Re: [Avid-L2] Avid DPX exports time estimate and storage options? Now Difference between OWC Mecury Elite Pro Dual 20TB and Graid 20TB

A while back I had this thread where Graid older 4TB enclosures vs. Graid Newer Enclosures had vastly different performance when exporting DPX out of Avid over USB 3.  I would get estimates of 12 hours going to an older 4TB Graid while going to a newer 20TB would be more like 7 hours or less.  Lately exporting DPX 10bit to Graid 20TB for an hourish show is under 5 hours on my home system.  Now I have an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual 20TB and the performance seems to be back up to 7 hours ish.  The media is all the same.  The Mercury Elite Pro Dual is the light chrome version with USB 3 and esata no thunderbolt.  The are all two drive raid 0 units.  I can't seem to find out from the tech specs if the enclosures are Sata II or Sata III.  I'm beginning to think that perhaps those older Graid enclosures might have been Sata II and maybe the newer ones with thunderbolt are Sata III.  From my original thread I had moved a pair of 2TB drives from an older Graid enclosure to the newer Graid enclosure and the performance jumped up to match what I was seeing with the 20TB drive pair in the new enclosure.

I suppose chipsets could also play into this.  Another confusing element is drive speed tests seemed similar with older and new graid enclosures it was just when exporting DPX from Avid that I noticed the big performance difference. 

So now when I see similar DPX export performance differences with the OWC raid enclosure I'm wondering is the performance chipset differences, Sata version in the enclosure or what.  I get that all drives aren't exactly alike but what could it be that is causing the difference and why do disk speed tests seem comparable but DPX export performance does not.  Could there be something unique to how Avid exports DPX.  I really thought I hadn't seen this performance difference until about the last year so maybe something in Avid's reimagined and coded DPX engine is a factor.  By and large my DPX exports improved as Avid improved the DPX support but these differences in export times times between brands and oider vs. newer Graid enclosures make me curious what's going on under the hood.


On Mon, Apr 15, 2019 at 10:45 AM, John Moore wrote:

Resending as this hasn't posted after two attempts yesterday.

I know the latest Avid versions are better at exporting DPX.  I'm on MC 2018.12.1.  I have to stay on this because of LUT level/scaling issues when jumpint to 2018.12.2 or 2018.12.3.  My last show took approx 7 hours or less to export 10 bit dpx to a GRaid 20 TB.  ON mc 8_9_4 similar exports took around 9 hours.

 

I am on a MacPro Cheesegrater mid 2010 upgraded to 12 core 3.33GHz, 24GB Ram, OS 10.12.6, radeon 5770 1024mB vram.

Today and yesterday I started to export an hour 5 minute sequence to 10 bit dpx.  The entire 4K sequence is rendered to ProResHQ.  Avid is estimating 24 ish hours.  I'm going to a freshly formatted HFS + 4TB Graid.  I tried another 4TB Graid that I didn't reformat but it was HFS+ too.  It didn't have much free space but it acted the same with Avid estimating the same 24 hours ish.

I then got the 20TB Graid I used on the last show that took 7 hours ish to export.  It didn't have much free space but regardless Avid quickly estimated 7 ish hours to export to it.  This is a newer Graid so perhaps it has a newer chip set?  The kicker is when I run Black Magic Disk Speed test the original 4TB drive freshly formatted has write speed of close to 300 mB/sec but the 20 TB Graid tests at approx 250 mB/sec write.  So the 20TB tests slower but it's export estimate according to Avid is 1/3 that of the two 4 TB Graids I tried.  WTF???

I have read about the higher capacity drives have more dense media to allow for more storage capacity.  I assume that means a lot more data can be written/read from a single track revolution.  What I can't rap my head around is why is the 20 TB Graid vastly out performing the 4 TB GRaids when they show a better disk speed test.

I think it is a Sonnet USB 3 card in the mac tower.  System report lists it as "PXS3"

I also tried exporting to a USB 3 tower from Areca that has 8 drives and it got an estimate of 15 hours.  It's speed test was down around 175 mB/sec write.  I don't understand how an 8 drive 28TB raid tower that only had 6TB stored on it under performs both the 4TB and the 20TB Graids.  The Areca is probably 3 or more years old but hasn't seen much use.

Is it at all possible that the older Graids and Areca tower have older chip sets that aren't communicating well with my MacPro USB 3.0 card?  I have noticed Avid is using up virtually all the memory, close to 20 GB and I'm wondering if more RAM would help in this particular function?  Regardless it's the discrepancy between a fresh 4TB Graid sand the 20TB Graid that really confuses me and makes me think there is a chipset/hardware difference causing the difference.

In the past on earlier versions of Avid I've even exported to a single 4TB or 6 TB Hitachi Deskstar drive in a Voyager dock and that still was in the 10 hour range IIRC.

System Report isn't showing me the manufacturer for the USB 3 card in the mac tower just listing it as PXS3.  Is there a way to determine what card it is through software reports or do I have to open up the tower.  I'm not sure if the card is labeled as to who made it.

Another thought is that as Avid improved the DPX export perhaps something changed that is creating the differing exports estimate times between the 20TB and th 4TB Graids.  I have no idea what that would or could be.  Anybody got any suggestions?

 

John Moore Barking Trout Productions Studio City, CA bigfish@pacbell.net

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