Nekochan Net

OK, I have an Indy workstation (if you didn't get that from the mentioning of Vino in the title). I want to try and get into a discussion of different file formats, capture benchmarks, maybe a little software recommendation and the like. For the record I will state my machine, which is an Indy with an R4600PC processor, 128 megs RAM, 24 bit Newport graphics, and a 2 gig HDD (hopefully I'll get around to upping that to at least 9 one of these days).

So I am running IRIX 5.3. Since I have not yet figured out how to install software (I don't understand UNIX very well, and have at best minimal Linux expereince), I am simply using the "capture" utility built into IRIX 5.3.

I am aware the Vino is not (supposedly) capable of capturing high quality video, but here is what I found using VINO on 640x480 capture with a specified frame rate of 15fps (Can this be set any higher? I haven't tried yet for reasons you will see below). So 640x480, I got the following results with the file formats available:

mvc1- 10.4 fps
JPEG 100% quality (software)- 11.0 fps
raw uncompressed- 9.6 fps

This was for 1 minute clips taken from a video camcorder through the composite input at high quality. Now obviously the JPEG has an advantage in this area.

So far this has been all of my benchmarking. Capturing at smaller resolutions does yield 15fps as specified to capture but there are still a lot of dropped frames and the like. I did an mvc2 clip benchmark as well but it wasn't significantly different from mvc1 (it was like 10.2 or something like that).

Now some observations I made going to low quality- although the capture did not warn me that it couldn't get 15 fps, setting the capture setting to low quality in JPEG mode made for a darned near unviewable movie (it was like watching a frame-by-frame. Low quality on mvc1 yielded a movie that was pretty watchable, with perhaps a few dropped frames here and there. Any thoughts on this?

Moving the JPEG quality knob around did not seem to have a great effect on the benchmark on high quality. I did a few tries at 60% quality and a few at 40% quality and found that I got about 11.4fps under 60% and close to 12 fps at 40%.

So this is one experiment that I have in the mix right now with my Indy. If anyone has an R5k or 4400 or 4600SC Indy that they can do similar tests on and compare I think that would be cool. I'm also looking for comments on the different video formats that I tested and why one might capture faster then the other. Also, software can have an effect on encoding and decoding rates. Is there any software out there that might be more efficient (ie. a smaller memory footprint) that might be better to attempt capture through Vino with?

Also looking for general experience and comments on Vino. Try not to be too brutal with that though! IF nothing else the Indy Cam makes it wall worthwhile.

Also I know there were JPEG decoding boards that fit in above the graphics board on the Indy. Can anyone comment on these (pricing, reliability, availability, capture quality/speed etc.)?

Anything goes- I just wanted to start a discussion about Vino.

Years ago I used my Indy (r4000@100, 1meg SC, 32 Meg RAM, 2 gig hd) to capture from VHS via vino. Exchanging the disk with a new 9 gig HD und upgrading RAM to the max (256) and choosing something like _no compression_ in dmconvert, I was able to grab 10 seconds of material, which was perfectly useable (25fps, 1/2 pal, almost no framedrops).
From what I remember, it looked like the length of the video was limited by RAM, of course after upgrading to a modern disc. I used Irix 6.2.
I used blender-sequencer to mix with blenderanimations. It looked good.

Well, a good place to start with getting to know your system in this area is the Digital Media Tools Guide manual for IRIX 5.3.


As for capture with the standard hardware, I was able to do quite a lot on my system originally (it had 128 MB of RAM and was using an R4600sc/133). Usually I was outputting to web, so quarter frame size at 12 or 15 fps was fine.

Things got a little better when I dropped an R4400sc/175 into my system (besides the faster clock rate, the cache was an increase from the original 512k to 1 MB), though from what I understand the Indy first tries to capture to RAM and then starts to dump to the hard drive, so 256 MB of RAM would be the best way to increase performance.

I only paid $40 for the R4400sc processor, so it was a great upgrade for me. I'd rather have gotten an R5000sc (either 150 MHz or 180 Mhz) but I haven't had the funds for it. Plus I'd most likely put the money into a 24 bit graphics board before I upgraded the processor again on this system.


The best thing that happen for me as far as video capture was getting the Indy Video and Cosmo Compression boards. I got mine back in 2002 or 2003 and paid about $270 for them back then. They have pretty much made my Indy indispensable for me at this point.

The only capture limitation I have now is drive space. I may have that issue fixed seeing as I now have a 36 GB drive I can replace my 9 GB drive with (or add to it as I have an extra drive sled).

The other short coming of this system is the capture format. I may be able to capture at full frame rate (29.97 fps) and full frame size (640x480)... but there is very little I can do with it in that format once captured. I have to use the media conversion tools to convert to QuickTime in order for me to use, edit, and compress for web on my other systems. 10 minutes of video captured at 320x240 at 29.97 fps can take about 2 hours to convert to QuickTime. Plus the fact that that 10 minutes of video takes up about 1.5 GB on my drive (with the QuickTime version taking up about 1.2 GB) means that space is at a premium on my system as it is now.

Still, the quality is awesome. And the setup has paid for itself many times over for me.

At any rate, here is what the inside of my Indy looks like now (with the R4400sc, Indy Video and Cosmo Compression boards installed). If you are looking for these boards for your system... note that there is a ribbon connecting the two of them, it is an important piece that is sometimes left out when the boards are sold separately.



Hope that helps a little.

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Hm, very interesting. I don't plan on professionally using my Indy, so it is doubtful that I will ever get a Cosmos compression board. I mean I'll keep one eye open for a set, but spending over $200 on my Indy is a hard sell.

So you didn't like the R4600SC eh? I just fired off a money order to upgrade my 4600PC to a 4600SC. Costs around 40 ish, then I'll sell the PC module for I hope around 20 ish... Well, we'll see how that works out. An R5000 would be ideal for me as well, but right now I just don't feel like buying another Indy, then transferring all the hardware from one to the other. So I'm getting the SC. I won't have to upgrate the NVRAM chip or anything to get the SC working, so it should be a nice simple swap.

I will tell you this if you don't already know- definately invest in a 24 bit graphics board. I think I saw one on fleabay last week for about 35 bucks. I actually have the 8 bit board that came with my Indy, and tried it out. There are somewhat surprising speed advantages to the 24 bit board.

I understand the space thing. with 2.1 gigs HDD space, I captured 8 minutes of movie with the composite and another 5 minutes of movie with the Indy cam. Then I grabbed Mozart's Piano Concerto number 19 (capture from CD doesn't work too good with the 2x CDROM, but this was just my first experiment). The video I grabbed was in MVC1 format at half PAL on the low quality setting. The quality definately stinks, but it would have been well enough for internet these days... Anyway even with my wimpy 4600PC processor, I was able to catch over 15fps. Then I went into movie maker and melded the Mozart's Concerto no. 19 and mixed up my movies a bit and set up all the fades in the sound and the like. I hit "optimize movie" in movie maker and I get "error, inusfficient free space" or to that effect. I look in the system manager and find I have 196 kb of free space left on my partition. However, I was used to Windows which would have required that I kept all the sources intact. IRIX just makes a new file. So I deleted out the sources, but a crummy 15 minute movie clip is taking like 700 megs on my HDD!

Oh and another question specifically for RacerX: do you run your Indy with the skins on or off? So far I've run mine with skins on, but it definately does get kind of hot when it's doing heavy encoding work with lots of HDD accessing.

I just happen to like the R4400sc (I think mine is slightly faster at most tasks than the R4600sc I was using and there was a nice boost in floating point types of things... though I'm sure that a 200 MHz version would have been even better).

And I keep mine covered. It is mixed in with a lot of other systems here.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the cover helps direct air over the heats sinks, and with the cover off the air just sits there and the sinks don't radiate the heat as well.

I don't know if this is as important with the R4600 and R5000 processors... they come with a rather small heat sink to begin with (I guess they run cooler). (I'm sure someone else with more experience in this area can comment on that).

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They're becoming more and more rare but a IndyVideo + CosmoCompress is more like $20 on eBay these days. Even cheaper if you find the cards in a system, buy the system, gut it, and resell.


That's because it's not compressed. IndyVideo + CosmoCompress will let you capture several hours of video on a reasonably sized disk.


Keep your skins on, Bournellis Law and all that.

to capture video on a straight indy, Memory, and disk RPM (preferably a dedicated disk) will get you the most bang for the buck. use dmrecord instead of the GUI's; it's much more reliable. as racerx first mentioned Indy Video and Cosmo Compression boards can add hardware compression to the video capture, and vidio output as well, in both composite and S-VIDEO. this will allow you to capture nearly effortlessly. a fast CPU will help in dmconvert operations; but be of little value in the capture/replay operation. you might want to experiment with either EFS or XFS filesystems on your capture volume, as XFS takes more CPU overhead. you'll want 4k block size i imagine.

my personal video capture Indy has Indy Video and Cosmo Compression boards, r5Ksc-180, 256meg memory, and dedicated 2-way 4800rpm stripeset RAID 0. i believe a single 7200 RPM drive would be sufficient now adays.

Cheap O2 with A/V card is possibly an alternative if you can't find the Indy Video and Cosmo Compression boards for indy. the benefit here is that with the indy you have used up all your expansion slots and have to export video at 10mbit ethernet speeds. the O2 has integrated 100mb ethernet, and a PCI slot you maybe able to add 1gig (i believe, although i have FDDI in mine :) ).

Well I can't comment on how cool or hot the 4600 runs relative to anything else, but it's on par with a ~1 ghz pentium 3 chip or so (with a passive HSF).

I'll have to put the look out for some cosmos boards now. Might be worthwhile. I have not networked my Indy yet. Haven't had time to log into the router and look into assigning it a static IP. DHCP is out of the question on my little network.

I have a 1.1 gig 5400RPM scsi disk floating around my room. I don't have the heart to throw it out- those meaty aluminum castings are absolutely beautiful compared to the tin-foil drives they sell today (although those tin foil drives last longer, perform better, and make less noise ). I might screw around with filesystems like skywriter says and make it a dedicated capture drive. 1 gig will not be sufficient in the long run though. But for experimentation purposes it's perfect.

Well thanks for the advice and such so far! I plan on keeping those skins bolted down tight! I really didn't think that the unit ever got alarmingly hot, but it certainly will warm up the bedroom quite a bit...

Oh not to dismiss the O2 suggestion, but right now I live pretty much out of a closet, only that closet has like 5 computers in it. I just got rid of my Indigo2 to clear out some space. I kept the Indy because the skins are in great shape and it's small enough to tuck behind my desk on end (when it's being stored- I always use it flat on the ground). Someday I want to get more into SGI, but in the meantime I'm just going to try and learn the ropes on my Indy. So maybe some day I'll pick up an some old O2s or something.

OK, my update: the R4600SC arrived and installed with no problems. Funny how the processor board is larger on the SC, but the case has both little hooks stamped into the tray to retain the module with...

All I can say is "WOW". The SC really maks the difference with this computer. My capturing ability is perhaps slightly better- 640x480 at low quality or half NTSC (320 X something) at high quality is very acceptable. I have not experimented with anything higher then 15 FPS yet. In theory VINO can go up to 30 FPS but I doubt that anyone has tried it...

I wiped the 2.1 gig HDD and reinstalled IRIX 5.3 on my spare 1.1 gig HDD. Things are working out good with that. I have everything capture to the second HDD, making things very easy. I captured over 10 minutes of footage with no problems (nice to not run out of space after 6 minutes of capturing now). It's pretty amazing how much space the raw capturing takes. It's like 1.5 gigs every 10 minutes.

The R4600 SC had a slight effect on my capture speed as I said earlier. It ain't great, but it's better. The place where the new processor shines is in the encoding. Watching the frame-bys, I would guestimate that the 4600SC does this at about 5 fps. With the old 4600PC it was more like 1 or 2 fps. The difference truly is amazing. Now otherwise the PC chip was not significantly slower (takes about as long to boot, load applications, sound quality is the same, etc.)

That's it for now. Feel free to continue commenting...

man dmrecord

nuff said

talking about the vino, i like to know if it's possible to capture video and to compress in real time with cpu ?
i try to capture some video 1/2 PAL, and with a 2Gb disk, it's filled in few minutes.....

regards

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HP proliant DL 585 Quad Opteron dual core 2.5Ghz 16Gb

Leave the skins on, unless you've invested in a fan to blow in the case. For a Sony PSU, turn the Indy so it is vertical with the fan/PSU up in hot weather or with heavy load. The heat rises and turns on the fan much better, but the Indy is still pretty quiet.

No, not possible to compress real time with the CPU, or at least not with an R4600SC chip... Cosmo Compress boards mentioned above will do it. In doing some research, the main reason that the Indy won't capture high quality video except for in short bursts is because it lacks the SCSI bus to transfer data quickly enough to get the job done. 2.1 mb/s is insufficient to capture full qauality NTSC, as it would require approximately 21 mb/s raw.

As for your disk space deal, you don't mention which version of IRIX you are using. I had a 2.1 gig drive in my Indy, and with IRIX 5.3 it could do about 15 minute spurts. Then you would have to stop and let the CPU render all that data. It went reasonably quickly with the 4600SC processor, but the R4600PC was agonizingly slow. Even still, 15 minute clips take about 2 hours to render with the R4600SC processor.

In many ways I miss my Indy, but it just has too many weak points to make it practical without the cosmo compress boardset, and to me, it's not worth spending the dough on those boards, when the thing still takes forever to transcode and edit on... Some day though, I will own another Indy, but only after I pick up on some faster hardware first...

It might be possible to stretch the capture time a little bit with a customer program that writes to disk as fast as possible. It won't be a ton of help. Best case would probably be 15 seconds captured instead of 10. More likely might be 12 seconds.

While slow and painful, if one is capturing from a pro VCR or laser disc, one could use RS422 machine control to capture long form material in 10-12 second passes. With the right adapter or deck, someone could even do this from a DV tape.

Mind you, I'm not saying it is justifiably worth the time to implement (or the wear on the VCR from all of the shuttling), but it is feasible.

That reminds me of a technique the Macrosystem VLAB cards (for Amiga) used: you had the VLAB-Motion card with onboard MJPEG-compression, which could do full-frame capture, but the cheaper card could only capture uncompressed frames which the Zorro-II bus could not handle.

So, captures had to be divided into several sessions (of the same tape-segment). Each run captured as much frames and as fast as possible and dropped frames were stored in a list (frame-numbers). On the next run, the card would only capture the frames that were missing.

I remember capturing a 5 minute clip from VHS, full PAL, in about 5 runs that way. I was suprised it actually worked (keep in mind I was using a consumer VHS-deck, no time-code).

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