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Author Topic: Computer systerm for DVD-O-Matic? Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 06-19-2019 10:56 PM                        Noob question here. We're looking at running a feature that's only available on DVD now. I've watched the DVD-O-Matic threads from time to time, but haven't paid too much attention due to time constraints. Catching up late, I'm afraid. So.... What would an appropriate system look like for the occasional conversion project... computer type, drive(s), size, RAID(?) etc? Also, if I want to do promo pieces for playback in my servers, what would you recommend as a good software package for that purpose? I have an extensive radio / electronics background, but fairly minimal in TV (read.... NTSC days!), so not looking for anything too complex to start. Thanks!  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 06-20-2019 05:06 AM                     Hi Jack, I hope you mean DCP-o-matic ;-) DVD-o-matic triggers more of an archeological interest now. ;-) The J2K compression is the most demanding task during DCP mastering. So it is important to optimize the machine for that specific task. All other stages would run equally well on any plain-vanilla office computer. DCP-o-matic is very effective in splitting J2K compression over multiple cores/threads on multicore CPUs. As a matter of fact, using older, server-grade CPUs with many slower clocked cpu cores is typically faster than using high-clocked current mainstream CPUs. So, you may get a suitable machine second hand on ebay for very little money. I suggest you buy one of those older dual CPU xeon workstations from HP (z600), Dell (Precision). 12GB RAM is sufficient (on these multicore machines), you don't need a fancy GPU/graphics card. If you want to buy something current, AMD Ryzen 7 or Threadrippers are worth considering DCP-o-matic supports networked encoding servers. You may use an up-to-date system running the main application, and add one of those low cost second hand machines as an encoding server. Personally, I am a big fan of the HP z600 machines. You can get a fully working dual CPU machine with 12/24 cores for as little as 300-400US$ on ebay. Very good build quality (no-screws design). I own two of these machines, I added a USB3.0 card for a few bucks, and installed a CRU slot. You may use SSDs, but, typically, a conventional large hard disc (1-2TB) means no performance penalty for encoding - except if your source footage is single image sequences (as opposed to compressed codecs like MP4, Prores, etc.). But then you would need a very large SSD. No RAID necessary. https://dcpomatic.com/benchmarks/input.php?id=1 That said - you can use any existing PC to create a DCP from a DVD. Just be prepared that it might take a couple of days to finish the encoding (for a full length feature). The typical slide or policy snipe usually takes a few seconds to minutes even on an older notebook. Even if there isn't enough space on the local hard disc, you could still hook up a portable USB drive. Also note, neither DVD-o-matic nor DCP-o-matic is able to rip the actual content off a DVD/Bluray. You need a separate tool to do that. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 06-20-2019 05:14 AM                     What Carsten says makes 100% sense but if the conversion is only 'occasional', you may just use a normal laptop/PC - it will take some time of course. What I am saying is that you don't need a special PC to run DOM. Clearly if you're looking to run it more frequently, go with what Carsten recommend - bearing in mind that those servers can be noisy!  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-20-2019 07:04 AM                        Agreed with everything said above. Your regular desktop computer may be just fine for this if you are patient. If you want to do faster encoding, you can add additional encoding servers. You will want a local network that is at least gigabit speed, but most people have this now, anyway. The bottleneck will be CPU and network. With enough hardware, you can get very close to real-time encoding speeds (and possibly faster). The CRU receiving frame is a nice-to-have, and not very expensive. The USB 3 version of the "Move Dock" adapter is another option. For ripping a Blu-Ray, I use "Make MKV," which is commercial software, but not very expensive. There are other options, too. DVDs work, but the quality won't hold up well on the big screen. As for producing your own material--that is probably a different question altogether. I don't really have any comments on specific software, but you will want to do the production at 24fps or 23.98fps, not 30fps or 29.97fps, if the goal is to produce a 24fps DCP. Everything should be progressive (no interlacing), and in the same dimensions as a standard DCP (1998x1080 or 2048x858). DCP-o-Matic can take still frames (e.g. jpeg or PNG files) and make them into slide-like DCPs, which would be a simple way to make your own promotional material. You could even make them with Windows Paint or any other graphics software. For animation, you will need fancier software, and much more skill.  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 06-20-2019 05:20 PM                        This gets me started. Thanks, All. Carsten... yes. I did mean DCP-O-Matic. Was just thinking about what I intended to use it for! -J  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 06-20-2019 06:21 PM                     That's why Carl named it so initially ;-) - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 06-20-2019 08:11 PM                        quote: Marco Guistini Clearly if you're looking to run it more frequently, go with what Carsten recommend - bearing in mind that those servers can be noisy! Absolutely. I used to use an old Xeon-based server for most of my DCP rendering. The noise level it produced was around that of a DSS200 - well into the 70s of dB in my home office. It was so noisy that it woke my three-year old son up while rendering, whose bedroom is next to the office. Last year I built a PC based on an 8-core i7 processor with liquid cooling. Its rendering speed (using DCP-o-Matic, Da Vinci Resolve and Premiere Pro/CuteDCP - they all render at about the same speed) is around 12-13fps in 2K or 3-4fps in 4K: about the same speed as the old server, but with a tiny fraction of the noise. However, the hardware components for the new computer cost me about $1,500, compared to, as Carsten points out, in the low hundreds to repurpose an old server (mid hundreds if you want to buy a Windows 10 license for it, too, but I would use CentOS or Ubuntu). The other advantage of the old server is that it has a RAID cage and backplane that can hold eight drives, so I can use relatively cheap, low capacity hard drives, and still have a decent sized overall RAID5 volume. As I do quite a bit of DCP making from DPX framesets that are frequently 3-4TB per movie, this is a help. But if I'm leaving stuff to render overnight, it has to be on the new computer now. Another factor to keep in mind with old servers is their power consumption. With all the processors maxed out during a render, my old Supermicro/Xeon box drinks between 450-500w. The new computer doing the same job pulls 150-200w. The electricity cost probably won't be significant if you're only making the odd DCP every now and again, but if you're rendering a large volume of content - and especially if your machine will be running 24/7 - it's something to keep in mind.  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 06-21-2019 03:50 AM                     While actual rack mounted servers try to cool hell, the dual CPU HP z600 are very silent. They have a very effective cooling system using large fans. https://dcpomatic.com/benchmarks/input.php?id=1 Compared with todays mainstream CPUs, they are not as useful for current video editing applications, but they work J2K very effectively at an unbeatable price. Usually, they come with a WIN7 license. e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z600-Workstation-2-Xeon-X5650-2-67Ghz-12GB-Memory-500GB-HDD-Windows/1 63742105774?hash=item261fca40ae:g:jPcAAOSwcuZdCcCT https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Z600-Workstation-2-Xeon-X5660-2-80Ghz-24GB-Memory-500GB-HDD-Windows -7/163742108017?hash=item261fca4971:g:z90AAOSwAz9dCcFa It's not a bad idea to add one of these to a state-of-the art editing machine just to speed up J2K compression. Put the encode server into auto start or use the encode server boot image, little effort. Occasionally, I do fancy a Threadripper or Ryzen 7 system, but when I look at the cost of a full system, I browse ebay and buy another z600... The only issue with them is that some components are a bit special, so it's better to buy a system that is fully configured - that is, dual six core CPUs, at least 12G RAM. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Marco Giustini Film God Posts: 2713 From: Reading, UK Registered: Nov 2007 posted 06-21-2019 04:50 AM                     Carsten Indeed I had a look and those do not look very noisy - I had those Dell 'blade' servers in mind, which have small and 'supersonic' fans which will drive you crazy when at full speed!! Indeed a very powerful machine for very little money.  |  IP: Logged Lindsay Morris Expert Film Handler Posts: 233 From: Darlington, WA, Australia Registered: Sep 2002 posted 06-21-2019 07:20 AM                     When I was making DCP's for screen adverts and at times rendering short clips of about 10 min duration I had NO trouble using my iMac Desk top which has a 2.8Ghz Intel Dual Core processor and 4Gb of 800Mhz DDR2 SDRAM. The shorts would take a couple of hours to render so I would set it going before going to bed and let it rip away. Always all done and dusted in the morning. Often a 2-3 minute trailer would be done in about 45 minutes.No big hassle at all. The iMac was the office machine and I could see no economic benefit in purchasing a higher powered Mac just to render DCP's any quicker...IF the work load was much higher then a more powerful unit would be better. Lindsay  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-21-2019 12:07 PM                     I only do this a couple of times a year but don't forget that most any computer you have can join in on the fun. That is, you can set them up (on the same network) as an encode server. Even if they are not whiz-bang fast if they contribute 1fps to your overall time, it still shaves off a considerable amount of time on a job. So, at home, I have an iMAC with an i7 and 24GB of ram that does the heavy listing but I'll still put the old iMac (first generation with Intel processor) and any laptops I might have with me as encode servers. I'll get about 1fps out of the old iMac and probably 3fps out of a laptop for a 4fps improvement for no more effort than turning them on and plugging them into the network. For my "pedestrian" equipment, I yield about 12-13fps or about double real time. So, if I'm doing a full-length feature, I'll let that happen overnight.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 06-21-2019 03:03 PM                        Would it be possible for somebody to put together a quick step-by-step of how to do that multi-computer setup? At work we have 6 computers that are all on the same network, but I can't get D-O-M to see the others. I feel like I must be missing some small but vital step. All the computers are Windows 7 based except one is Win10.  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 06-21-2019 04:44 PM                     All you need to do is to install DCP-o-matic on every computer. During installation, you may choose to only install the encode server (you don't need the full package on every machine). Best is probably to place the encode server into autostart, so you don't have to start them manually each time you want to use them. They don't eat memory or performance when running idle as a taskbar symbol. You may need to confirm the incoming firewall rule for the encode server on typical systems once. When you start the main application on one of the machines on the same network, it should recognize and show all encode servers. There is an option to add server IP addresses manually, but I never needed to do that as long as all servers are running on the same subnet. Note encode servers work across different platforms, you may run DCP-o-matic main on a Mac, but have encoding servers running on windows or linux, or vice versa, or any mix. When you update your main/master DCP-o-matic application to a new version, try to keep your encode servers on the same version, or at least close. Usually, mismatched versions will trigger a warning, but... In general, you need at least a GbE (1000MBit/s) network for this to make sense. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Karl Belter Film Handler Posts: 21 From: Chillicothe, IL, USA Registered: Mar 2019 posted 06-24-2019 02:00 PM                     With a small theater, we have a laptop running veezi for ticketing. I am using that after hours to process adds using D-O-M. For a 30 min, it takes like 4 hours. This is a low end HP laptop. I did not know about the ability to use other machines to farm out the work. That is pretty nifty.  |  IP: Logged John Thomas Film Handler Posts: 75 From: Boston, MA Registered: Sep 2011 posted 06-25-2019 01:00 PM                     Burn a bunch of the live cd's and (depending on the makes/models) you can use your playback servers for encoding during after hours.  |  IP: Logged

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