#VLAB Motion mini review
9 messages in this thread
Paul,
Welcome to the amazing world of the VLAB-M! Glad you are as impressed with it
as I am.
To change the buffer sizes, you need to do this before you open/start a
project! I highly recommend you save the buffer changes as the default, then
quit the program. Upon restarting MovieShop, the new buffers will take effect
and you can start work without a crash — changing the buffers and not quiting
the program has been a sure fire way to crash on my system!
EdV
Ed,
Yep, I figured that out after posting to John, and I sent him a
correction. BTW with a larger buffer I've pushed the quality up to 80% and
can still record about 16 minutes on the 1 gig partition with no lost of
frames. WOW!
Do you know if they are planning a new more complete manual? My system
came with a very incomplete manual for 1.2. There are some settings for
video filters ect. that are not documented and I have no idea what their
effect would be.
…Warp Engine Engaged…
-Paul-
Paul,
I'm working with the same `manuals' you are and I don't know what
MacroSystems's plans are for any updates. Make sure you look on the original
disks for any readme files. It would be nice to know what all the adjustments
are for but I'm getting such good results with most of them set at default that
I haven't played much <grin>. I'm also not a video type person, but I think
that if I was, most of those adjustments might make some sense to me! I agree
with you on the interface, it is pretty intuitive — it has to be for me to be
able to use it.
Have you pushed beyond 80% yet? I have done 80% a few times myself and was so
pleased with the results that I haven't tried anything higher yet! I suspect
that with my A3000 setup I must be approaching the data rate limits but with
your A4000/WARP setup, you should have lots more headroom.
EdV
Ed,
>Have you pushed beyond 80% yet? I have done 80% a few times myself and
was so pleased with the results that I haven't tried anything higher yet!
I suspect that with my A3000 setup I must be approaching the data rate
limits but with your A4000/WARP setup, you should have lots more
headroom.
I'ay captain. I'll boost her up past 80%. I sure hope the WARP core
doesn't over heat! 😉
Time Passes. . .
Well I tryed a few different settings. I can record at 85% with level
one smoothing with an occasional buffer overflow. To record at 90% I must
crank up the smoothing to a point where there's no real point to it
(except maybe if you're shooting Liz Taylor 😉 ) since the video is way
too soft.
BTW crisp sharp video with lots of hard edges seem to be the toughest
for VLAB-M/JPEG to handle. I was feeding it the ultra sharp S-video output
of my RCA DSS system. SO this was a "worst case" test since video off of
tape will be "softer" anyway.
…Warp Engine Engaged…
-Paul-
Paul,
Humm, 85% sounds lower than I would have expected. I'll have to try and melt
my setup with bigger buffers — how big are your buffers?
EdV
Ed,
>how big are your buffers?
7 megs, 512, 512, 3megs
…Warp Engine Engaged…
-Paul-
Paul,
Have you done any testing of that WARP SCSI interface – things like write and
read speeds to the Barracuda? I would have expected your combination to beat
the pants off of my A3000 setup, but we are surprisely close. Hummm, do you
have any SCSI 1 devices on your WARP SCSI chain? Just curious…
EdV
Ed,
Yes I do have SCSI-I devices on the chain, but I think the performance
limits are more due to CPU speed. In tests I can get about 4 megs/second
writes and 8 megs/second reads (This test was done on my Application
partition which is almost full. And performance is greatly affected by
buffer size and configuration. I don't know if MovieShop buffer system is
optimized for fast SCSI-II.). But at this speed it is very CPU intensive.
The RSCP test showed my CPU working harder than a stock 2000 and a
2091/quantum combo (granted pushing out 10 times more data). But my Warp
Engine is the "slow" 040-28 model. When I push the V-LAB hard it is easy
to see that the disk writes are eating CPU cycles to the point where you
can't even move the mouse pointer in the MovieShop screen. I think an
040-40 would greatly improve the system.
…Warp Engine Engaged…
-Paul-