[jersey]

Granted, this is a bit extreme, but I cant seem to find and answer to this question. Not even the head "Genius" at the Soho store could tell me.

According to the Apple site, the new MacPro is capable of supporting 8 monitors at the same time. Fabulous. What I want to know is if it is loaded with 4 of the fastest hd's available, and 16 gigs of ram, would it be able to play 8 quicktime files (each 2 gigs), each full screen, one on each monitor ?

The Soho store claims the signal would get scrambled. I call bs.

I know ...... wtf am I wanting to do this for. Lets just agree that this would be a cheaper solution than what I'm doing now.

[mduell]

What codec, profile, bitrate, and media player?

Scrambling is nonsense. You probably don't even need 4 disks (depends on bitrate) or 16GB RAM. If you're using high-bitrate/high-resolution H.264 videos the CPU is the likely bottleneck.

[Big Mac]

Why would the CPUs be a potential bottleneck? (Honest question) If anything I'd say one would run into a limitation of the PCIe bus. But if the bus can handle it, there shouldn't be that much extra load on the CPUs, at least that's what I'd imagine.

[Dino-Rider]

Is this question related to any type of masturabatory field? Just wondering.

[jersey]

Originally Posted by mduell

What codec, profile, bitrate, and resolution?

Scrambling is nonsense. You probably don't even need 4 disks (depends on bitrate) or 16GB RAM. If you're using high-bitrate/high-resolution H.264 videos the CPU is the likely bottleneck.

I would either be using .dv or mp4 /H.264 @ 1280 x 960/1024

I too was thinking the cpu was a bottleneck, but not too sure about the system bus. I was considering the 4 disks to prevent thrashing the drives, forcing 1 drive to pump out 16 gigs of info.

[jersey]

Originally Posted by Dino-Rider

Is this question related to any type of masturabatory field? Just wondering.

No, actually. It's art related. I'm tired of using 1 mac mini per piece.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Big Mac

Why would the CPUs be a potential bottleneck? (Honest question) If anything I'd say one would run into a limitation of the PCIe bus. But if the bus can handle it, there shouldn't be that much extra load on the CPUs, at least that's what I'd imagine.

The Xeons can handle about 1 ~10Mbps H.264 video per core at ~2-2.5Ghz. If he wanted to do 8 of those, he'd run into a CPU bottleneck. Part of this is Apple's relatively poor codec implementation (VLC drops less frames than Quicktime on my Pentium M).

PCIe bus... where? With 4 video cards you'd likely set it up as two 8x and two 4x slots, that's 2GBps and 1GBps respectively. A pair of 1280x1024x24bppx60Hz image streams is only about 450MBps.

Originally Posted by jersey

I would either be using .dv or mp4 /H.264 @ 1280 x 960/1024

I too was thinking the cpu was a bottleneck, but not too sure about the system bus. I was considering the 4 disks to prevent thrashing the drives, forcing 1 drive to pump out 16 gigs of info.

The system bus is on the order of 10GBps... your videos combined wouldn't even be 2GBps.

CPU is going to be your limitation, but I think it would be close. As I said earlier, it depends on codec, profile, bitrate, and media player.

[jersey]

It also seems that part of the issue is tricking quicktime into doing it. It's sometimes difficult to get a file to play fullscreen on the non-primary monitor. However I seem to have to have better luck with vlc. I also wonder if the 4 drives were partitioned in half, and 8 full installs were done (1 on each partition) would 8 instances of QTP make it easier to pull off.

1080p is way more than I'm looking for right now. I could maybe even get away with 720 x 480 p/i

[MaxPower2k3]

VLC's implementation of H.264 on the mac isn't that great. I'd stick with quicktime if you can figure out the full-screen issue. AppleScript may help you there. From first-hand testing, I can tell you that the 2.66GHz Mac Pro can play back 4 1080p H.264 streams. 1280x1024 might get you 6 streams, but I doubt 8.

If you're using DV (regular DV, anyway) you're limited to 720x480. DVCPRO HD could be 720p or 1080i, and would be less of a load on the CPU. You would need 3 or 4 hard drives, though, since those streams are 100mbits each.

H.264 at a lower resolution would work fine, but you might want to consider regular MPEG4 at a higher bitrate. compression efficiency isn't the main concern here, CPU efficiency is, so that may be a better choice. You should be able to easily play back 8 MPEG4 streams at 1280x1024.

[Dino-Rider]

Here's an idea: Burn the **** onto DVD, and buy 8 cheap ass $30 DVD players. Problem solved.

[- - e r i k - -]

Sadly that is the most economically viable idea. Get the DVD players and get the Xeon for yourself to create even cooler art

[i_wolf]

I would imagine that it would depend on a few things...
First obviously is the processor used. The new Xeon Woodcrests have an extremely fast vector engine in SSE2/3/4 available to them. I would imagine that presently quicktime is not at all optimised for the new vector engine available with these new processors. Similar to the way quicktime has improved over time on the macbook (apple optimised it more) its likely performance will improve substantially over time on the mac pro with quicktime.

Secondly... what video card are you using and, does Apple utilise modern graphics acceleration techniques for H.264. The reason for this is simple. On wintel side of the fence a card such as ATI's X1900 can hardware accelerate the decoding of H.264 with a massive reduction in CPU utilisation. Apple does offer an ATI 1900 option on their macs, however I have never investigated (nor has anyone else to the best of my knowledge) if Apple's drivers support H.264 decoding on this GPU. Can somebody with an ATI X1900 class card in a mac pro investigate this ? Compare CPU utilisation with somebody using the bog standard base config card on say a quicktime HD movie downloaded from the trailers website ?
If if does support hardware decoding, I would imagine then your choice of video card(s) is equally important in the purchase decision.
Getting back to the processors alone, maybe opting for the 3GHz is a better way to go as it will give you more horse power. As Apple optimises quicktime for the new Xeons over time, you should see large performance improvements. Whether that is in the order to play back 8 streams .... I am not sure. But I would imagine that 6 or 7 should be possible anyway.
As for the movie layout on the hard drives... i would put 2 per drive!!

i_wolf

[OreoCookie]

Well, I'm sure it's possible if you choose the right codec. H.264 is very cpu intensive, so playing 8 streams simultaneously would be pushing it cpu-wise. With a different codec, it shouldn't be a problem, though.

[freakboy2]

try it.. even if you end up needing two zeons, it won't be that much more expensive than 8 minis, and you only need 1 box, so it'll be less likely to die on you.

my guess is that it will do it, no problem.. even the low end one will do it. The reason is that you're not doing super hi-res.

[jersey]

Originally Posted by Dino-Rider

Here's an idea: Burn the **** onto DVD, and buy 8 cheap ass $30 DVD players. Problem solved.

Or maybe it's because slow moving, gradating color looks like horrible when dumped to mpeg2 on a dvd. The uncompressed quality off of a hard drive looks much better.

[jersey]

The thing that is driving me crazy is that there is no way to test this. The Apple Store wont do it. They say buy it all and if it doenst work I can return it. Of course, they wont wave the restock fee, so I'd be out a few hundred $.

I dont see why it wouldnt work with 10k rpm drives and maxed out ram.

[freakboy2]

Originally Posted by jersey

The thing that is driving me crazy is that there is no way to test this. The Apple Store wont do it. They say buy it all and if it doenst work I can return it. Of course, they wont wave the restock fee, so I'd be out a few hundred $.

I dont see why it wouldnt work with 10k rpm drives and maxed out ram.

is there some way you could try and get in touch with someone besides the apple store? it could be one of those apple stories: "hey look one apple machine is driving 8 monitors at once and doing a whole art show!!"

it seems like a demo that apple would want to do themselves. Look we can drive 8 hi res video streams from one machine!

[Catfish_Man]

Originally Posted by jersey

The thing that is driving me crazy is that there is no way to test this. The Apple Store wont do it. They say buy it all and if it doenst work I can return it. Of course, they wont wave the restock fee, so I'd be out a few hundred $.

I dont see why it wouldnt work with 10k rpm drives and maxed out ram.

It's CPU limited. Faster drives won't help CPU limited things. As was stated above, 4x1080p is about the limit of current systems. Dropping the resolution or using a less cpu intensive codec could relax the limitation some, or move the bottleneck elsewhere.

[harrisjamieh]

Playing a 1080p quicktime movie from Apples website uses about 120-150% of my CPU on my Core Duo iMac.

If we take MacWorlds SpeedMark scores, the iMac (granted the 2.0 Ghz whereas mine is a 1.83) got 210, whereas the 3.0 Ghz MacPro got 313. That roughly translates to a 1/3 more power in the Mac Pro.

If this is the case, then a single Proc. dual core Xeon will just about manage to play 2 quicktime videos at 1080p. Add in the second proc you get, and that gives you a total of 4 video streams. Granted, the Mac Pro has a faster FSB, helping to speed things along a bit, perhaps letting it manage 5 quicktime videos at 1080, but theres no way it will do 8 at once.

If the OS was clever enough to delegate the GFX cards to decode the H.264 stuff, then maybe, but for some reason or another (as I understand it), Apple has not yet implemented hardware decoding capabilities in the OS, even though support is there in the actual cards.

So, to sum up, you won't be able to do this, until you get an 8 core Mac Pro, or until you get hardware decoding on the graphics cards which would take the load of the processors.

[Enigmatic]

Originally Posted by jersey

1080p is way more than I'm looking for right now. I could maybe even get away with 720 x 480 p/i

He doesn't need HD resolutions

[Catfish_Man]

hm... that's 1/6 of 1080p... I bet it'd be doable.

[- - e r i k - -]

Do it and let us know how it works

[tooki]

I think the Mac minis and Apple Remote Desktop to enable easy management is probably not such a bad idea, really.

tooki

[Dino-Rider]

I still think the 8 $30 cheap ass korean DVD players is not such a bad idea, really.

[jersey]

Originally Posted by tooki

I think the Mac minis and Apple Remote Desktop to enable easy management is probably not such a bad idea, really.

tooki

Thats what I have been doing and it's not too bad. However getting some places to let me remotley log into their network has been a pain.

[sith33]

DV streams shouldn't really be a problem. Maybe RAID-0 two disks for playback (8 dv streams is about 200mbits/sec, shouldn't be a real problem).

H264 might be more problematic due to cpu usage, but it doesn't sound like you necessarily need to go that route. It wouldn't really give you any advantage over DV (same-ish color sampling - 4:1:1 versus 4:2:0, etc).

I just threw 4 DV streams in QT and played them back simultaneously on my Dual-2 G5 - QT was at around 90% cpu usage (out of a possible 200%), the clips played fine, all coming off a cruddy firewire disk. I think a beefy macpro will more than meet your needs.

[newtech]

May or may not be possable video wise but only one audio stream will be available.

[notehead]

Jersey, I have to believe that focusing on getting good image out of 8 separate dvd's would be your best strategy to meet your objective. I mean, Macs are used for all kinds of top-tier video work. Surely different encoders produce different results? Are you absolutely certain that a good encoder, decent playback units, top-notch cables, and quality well-calibrated displays won't do the job?

If you are the artist, then you may be able to perceive incredibly subtle differences in the output that are literally imperceptible to 99.99% of your audience. I run into that kind of thing in the audio realm all the time. Don't redesign the entire beach just so that it will hold one more grain of sand.

OTOH, I would never deny somebody the opportunity to acquire the finest desktop computer available to humanity!

Anyway, good luck!

[Spliffdaddy]

Has it ever been confirmed that it's possible to have more than one monitor display the video in fullscreen ?

[Mac Write]

If you do Shift+Command+F you can select the display to go full screen to. I am running my G4 at 200% right now so I can't test out my theory (I have my TV as my second monitor for watching videos on).

[Mac Write]

Just tested my theory and the first video goes full screen on the display selected in QuickTime Player preferences, then the next movie on the other monitor (in my case at least) when you go full screen. Very cool actually running two videos full screen on each display. Thanks for the idea.

[afaby]

Originally Posted by jersey

The thing that is driving me crazy is that there is no way to test this. The Apple Store wont do it. They say buy it all and if it doenst work I can return it. Of course, they wont wave the restock fee, so I'd be out a few hundred $.

I dont see why it wouldnt work with 10k rpm drives and maxed out ram.

You can't possibly expect them to actually set this up and test if for you in the store. Scrounging around for 8 displays, adding video cards to the system to support 8 displays, etc..

Yeesh... that's a lot of work, and, quite frankly, kind of an unreasonable request.

[Tsilou B.]

Easiest solution: Do you have a good friend in the European Union? The EU law states that you can give back anything ordered online or on the phone within 14 days of delivery, and you get a full refund - no restocking fee etc. The seller has to pay the shipping costs, too. This law still applies even if you opened all the boxes and tried out everything. Of course you have to be careful - if you damage anything, you will have to pay for that.
The law does have an exception: It does not apply to goods that were specially made for the customer. That means, if you order an iPod with engraving, you cannot give it back. Apple once said this exception would apply to BTO systems, too, but there have been several court decisions that said otherwise, so Apple now takes back BTO systems, too, without any restocking fee.

So maybe a good friend in Europe would test it for you.

[Gee4orce]

Er - where can you buy a HD DVD player ? H.264 on a 30" ACD is MUCH higher quality than DVD.

[Gee4orce]

A 3rd party reseller would be more help than Apple here - some of them specialise in video production setups.

[willed]

Artists obviously have way too much time and money these days

[jersey]

Originally Posted by sith33

I just threw 4 DV streams in QT and played them back simultaneously on my Dual-2 G5 - QT was at around 90% cpu usage (out of a possible 200%), the clips played fine, all coming off a cruddy firewire disk. I think a beefy macpro will more than meet your needs.

Thanks for doing that test. DV is probably what I would use. However an uncompressed .mov is nice too.

[jersey]

Originally Posted by Mac Write

If you do Shift+Command+F you can select the display to go full screen to. I am running my G4 at 200% right now so I can't test out my theory (I have my TV as my second monitor for watching videos on).

Awesome .... I didnt know about S+C+F. I would just drag the player to the screen I wanted. I too got an old sawtooth to run 2 videos on 2 screens, about a year ago, and this has what lead me to this point.

[jersey]

Originally Posted by notehead

Jersey, I have to believe that focusing on getting good image out of 8 separate dvd's would be your best strategy to meet your objective. I mean, Macs are used for all kinds of top-tier video work. Surely different encoders produce different results? Are you absolutely certain that a good encoder, decent playback units, top-notch cables, and quality well-calibrated displays won't do the job?

If you are the artist, then you may be able to perceive incredibly subtle differences in the output that are literally imperceptible to 99.99% of your audience. I run into that kind of thing in the audio realm all the time. Don't redesign the entire beach just so that it will hold one more grain of sand.

OTOH, I would never deny somebody the opportunity to acquire the finest desktop computer available to humanity!

Anyway, good luck!

Admittedly I do notice the small things, but when a dv stream of slow gradating colors is smooth in QTP and .dv, and it's bumped to dvd and get pixelated (no matter what codec is used) it gets really frustrating. And its not a compromise I'm willing to make, something I'm sure youre well aware of.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by jersey

I also wonder if the 4 drives were partitioned in half, and 8 full installs were done (1 on each partition) would 8 instances of QTP make it easier to pull off.

You only ever have to copy the QTPro application bundle, then you can open as many instances of the app as you want. The QTPro app is independent of the installed QT architecture. I'm inclined to believe that this would be better than playing 8 movies from the same (copy of the) app. Let the OS worry about threading this thing, not QT.

[jersey]

Originally Posted by Uncle Skeleton

You only ever have to copy the QTPro application bundle, then you can open as many instances of the app as you want. The QTPro app is independent of the installed QT architecture. ....

Thanks for the tip ...... didnt know that would work.

[arcticmac]

My guess is that the CPU is gonna be the bottleneck. Now, it will depend somewhat on codec and stuff... BUT...
to give you an idea, I've got 4 of the BBC Motion Gallery videos from apple's HD gallery.

BBC Motion Japan is 1080p @ 30fps H.264
BBC Motion (generic) is 1080p @ 24fps H.264
BBC Motion Africa is 720p @24fps H.264
BBC Motion Andes to Amazon is 720p @ 24fps H.264

I only have one monitor, so I've been playing them scaled to half size and overlapped, but...
I can play the generic one, Africa, and Andes all at once, with zero dropped frames. If I switch one of the 720p ones out for Japan, It plays acceptably, with occasional dropping at times.

Both of these operations occupy between 75% and 85% total CPU resource on my 3.0GHz Mac Pro.

If I go for all four, it drops more frames than I care to admit - HOWEVER, I can't figure out where the bottleneck is. CPU still shows 15% to 20% (of total) idle, disks are nowhere near maximum read speed... so...??

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally Posted by arcticmac

My guess is that the CPU is gonna be the bottleneck. Now, it will depend somewhat on codec and stuff... BUT...
to give you an idea, I've got 4 of the BBC Motion Gallery videos from apple's HD gallery.

BBC Motion Japan is 1080p @ 30fps H.264
BBC Motion (generic) is 1080p @ 24fps H.264
BBC Motion Africa is 720p @24fps H.264
BBC Motion Andes to Amazon is 720p @ 24fps H.264

I only have one monitor, so I've been playing them scaled to half size and overlapped, but...
I can play the generic one, Africa, and Andes all at once, with zero dropped frames. If I switch one of the 720p ones out for Japan, It plays acceptably, with occasional dropping at times.

Both of these operations occupy between 75% and 85% total CPU resource on my 3.0GHz Mac Pro.

If I go for all four, it drops more frames than I care to admit - HOWEVER, I can't figure out where the bottleneck is. CPU still shows 15% to 20% (of total) idle, disks are nowhere near maximum read speed... so...??

those are much higher resolution than he needs, though. i took a 5-minute H.264 clip i ripped in handbrake. 720x304, 1.5mbits. duplicated it 8 times in Finder, played fine. went up to 10 copies, no problem. didn't drop a frame until i had 16 copies of the video playing in quicktime. that's only about 24mbits, so i'm sure the CPU was the bottleneck. This is on a completely stock Mac Pro (2.66, 1GB). Even at full 720x480 resolution, 8 H.264 streams won't make this thing break a sweat.

[Uncle Skeleton]

Originally Posted by newtech

May or may not be possable video wise but only one audio stream will be available.

Oh yeah, that's not true either, in case this was holding you up. Just uncheck "play sound in frontmost player only" in the prefs.

[zpjet]

i think 16 gb ram is a bit overkill, but if the movies aren't too big, i would try to put them on a ram disk! then you don't need all those drives.

i'm personally looking for anoher solution - playing one movie across more screens. while the hd film is okay on two screens on the same card, when i play on two different cards, it has dropouts...

[dquoid]

For what it's worth. We have 6 23" monitors on our Mac Pro set up as a Corewall system (www.corewall.org). I figured I'd give it a try and did the following:

Started 6 instances of QT Player 7.1.3. Downloaded the Battlestar Gallactica story so far .mp4 from the iTunes store. Opened the video in each instance of QT Player (not pro) at fit-to screen (not full screen, but close) and put a window on each display. To my untrained eye all played back with no loss of quality or hesitation. Had sound on in each instance of QT Player, so it sounded like an argument going on. The CPU meter showd all four cores running at about 65-75%.. Regrettably I didn't check the memory usage.


System specs:

MacPro 3.0 GHz
4 GB RAM
500 GB Hard Disk


Just a data point from someone with way too many screens (although we could put 2 more on!)

[MattJeff]

Wow