, the performance hit would be huge. That's why at rendering things like LOD (levels of detail) are used.

    For realtime HD, it isn't so much the hard drive speed that allows you to play it quickly, but the proccessor speed and amount of RAM.


    Well the biggest factor is system throughput, and if it's HD uncompressed the CPU wouldn't be that much involved. RAM is an issue if you're referring to playbasts and using RAM based players. But say for editing what you might want to consider is actually a RAID array to have enough system throughput (not to mention for fault tolerance purposes).

    I'm saying that After Effects crashes on me all the time because of the complexity of the projects just as 3D Studio Max does.


    Why not consider scanline based node based compositors like Shake or Digital Fusion if your main goal is compositing. On the other hand if you need the motion graphics stuff, might as well stick with AE.
     
  8. darthviper107

    darthviper107 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 26, 2003

    I can tell you that proccessor has a lot to do with it. On my old computer system I couldn't possibly play HD movies (Celeron 2.7ghz proccessor) With my new system (using the hard drives from my old system) with a AMD Athlon 64 Dual-Core 4800+ proccessor it goes very fast and I could do other things as well as have HD video playing. RAM has an important role because the video players have to have a cache of video for smooth playback, which is why when you pause a dvd and then play it some time later, it'll play for like a second or so and then stop while it loads up the disc. But yes, the hard drive could be an issue, however unlikely I think even with extremely large uncompressed files. Take for example the Adobe Premiere conformed audio files, working with like 15 audio tracks about 2 minutes long total (layering them) the conformed audio files for that can be up to 4GB, to playback that 2 minutes of audio it's got to go through a lot of data really fast, but it does it just fine with a good proccessor.
     
  9. malducin

    malducin Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 23, 2001
    I'm not disagreeing with you, just saying if your using a compressed movie, the CPU has even a lot more to do, as opposed to just trying to stream the uncompressed HD to the graphics card.

    On the other hand maybe I misunderstood the original question, which is why I put 2 cases about the playback. For a RAM based playback, say a playblast from Maya, the Shake player, something like Framecycler, etc. of course RAM is a huge factor. On the other hand if he refers to say editing in Premiere, Vegas and the like, probably the HD and system throughput will be an important factor (especially if your jumping all over the place). And even more important if he's capturing video but then I might have made a wrong supposition, so maybe he's more than fine.
     
  10. kylepro88

    kylepro88 Jedi Youngling star 2

    Registered:
    Sep 10, 2004
    Your specs seem to be nice but one thing I would suggest is you look into the new Intel Core 2 Duo CPU's. Btw, you didnt list a motherboard, your components are only going to work as well as the motherboard permits. If your looking for a great system here are some specs I suggest:

    Antec P180 Black
    Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800
    ASUS P5N32-SLI SE Deluxe
    Antec TruePower Trio 650W
    Nvidia Quadro FX4500
    Corsair XMS DDR800 1GBx4
    Seagate 750GB Drives (huge capacity lol)

    That will get you doing pretty much anything you want. If you want my personal opinion ide say get a MacPro w/23in display. If you guys want to really get serious with filmmaking, which you seem to be well on your way I suggest you start investing in the real deal. Final Cut Studio will really propell you IMO. AE for the MAC (Universal Binary soon hopefully), or if you dont want MACOSX, run bootcamp lol. Either way I think your set I guess.

    -Kyle
     
  11. darthviper107

    darthviper107 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 26, 2003
    That's a pretty good proccessor, but with the setup he's got his will probably be like twice as fast as that at least, doing a quick check, you can get a motherboard for more than one Xeon proccessor but you can't do that for the Intel Core 2
     
  12. swimmerman91

    swimmerman91 Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    Aug 22, 2005

    please get a AMD processor, it's much better then intel, especially graphics wise
    I switched, and love it:)
     
  13. darthviper107

    darthviper107 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 26, 2003
    AMD isn't actually all that, Intel and AMD are close competitors, so there's not really just going with one brand, it's by proccessors. And Xeon proccessors are very good for rendering setups.
     
  14. 1337mik3

    1337mik3 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 17, 2004
    I disagree, I have had much expirience with both, and as far as 3d rendering goes, AMD is all that. Obviously depending on what one you get, overall, AMD will suite you better.
     
  15. darthviper107

    darthviper107 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 26, 2003
    Unless you've tried every proccessor, then it doesn't matter.

    Some proccessors are good some proccessors aren't, that's how everything is.
     
  16. Shadow_of_Evil

    Shadow_of_Evil Jedi Grand Master star 6

    Registered:
    Nov 18, 2001
    I'm saying that After Effects crashes on me all the time because of the complexity of the projects

    As well as the fact it's one of the most unstable professional video editing packages on the market. I love AE and use it all the time but the coding REALLY does suck.
     
  17. PadawanNick

    PadawanNick Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 6, 2001
    Why all the obsession with working in realtime anyway?
    People were routinely working on 2k film scans for Phantom Menace on beige PowerMacs, rendering in EI and comping hundreds and hundreds of layers in AE.
    For LOTR massive renders and comps where being done back in, what, 2002? 2003? and computers are now dramatically faster and cheaper.

    Unless you're shooting on a camera that shoots 4:4:4 (there are what, enough models of those to maybe count on one hand) you'll be acquiring 4:2:2 compressed anyway.
    It's not that bad.

    The 4:4:4 F950 plates I work with even almost play back on my old Dual G4 1.25, which is much better than the performance of my newer Dell PC.
    Part of that is due to the software and OS integration with the GPU on Macs.
    This may, in fact be one of the places where Macs do, in fact, outperform typical PC configurations once you account for the hoops a product like Premiere or AE need to go through to display images.
    (I'm traditionally a PC guy, BTW)

    Anyway ... get the best system you can afford and do the best you can with it.
    You guys have already proven to be amazing at that :D

    BTW, there are two tricks to massive comps and renders.
    1) RENDER FARM OF 100s of processors (these are rentable too, where you can toss your file in over the net and pick up your renders when their done ... you don't have to ... ah ... by the farm)
    2) MANY layers or precomps/prerender projects, rather than everything in a single project.

    Sounds like you've got some serious funding for some serious tools.
    Looking forward to seeing the upcoming releases.

    Have fun!
     
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