Resolume Forum

I want to start playing in 720p, up to 4 layers. I'm no hardware guru, so please help me out

I'm using a Macbook Pro4,1, with 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, and 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM.

Now, I'm being told that the real bottleneck is the Harddrive.

So, would it be possible to upgrade to a SSD disk on this machine, and would I benefit form the increased RPM?

Would this get the framerate over 25 fps, with 4 x 720p clips playing?

Thanks

Your doin it right man, keep it up!

I'm using the standard 5400 RPM.

Hm, so it means that upgrading my RAM would increase the framerate?

With the present setup I'm barely able to play one 720p layer. and then with a flickerin between 18 - 30 fps.

I use long clips though, up to 4 min premixed material.

Orubasarot wrote:...But if I understand correctly all of this is stored in the RAM so HDD performance is irrelevant besides for loading new clips.

As far as I know, no clips are stored in the RAM while running Avenue...

HDD performance is far from irrelevant regarding Resolume (Avenue)!! All the material/clips is streamed directly from the HDD. The bigger the clips the more you'll benefit from fast drives. It's also in the manual, and the advise is to use external eSata drives (7200 rpm), not USB, while this is a lot slower. Especially the internal 5400 rpm laptop drives are slow.. but usable if not using too big resolutions...

As we can read on the forum, several users had absolutely great performance gains with SSD's!
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5963&start=0&hilit=ssd+drives

Good. Thanks for clairyfing.

So, let me reformulate my initial question:

Is the MacBookPro4,1 compatible with these highspeed SSD disks?

For example, does the MBP 4,1 have an eSata port to connect external SSD disks?

Hey Smuseus

I have the same model MBP and it doesn't have an eSata connection. SSD drives come with different connections though, so you might want to look into getting a FW800 one.

As a side note, after your initial post, I did a test with 4 layers of 1280x720 DXV 25 fps clips playing at the same time, playing back in a 1280x720 composition. When using the internal 5400 RPM drive, framerate was a steady 18fps.

Interestingly enough, playing back 4 layers of 640x480 DXV 25fps clips in the same composition gave about the same result. When switching back to a 640x480 composition, both the 480p and 720p clips gave a steady 50 fps framerate. All of the same internal 5400 RPM drive.

This would make me think the drive is actually not the bottleneck (since for both composition settings it needs to load the same amount of data). Rather the composition having to render at 1280x720 is causing the slowdown.

Then again, this is far from a proper test, and it maybe unrelated entirely. It's food for thought though.

Joris

Hey everybody,
this is the same what happened to me. I've done a 2channel projection (only 2 layers) and found that there is a point where higher res is not possible (with higher frame rates). Even using SSD. So graphic card is the bottleneck on a macbook pro (I used a 2.4GHz, GeForce 8600M GT 256 MB). I could play 1600x600 at 30fps (all clips DXV encoded). Higher res is not possible at this framerate. Using a newer model should make more room - but I think not that much. I don't know if more VRAM helps. If anybody knows that would be interesting.

SSD however helps a lot with lower resolution and many layers playing at a time.

I think 720p should work fine and If you're playing with more than 4 layers you better have an internal SSD or very fast hard drive. If you think about an external SSD you should look for an older model (early 09?) of MacbookPro as it had an expresscard slot (which is fast enough for SSDs). Sometimes you can find very cheap and new refurbished machines (full warranty) at apples online store.

Good luck!

This original question was not answered. I too would like the know if it's possible. Does anyone have information on putting a solid state hd into this generation of macbook pro.

One answer to the original question is, I do have a pc card that is running a esata external. It's made by sonnet

https://secure1.sonnettech.com/product_ ... 0c264fcb65

It helps a lot, But I would like to make the internal as fast as possible.