Super Computer needed for onsite event

[kissvid]

Hello,

I am back here at the forums because it's one of the few places that I can get a direct answer. Here's my situation...I am a videographer and I do live dance comptetitions. We record approx 225 -400 per event. They are all 3 mintues each. Currently I use Adobe On location to capture the evnt. We exchange hard drives out every hour and bring the footage to the sales table and transfer the files to 3 laptops for parents to view. This gets very time consuming.

We are looking now to do the following...Record the event with our Panasonic HMC-150 directly to an sd card. Switch out the sd cards every hour and now just drop the files to like a super nas and connect 3-4 laptops via a switch so that they can view. People I have spoken to say this can't be done because I don't have enough bandwidth and I tend to disagree. I really wanted to get ths device (http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=A36633...30980794501410

but was told it couldn't handle the mts files upon playback. Does this make sense? Does anyone out there do what I do? Thanks in advance for your help.

Marc

[aedipuss]

better nas boxes have 2 nics. so you have 2 gigabit network connections. if you populate the nas with fast hard drives i can't see a problem. mine works fine connected to 6 computers, 2 blu-ray players and a bunch of tablets. i can't say anyone has had to wait for data off the box.

any with a throughput of over 100MB/s should work.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view

and if you want with this one you can add an optional 10 GbE port for a throughput exceeding 300MB/s
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews/31817-thecus-toptower-n6850-nas-reviewed

[kissvid]

Thank you for the quick response. Do you think it will be able to handle 4 laptops playing HD at the same time and a 5th laptop processing orders without playback issues? For example..4 laptops watching footage and then on the main computer, dropping more files to the server and/or dropping files to flash drives for customers. Wish there was a way to test all of it out first. If it works I'll buy it. You know what I mean.

[Cornucopia]

So you are likely running those in PH mode, which is ~25Mbps (hopefully using the 720p option for better action smoothness). 4 laptops reading would be 100Mbps (aka 12.5MB/s). Even with throughput buffering/scheduling problems (quadruple that #?), you'd still be nicely under the ceiling aedipuss suggested. Sounds like a plan.
You should keep a dedicated ingest workstation (with Teracopy, etc) if your NAS solution doesn't already have a built-in card reader (looks like those are SD instead of Panny's usual P2).
And I would strongly recommend you stick with WIRED connections. Less hassle all around & more guaranteed throughput. And make sure you have a good naming convention.

What player/reader SW are you using on the laptops? Remember, unlike what some other dude was telling you, unless you are needing the NAS to transcode on the fly, it is still just being a SERVER. The CLIENT is where the clip is recognized & decoded & played.

Once the families view the clip(s), what happens then in your workflow?

Scott

[kissvid]

Hi Scott,

Thank you for your reply and input as well. I was doing 1080p/60i in ph mode. Never seen an issue. It looks great. If you have experience in this and tell me that it's better to go 720p I will. I agree that if I use 7200 rpm drives I should not have a problem with 4 laptops accessing the information and playing back. Here's my thing. Part of my workflow includes a 5th laptop that I would hook up the sd card reader to drop new footage. I am open to what to buy, I havent't purchsed a reader yet. (I like Lexor though) I would also be using the 5th computer to complete orders. For example if a parent orders 2 routines I use the 5th laptop to convert the files to mp4's and drop them onto a flash drive for purchase. That's my workflow pretty much that I want to do. Any suggestions?? Also do you think the Lacie device I mentioned in an earlier post wouldn't be able to hanlde it? Thanks.

Marc

[Cornucopia]

I am not familiar with either the Lexor or the Lacie devices, so won't comment (sorry). I do think your ingest should be dedicated to just that. If you want to do a ordering & transcoding station, it should be a 6th workstation. I might look into a solution that uses Watch Folders, so that maybe you could have the viewing laptops also be the "ordering" laptops, where the result of the order (in addition to the monetary transaction) is a script to copy & drop the clip in question into the watch folder (which then automatically gets transcoded). Or you could have a 7th station dedicated to ordering. I know it probably doesn't do much, but for a transcoding workstation, you seriously want to minimize your overhead.

Do you archive, or are these clips tossed once the competition is old news?

Scott

[kissvid]

mmm..I am sort of missing what you are saying. I would have a separate i7 laptop for processing. (connected to the device for easy access) Or are you saying I should have it completely separate and off of the device and have 2 sets of inventory. BUt that would go against what i am trying to do. I archive everything for 1 year from all the sities I record. Generally it ends up being about 3000 routines for the season.

[aedipuss]

as for a card reader i've had really good luck with kingston usb3.0 units.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA12K1045403

i'd switch to 720p for motion smoothness and better/faster conversion to mp4. NO de-interlacing required/ NO artifacts.

[Cornucopia]

No, (assuming you have fault-tolerance) 2 sets of inventory is redundant, superfluous and wasteful, and most importantly in your case, time-consuming. If you already have a separate workstation (whether laptop or desktop) for doing the processing, that's cool, and what I was alluding to.

I don't know how much downtime you have at the actual customer-viewing laptops, though. It may be good to have transactional (POS) software there, or possibly at its own separate station.

So I would see the setup like this:

1. NAS
2. Switches & wiring
3. Ingest workstation
4., 5., 6., 7. Client viewing workstations (with Xactional/POS tools)
8. Processing workstation

or 4-7 w/o Xactional/POS would add a #9. POS workstation

If those competitions are like I'm thinking, there's probably NEVER downtime with the client-viewing stations, so a slowdown there to do a POS process would bog things down. However, if there is some slight gap between families viewing, it makes sense for the POS to be on the same machine as the viewing, could even be linked in memory. It's kind of a natural fit.

But, to me, a watch folder setup would make a lot of sense. The Xaction/POS does the money thing and then takes the requested clip(s) and drops copies to the watch folder and is done, allowing the next Xaction/POS to immediately available. Meanwhile, the Processing/Transcoding station is idling waiting for something to be dropped into the watch folder, and as soon as it is, it gets into action converting to the output of choice (which could also be determined by a preset script generated by the POS). Automation like that takes alot of the guesswork and manual user intervention (and human error) out of the equation.

And I agree with aedipuss: anytime you are doing sports, action, dance, or nature (with animal movement), or location reporting, I would want to go 720p to get ALL the best, smoothest action. Particularly with sports or dance competitions where the client/families/coaches would want to do some kind of slo-mo review.

Scott

[deadrats]

And I agree with aedipuss: anytime you are doing sports, action, dance, or nature (with animal movement), or location reporting, I would want to go 720p to get ALL the best, smoothest action. Particularly with sports or dance competitions where the client/families/coaches would want to do some kind of slo-mo review.

i'm a little confused, in what way is 720p preferable to 1080p? are you talking about 720p60 verses 1080i60 or 1080p30? maybe in that case but why not tell him to record in 1080p60, assuming his camera(s) will record at that resolution/frame rate.

i think the 720p suggestion was made because it's assume that 720p video would be recorded at a lower bit rate and thus there would be less bandwidth requirements but it doesn't make any difference from a bandwidth standpoint what the resolution is only the bit rate of the recorded content.

[kissvid]

Hi Scott,

Thank you so much for your response. I really appreciate it. You lost me with the POS and to be honest it sounds like exactly what I need but I don't even know where to start to look for it. I'm at appoint in my business that I have to take the next step. This is that step. If there's any direction you can put me in I would really appreciate it. You can send me a private email as well if you don't wish to post here. It's my username @aol.com. I am going to try the 720p and see how it comes out. I am more confused than ever but excited at the same time. You don't know how many places I have been that have told me that I couldn't even get a nas or server to do what I want.

Marc

[Cornucopia]

@deadrats, the OP's camera, at its highest quality setting, can do either 1080i60 or 720p60. 1080p60 is not an option. Plus, at the 25Mbps rate, 720p has been shown to be more efficient quality-wise. Knowing those 2 pieces of info, I doubt you'd disagree.

@kissvid, POS = Point of Sale (aka "storefront" or sales software) - though sometimes POS means 'piece of $h!1T'
I am familiar with Xactional (aka Transactional or the aforementioned POS) in only a generic sense. I couldn't point you to a specific piece of code that would get you exactly what you wanted. I could help with NAS and/or intrastructure and or transcoding, though I believe there are others here who are much better than me in all 3 of those fields. Most of the better transcoding/batch encoding softwares should be able to do watch folders (AME, Sorenson, GV/Canopus Procoder, ffmpeg, others).
Don't understand about those prior un-recommendations. Maybe they didn't fully understand the specs & workflow involved. Could be they were thinking uncompressed HD video - 4+ streams of ~continuous uncompressed HD would have required a serious SAN with fibre channel, etc to consistently work smoothly.

What POS software are you currently using?

Scott

[kissvid]

Hi Scott,

That's my feeling that some other folks didn't get what I was saying. You are correct the highest setting on my camera is 1080/60i. I never thought of lowering to 720p to get better image quality when it comes to action footage. I will be doing so at my next event. To be honest I don't have a POS of any kind at all. I am the one at my sales table and once parents view the routine I hand them an order form. They fill it out and pay me, then I mail them a dvd in 2-3 weeks of the routines. What I was looking to do this year was at the very least have a nas system setup and be able to deliver the product on a flash drive as an alternative to dvd. I don't know if it's worth it to have a pos since I am there hands on. You have to rmeeber that I am also in a different city every weekend for a 12 week period, so what I setup and have in place has to be mobile and practical as well.

Marc

[Cornucopia]

Don't take my word for it - do a test run on material that you aren't under the gun for. Then decide for yourself.

Just did an online check, and something like OpenERP might be something interesting (if you can get it to do a post-transaction file copy script).*

Good thing about watch folders & scripts: you could get it to be set to automatically go to the correct/appropriate customer-ordered medium, both in the compression formatting and the filesaving and/or authoring/burning. For example, the same SQL database that held your order inventory could also hold your order output format request, and that can be the field source for a Php script that loads ffmpeg.

Wish you could do wireless, but 802.11n would only barely give you what you need at the best of times (which you couldn't always count on). But the wired setup is really the main obstacle to mobility, and it isn't that big of a problem.

Hope that helps,

Scott

*Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with this product. I just used it as a possible good example.

[kissvid]

Hi Scott,

I hear you exactly. I will do my own tests. Don't worry about that. I have enough information at this point to move foward. I have to get a server and I need 4-5 new laptops. I have to do my own tests and see if it works and how well. We'll see how it goes. I will know more in a few weeks and will gladly post everything here. I don't know about a pos at this point but I am going to look into it. I only have a few months to get everything going before my season starts and being a man I can only do a couple of things at a time. LOL. Thanks again. I monitor the forums so if you think of anything feel free to mention it in this thread. Thanks again.

Marc