Hi,
We have been getting a lot of questions about the Xserve here, and so I thought it was a good time to post some info on it.
The Xserve is an incredible Mac, and is perfect for video, however we have only done a few hours of testing so cannot be sure everything is perfect yet until we do more.
This machine is long, and is loud! It's designed to really impress your clients, at at least at a minimum, your parents. If they wondered what you really did for a living, then now they are at least going to think it must be important if you use a machine that makes that much noise.
Here’s what we’ve found so far.
Basically, the Xserve is a great video machine, and even though the internal RAID disk is based on IDE disks their seems to be enough speed to do RT without any problems. It does make an incredible all in one editing system, and it looks really nice.
Imagine begin able to have a full video editing system all in 1 rack unit of space. It also makes a nice Mac to swap out in case of trouble, as you can pull your internal disk out the front, and put it straight into another system. This is a very easy Mac to remove components from in case of a fault.
I think a few people have commented on the internal RAID being based on IDE disks, however, IDE disks are ok, and work well. I think IDE disks get a bad reputation however they are fine if the backplane they are plugged into is good. We have been told by Apple that the drivers for the internal IDE disks in the Xserve are very well written, and are capable of long bursts, which are required to get fast data transfers. Also each IDE disk in the Xserve has a separate IDE channel, and that's fantastic, as each disk has a separate bus so the data rates are huge.
http://www.apple.com/xserve/storage.html
The computer has fast DDR 266 memory bus, dual 1 Ghz processors, and extremely fast PCI slots that run at 64 bit, 66 MHz. On the speed side, this is a very fast system.
http://www.apple.com/xserve/architecture.html
http://www.apple.com/xserve/specs.html
From our point of view, the Xserve is great, but we do have a lack of information on a few points. We are still trying to get an Xserve here to run more detailed tests so we can clear up some of these questions.
The Xserve has an RS232 port on the back that's normally used for server monitoring, however it needs to have RS422 with the correct pin arrangements to connect to Sony remote decks. We need to find a good brand RS232 to RS422 adapter for deck control.
There are a lot of these on the market, and we need to get the name of a few brands of these converters and check them out. We think the Addenda model linked to below looks good, but we still need to test them. RS232 and RS422 serial communications standards are basically the same apart from voltage differences, so these converters are really low cost because they are simple.
http://www.addenda.com/rs2324.htm
Also, even though the Xserve has a RS232 port on the back, you still need to choose RS422 Sony protocol in the Final Cut Pro setup for device control. Of course on the Kona we already select this in the easy setups.
You might need to turn off the server monitor access to the serial port. You need this port to control the deck. In the terminal you need to type: open ect/ttys This will open a configuration file for the serial port on the back of the Xserve, in the Text Edit application. There are details on how to turn off the serial port in this file, and if you cannot get access to the rear serial port, then check this out.
Apart from those points, everything looks good based on the testing we have managed to complete so far.
We recently had a large user group meeting at Mac World NY where Final Cut Pro was shown with the Kona SD on the Xserve using the ATI 8500 display card option running two monitors. One monitor was a Cinema Display, and the other was a video projector on the VGA connection, and this worked fine.
One interesting thing on the Xserve is it cannot accept the NVida display card, as it cannot power the external ADC based Cinema Displays. Apple have the ATI 8500 as the display card build to order option for video users. This has the standard VGA and DVI connections which can run two independent monitors. Apple has adapters for connecting a Cinema Display to the DVI connection, or you can add a cable to connect a VGA monitor to this port. This makes the Xserve great for a dual head editing workstation.
The ATI display card option replaces an extra ethernet card that is standard in the machine. There is already another ethernet connection on the machine, so you won't loose network connectivity when using this slot for better monitor displays.
The Xserve only boots up from Mac OS X, however the Kona has been shipping on OS X for the last 8 months, and so is well established on OS X. In fact when we plugged in the Kona SD, it just worked, and we did any length real time dissolves in 8 bit from the internal disk array, and it was fine. The Kona SD bandwidth is so high, the internal raid was fine, and there was no problems at all. 10 bit editing was also fine.
In fact the Kona SD is the only QuickTime card that can be used in the Xserve, as we are still the only company shipping on OS X. I am glad we have the 8 months of shipping experience behind us, and can focus on the fun of trying new systems such as the Xserve.
For convenience, there is a FireWire port on the front. This is really handy when freelancers or other people in your facility want to "sneaker disk" some graphics or render files to your editing stations fast. Just plug into the front. If you're really security concerned, you can use the lock on the front to shut off the system from external use. This locks all the RAID disks from being hot swapped out, turns off the keyboard, mouse, and FireWire connections. No one's going to tamper with your 50 layer all night renders again!
So to summarize, we finally we have a Mac that we can build a complete 1 rack unit editing system, and the internal disk array is fast enough for editing uncompressed. The Kona SD can capture to Online JPEG as well, so if you need more space then you can just use the extra space a compressed mode provides.
Because the internal disks array works so well, this means you don't need to add an external disk array and SCSI card. This saves some dollars, but also leaves the slot free for other add in cards. With all the features built in, I cannot really think what you would need to add into that slot other than an external disk array, if your really get into big storage!
I hope this helps provide a little more info on what we know about the Xserve, and I will provide more info as we learn more.
Regards,
Grant Petty
Blackmagic Design
http://www.blackmagic-design.com
