#4000 Deinterlacing
17 messages in this thread
On the subject of deinterlacing, Ben (Black Belt) posted that
there was significant performance costs to deinterlacing in software.
I put the C= display inhancer from my 2500 in the 4000 and did some
tests:
1. Yes it does work! In fact better than the software method. On my
4000 the software deinterlacing produces a very slight but visible
vertical pattern of light & dark regions about 8 pixels wide. There
is no such pattern using the hardware deinterlacer.
It does not like the higher color resolution modes. That is not
surprising seeing that the board is not long enough to fill the
new longer video slot. I use the second monitor that I had for
viewing DCTV, connected to the regular RGB port to view native
graphics & DCTV now.
2. There DOES seem to be a penalty for using software deinterlacing.
My informal test was to simply run a hirez 256 WB with two 256 color
pics as workbench and window backdrops. With software deinterlacing
there was a significant slowdown. You could easily see widows being
rendered from the bottom up. With software deinterlacing off
performance improved to the point where window rendering look
"normal".
3. By using hardware deinterlacing life is much simpler. There is
none of the "multisyc jump" caused by switching from interlace to
non-interlace (even with mode promotion on, some programs still force
interlace screens) since my 1950 always sees deinterlaced screens.
And my DCTV is happy since it now always sees interlaced (DCTV does
NOT like software deinterlaced screens) screens. For now my display
enhancer stays in the 4000!
BTW I also installed a 2091 (my dealer will let me trade it in as
soon a the true SCSI II cards come out), and I have my Syquest and 80
meg Quantum back. I am a happy camper now!
But there goes two slots!
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
Paul…
How would you describe the performance of the 2091 as compared to the
internal IDE drive?
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Ben,
I just ran a few quick tests. With an 80K picture file:
Loading and viewing with superview:
IDE 2sec
2091 4sec
Copying from ram to:
IDE 8sec
2091 5sec
Now these are just "one one thousand, two one thousand, etc" seconds
and not real accurate. But it appears that the IDE is faster when reading
data, and the 2091 wins on saving data. I am going to use the IDE drive
just for storing programs and my SCSI Quantum & syquest for data. Once I
get a SCSI II card I should be all set.
BTW While I have your ear. I was playing with AIBB and this puppy is
AMAZINGLY fast with math code that written for the 040's internal math
processor. Will there be a version of IM that is optomized for the 040?
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
Paul,
We do plan to add an '040 version of Imagemaster to the release disks,
however, it does depend on the SAS C compiler, which we just received a
week ago. We've got to get familiar with the new compile options and then
run a LOT of tests so we can be sure that the extra cost of including an
040 version provides some results. Compiling for the 030 is close to
compiling for the 040 with the exception of floating point operations,
which actually very few operations in Imagemaster require – Morph, and a
few others.
Thanks for the insight on the speed; I kind of had a feeling that the
writes were way off, for some reason.
Hey – what's "AIBB"?
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Ben,
AIBB is a very good benchmarking program, I believe it is on the Fish
disks, if not I can up a copy. While I am no expert, the test on AIBB
seem to be very well thought out and useful. I use everytime I add
hardware or am just checking to see if my system is running ok, it saves
the results of each test. I know some of the earlier version come with
source, so YOU could look and see what it is doing, (it's greek to me).
…Steve
On AutoPilot! (at last)
Aha. Thanks for telling me.
–Ben
…via AutoPilot
Are these both in the A4000? And from those speeds I would suggest you run
dspeed4 that Mike Sinz wrote. The figures you get MAY be pretty bad.
{O.O}
Yes I mounted an 80 meg Quatum on the 2091, so both are "in" the 4000.
OK I'll run some more formal tests and post the results, but basically
they ARE slow. Can't wait for real SCSI II :).
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
Note that it's been discovered that many A4000s seem to have been
misconfigured at the factory with (ack!) old filesystem partitions! Do an
INFO on all your drives and if any of them show 488 bytes per block, you
should back them up and reformat them with FFS.
Should increase speed by a factor of 10 overall…
Well it is actually formated with a Custom file system… I dont
understand the reasing behind it myself… but I went in and reformated it
with the FFS with Directory Cache, but there is no speed increase in the
drive…
Forrest
Directory Cache will slow writes down something horrible on hard drives.
Only really recommended for really pokey HDs, such as old A1000 parallel
port drives, and for floppies.
When I reformated with FFS and Directory cache, there was no speed change
at all.. but it does cache the Directories..
Forrest
Forrest,
Do not use directory caching on HD's. It's generally a loss. The
DCFileSystem is really intended for floppies where the caching can
overcome the extreme slowness of the drive.
Dean
DKB Software
Yep, 488 bytes per block! 🙁
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
Varied. Some people seem to be getting drives that are HIDEOUSLY slow.
Others report speeds in the range that you'd expect. C= folks are now
aware of this and are trying to nail down why. Tomas Rockiki (Radical
Eye/TeX) has such a slow machine and is helping nail down the cause.
A working IDE drive will be slower than an equivalent SCSI. But that is
with drives in the 2.2meg/sec class in SCSI which on the A4000 come out at
speeds on the order of 1meg/sec.
{@_@}
Um, the 2091 is by reports also hideously slow but not as slow as some
of the IDE drives in a few machines that "escaped" or something.
If anymore info is useful. I`ve just got an A4000 in the UK and it`s
giving me around 1,057,000/sec, which is noticeably slower than my A2000
GVP HD, which is more like 1,675,000/sec.
It does seem strange to have such a powerful tool in many areas and for it
to load and save considerably slower than it`s little brother.
Greg :^)
JoAnne,
Has anyone (besides people AT Commodore) reported a "fast" drive?
–Ben
…via AutoPilot