Producer Assist / Wacky Zacky Productions

P r o d u c e r A s s i s t

a service of WACKY ZACKY PRODUCTIONS

	BREAKING BOTTLENECKS means collapsing the time it takes to complete a video editing project. Shrink the traffic. Widen the road. Either approach helps. DV does a fair job shrinking the traffic, but we aren't talking about DV here - they have it easy. We're talking about moving uncompressed video, MJPG, SDI. Hardware CODEC boards serving up two or more video files for simultaneous playback. RGB with key files 42 MBs wide quickly become 84 MBs when pushed by dual-stream playback engines (not counting additional audio and graphics layers). Transporting these enormous files, from hard drives through the PCI bus and finally to realtime playback hardware, MUST run like clockwork. Now we regularly see 120+ MBs, three-or-more file playback boards like Pinnacle System's TARGA 3000. These fat data haulers are fairly inexpensive by themselves, but building and maintaining the infrastructure for heavy realtime traffic can cost many times more.			MEMORY Not typically a bottleneck. Just use lots. PROCESSOR Can be a bottleneck. Some effects take advantage of multiple processors. MOTHERBOARD Can be a big bottleneck. Front-side and PCI busses get fatter! (and that's a good thing). But compatibility can still be a headache: mysterious IRQ allocations, BIOS upgrades, PCI 1x, 2x, 4x. Quel rats! HARD DRIVES and HOST ADAPTERS The last, great bottleneck holdout. At minimum, RAID 0 Ultra2 and Ultra160 SCSI subsystems for video files. Begin saving your dimes and nickels for Ultra320 upgrades!

Manufacturer's Corner

CANOPUS
... Will support the upcoming AMD Athlon 64 processors. [read the press release dated 12/11/02]

PINNACLE SYSTEMS
... Qualifies (read certifies) Medea's VideoRaid RTR and VideoRaid RTRX disk arrays for use with TARGA 3000. [read the PDF press release dated 11/18/02]

ADAPTEC
... Introduces new family of Ultra320 SCSI and RAID controllers: two-channel 39320D-R and 39320-R; the 39320D, optimized for external SCSI connections; the 39320 for internal SCSI connections; the one-channel 29320-R and 29320LP-R, designed for entry-level servers and high-performance workstations.