Cineform issue in Premiere CS5

[Nick Schulz]

hi,

i got some playback-issues with cineform codec in premiere cs5. i found some postings with similar issues, but did not find one with an solution. so sorry if i missed one.

here is my problem: my system runs up to 4 videolayers (1 backgroundlayer and 3 picture-in-picture) of h.264(EOS 7D)-footage quiet smooth. with a fifth layer playback begins to judder. that
seems to be ok with my system config (please correct me, if i am wrong :)). cpu is at 60-70% so i guess the bottleneck might be my hdds (ATTO Bench: R/W: 80-90MB/s). so i expected cineform to increase the amount of videolayers in premiere pro, since it has a lower datarate than h.264 .

i installed gopro cineform studio, encoded some h.264 and imported them into premiere. i read, that the best performance for cineform would be in a "desktop" project, with the required settings for
dslr-footage. i expected a minimum of 4 videolayers playing smooth, what happens is that playback begins to judder after the third videolayer ( 1 backgroundlayer, 2 pip). cpu is just at 20%
at this time (like it should) and in my opinion the problem cannot be the transferrate of the hdds, since four h.264-layer play smooth, which have a higher datarate.

so how can this happen? am i missing something? what can i do to improve the cineform performance?

thanks for your suggestions

My System:

CPU: I7 930 @ 2,8 Ghz
MoBo: Gigabyte X58 UD3R
RAM: 12 GB Samsung 1333 Mhz
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 460 1024MB
HDD OS: 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
HDD (Media, Projects): 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
HDD (Export, Cache, Pagefile): 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
(Reads/Writes 80 - 90 MB/s)
OS: Windows 7 64bit
SW: Premiere Pro CS 5(.0.3)

[David Newman]

You have one fact reversed. CineForm has a lower compute requirement, but a higher date rate -- 2-3X higher than DSLR H.264. So while increasing disk speed with not help H.264, it will help CineForm files.

[Nick Schulz]

Thank you, David. I have not thought about that. I looked into the file settings in Premiere:

The data rate of the cineform files is 8,5 MB/s, compared to 5,4 MB/s (H.264).

But with my understanding of the data rates, should my HDDs not be able to tranfer more video streams for more video layer playbacks?

my calculation:
with reading/writing rates around 80-90 MB/s around 9 videolayers (9 x 8,5 MB/s = 76,4 MB/s) should be played ...

[Mark Pavy]

Hi Nick,

I wouldn't place to much relevance on your benchmark results (80-90), I have only a limited knowledge, but that data transfer rate needs to be sustained and in real world scenarios the 80-90 you get from your ATTO bench isn't a sustained transfer rate. If you look at what you've said the 264 files @ 5.4mbs play back 4 layers/streams and fall over at 5 layers, so you can assume that your hdd can sustain at least 4x5.4= 21.6mb/s but can't sustain 5x 5.4mb/s= 27mb/s, so consequently you can only playback 3 cineform layers at 8.5mb/s= 25.5mb/s. Do a search on the Adobe Premiere Hardware forum on a thread started by Harm Millard called "To Raid or not to Raid". I'd personally get another 1 or 2 spinpoint f3s and setup a Raid 0 on the drive where all your media files are.
Hope this helps.

[Nick Schulz]

thanks mark,

i already knew harms article and i am really looking forward to get a ssd for my os and configure 2 hdds as raid0, when hdd prices get low again i will probably go for a raid3/5 solution.

to the datarates: with my limited knowledge i am a litte bit confused with the hdd benchmarks circulating in the web, since you simply cannot count together datarates to get the throughput that is to be expected from hdds considering video streams, like i did.

do you know any tool or method to check the sustained transfer rate of a hdd? or to calculate how many videostreams a certain r/w speed should be to handle?

[Mark Pavy]

I don't know of any tools, but, I use a raid 0 (2x1tb) and I'm pretty sure I've had 8 layers/streams of 264 playing in PPro 5.

Cheers