Uncompressed 6k Workflow
March 19, 2015, GPU Technology Conference, San Jose, CA—Jeff Brue from Open Drives described the work in developing and implementing a native 6k workflow. Part of the effort is to anticipate the eventual move to 8k and the balance is to get more out of their infrastructure.
The primary motivation was to bring effects closer to the editorial functions. They integrated After Effects and Adobe Premier in a native 6k workflow. The 6k format allows them to work at the edges and also allows in-scene edits for pan and zoom. The combination improves throughput and helps to coordinate effects and editing.
In the past, they could get about 2-3 shots a day and now they are getting 6-8. the integrated workflow localizes the edit functions and improves interactions between the effects and edit teams. The new workflow brings more post functions like color corrections on-line into the edit suite.
For TV series like “House of Cards” and “Gone Girl”, the system architecture is still an evolving process. Hardware includes HP workstations, Quadra GPUs, and 4 Mac Pro with Nvidia K5000 GPUs, all feeding a central storage array through a 10 GbE network. Other equipment includes HP, Nvidia, Fusion IO, and AJA products all contributing to a 2.1 GB/s playback system.
The tool integration is necessary for a production of “Gone Girl”, which had 1800 effects. For a project of this magnitude, the storage delays and latencies affect the time to open a project, and 80 percent of the content was After Effects footage. The off-line storage comprised 36 TB of SSD, 60 TB HDD connected through 6 10 GbE links and a custom Premier accelerated cache volume. The on-line store included 342 TB HDD and 1 TB SSD cache feeding through 6 10 GbE links. The systems seems to work best with Solar Flare 10 GbE equipment, and they are looking forward to seeing thee 40 and 100 GbE systems come on line soon.
Another issue for the system is the number of times to see or try a shot, with the ability to increase this number leading to better and more creative iterations. Within that framework, is the question of defined resolution versus native aspect ratio. Getting from one to the other requires some transforms an you take the native 6k down to a 4k final version. Their system can take a live updating stream of up to 100 iterations in a 2152 aspect ratio.
The system speed helps with faster decision making. The manual VFX and manual cutover are in an environment of a pixel aspect ratio so that edit and effects are the same in the final render. Automating the After Effects streams allows shots to be replaced in edit and seen in context. All of the glue software is in Cuda, which makes many functions work better. The company is now doing 5 major productions, all in full 6k, half-float EXR for high dynamic range images. Edit takes place in a 3.5 k aperture.
The K6000 GPUs are about ten times faster than dual CPU Xeon workstations. The biggest bottlenecks are in the PCIe bus. Data are in a dedicated storage network within a private network. Alternative transport protocols like 40G in Mellanox continue to be investigated, but the tradeoffs of cost and throughput tend to favor Ethernet.
