Whitepaper

1 Beyond White Paper:

Laptop design for the Video Professional

By Terry Cullen

VideoMaker Product of the Year 2002 Cited for Laptop Horsepower, Features and Price

1 Beyond White Paper:

Laptop design for the Video Professional

I. Overview of Professional vs. Consumer Laptop Design Criteria:

Portable editing and compositing for the video professional has been a dilemma. A solution is desirable for many reasons (too obvious to mention here), so why has this not become more popular? Unfortunately, editing and compositing on consumer laptops is at best a difficult compromise compared to using a powerful desktop system. Our goal, in this space, has been to offer a portable video editing and compositing solution that will give the professional a true desktop experience. After studying the problems involved, including several partial solutions over the last four years, we have identified the four “bottlenecks” that must be alleviated to achieve this allusive goal:

1. Computational Power: Video applications have always been on the high end of computational requirements. Since Laptops by definition have no video accelerator cards (to interpret DV for example), they are totally dependent on processing power for real-time previewing, rendering, compression, even smooth previewing. The new generation of “Software Only” video applications are especially dependent on computational “horsepower”. The more processor power, the smoother the real-time previews and the quicker the renders, compressions, etc.
   
2. Data Flow: A balance of design has to be maintained between processing power and Data Flow. Raising the Giga Hertz of the processor may win the marketing battle, but is actually useless if the data is choked off by the data path. A perfect example of this was when processors went over 1 GHz (many years ago for desktop’s) but the internal bus speeds were not improved. It felt great to have all that horsepower but strangely, video editing and compositing did not improve.
   
3. Disk Speed: The results of poor data read and write speeds to disks are well known to professional editors. In all laptops we have the hard restraint of 2.5” disks running at 4200 RPM. In the fall of 2002 this was finally increased to 5400 RPM on a few laptop disks, but this is no where near the speeds that we have grown to enjoy on Desktops which are now up to 15,000 RPM. RPM’s do not create the Sustained Data Rate necessary on their own, but with this low RPM all the normal Ultra ATA buffering tricks are of limited value at best. Some have resorted to using external desktop disks in FireWire or USB enclosures, but this is still very limited by the bus speed and defeats the goal of being portable. Seem impossible to overcome? Read on.
   
4. 3D Effects Computation: In compositing, animation and 3D effects editing (and even high-end 2D), the geometric computational requirements go off the chart. For this reason, application designers have resorted to utilizing the actual 3D effects engines (processors) and high speed memory of the video display card (or video display chipset in the case of laptops). The performance or the editing “feel” can be enhanced greatly by off-loading the general purpose processor (which is already overloaded, see above) with a high-end video card. This is not even as necessary in a desktop because a professional editing system will generally have a video capture card e.g. the Canopus DVStorm card, with these effects engines built-in. Unfortunately, in laptops there is no room for these cards. Therefore we can improve the “experience” greatly by using the highest power video display chipset available.

The 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800, is the first laptop to alleviate all four of these bottlenecks. The following is a more detailed explanation of these problems and the design methods used to overcome these obstacles for the video professional.

II. Solutions to Consumer Laptop Design problems:

Most laptops can perform consumer level editing which requires a much lower data rate. For example, if you use the Microsoft Movie Editor, it can input Digital Video (DV) using the IEEE 1394 or FireWire, but they compress it. Their default and suggested format requires 5,000 times less data rate than uncompressed DV necessary for professional lossless editing. People have purchased laptops with consumer level editing and have tried to upgrade to professional DV and are often times surprised to find they cannot handle the data rate required. Some laptops can handle DV in a limited fashion, but let’s put the requirements into perspective. There are three data rate demands for Professional DV lossless editing. You have to differentiate between hard requirements and desirability.

• First, you must acquire the DV without dropping frames. This is a fixed requirement for a professional. A consumer may not even be aware that some frames are missing. There seems to be a jerkiness to the flow, but it’s accepted.
  
• Second, you must edit the DV. Surprisingly, editing demands the least data rate (hard requirement) but is where it’s most desirable to have the best data rate. It demands the least because during the editing process the application can actually cheat. A program can reduce quality or even drop frames on playback (viewing) without affecting the final output after rendering. But, while editing, it’s most desirable to see smooth, clear, high quality playback to know what your final output will look like. Isn’t that why everyone wants real-time preview, e.g., to have the opportunity to immediately see and adjust effects. With reduced quality or jagged playback, a professional editor can’t see the true result of filters or get a feel for the actual flow of the production they’re creating. “Scrubbing” the timeline is even more difficult. It requires many times the data rate necessary simply to preview the video because you are scrubbing at many times the normal playback speed. Unresponsive scrubbing is very frustrating.
  
• Finally, you have to output the DV without dropping frames. This is actually a more demanding requirement than acquiring the video because the video is coming from random parts of the disk as opposed to capture, which is writing contiguously to the disk for the most part.

Therefore, some laptops (even Pentium 4’s) cannot sustain the data rate required to both input DV, or worse, playback DV. But the real frustration in portable editing is that no laptop (until now) can give the pleasing response that editors are accustomed to from using large powerful desktop systems. We put up with the compromises because they are “portable”.

What is the reason for this lack of performance? Consumer laptops made by Sony, HP, IBM, Dell etc. are restricted by two design goals.

• First they are designed to run what 90% of the market uses them for, the most popular consumer applications e.g. e-mail, Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint…) and Internet browsing. These applications do not require much in the way of “Horsepower”. This has lead to the invention of processors like the P4M or Pentium 4 mobile chip. This chip is designed to constantly slow down the processor speed, memory speed, bus speed and even reduce voltages (see below for details).
  
• The second design factor is these companies continue a fierce battle for market share which is driven to a large degree by price. Therefore adding extras like features used by only a small portion of the market, e.g. video editing and compositing, is out of the question. It just doesn’t make economic sense.

These two driving factors are what have led to the limited power consumer laptops today. Unfortunately, for video editing, this is the exact opposite of the most desirable features required.

If you look at the design criteria in the most desirable desktop editing systems, you can see what makes them successful.

Maximum Horsepower – Smooth, responsive video editing and today’s real-time effects require computing power and an open, fast data path. This is achieved by several critical factors. Let’s call them the Desktop Video Editing design criteria:

1. Fast / Powerful Processors
2. Fast Data Buses and Memory
3. Large / Fast Disks and Controllers
4. A Fast Video Controller with hardware support for 3D multi-media

Admittedly, these are all expensive but, considering that few if any of these are available in consumer laptops, it’s easy to understand the frustration of the Video Professional who would like to be productive “on the road”.

At 1 Beyond, we have been designing desktop editing solutions for years with the above design criteria. We have also been asked repeatedly for portable editing solutions and to this end we first created our “Mobile” Editing and Web Casting System in 1998.

It has literally all the power of a desktop, it’s portable, but it’s not as portable as a laptop. In fact, we still offer the Mobile 660 solution today (updated to the latest P4) because there are some video applications, like Live Web Casting, that just cannot be done effectively in a laptop, (because the 660 Webcaster / Editor includes additional PCI cards that can’t be put into a laptop).

In 2000 we accomplished the second breakthrough in offering a Video Editing Laptop attacking the first two desktop design requirements above. We offered the first Video Editing laptops with real Pentium desktop processors, (not mobile processors), fast internal buses and memory (see VideoMaker magazine’s Laptop Buyer’s Guide 2000).

We have been improving the performance of our designs offering several Industry First’s including the first Laptop with a Pentium 4 (see VideoMaker magazine’s Laptop Buyer’s Guide 2001).

Now, in 2002 with the introduction of our 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800 Laptop series, we have finally met our goal of offering all four of the above desktop design criteria for the first time in a Laptop.

In addition to meeting our performance criteria, we have added so many video features that are truly unique (see below), the 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800 has been called “the Ultimate Portable Video Suite”.

First consider the Laptop Performance breakthroughs as they relate to our above four “Desktop Design Criteria”:

Fast / Powerful Processors

• A real Pentium 4 Desktop processor (not P4M Mobile)
• The first 2.8 GHz true Intel Pentium 4 in a Laptop

Fast Data Buses and memory

• The first 533 MHz Front Side Bus (state of the art in desktops)
• 266 MHz Dual Data Rate Memory – up to 1 GB

Large / Fast Disks and Controllers

• The first Laptop with Dual Raided Hard Drives for over 40 MB/S (see below for details)
• The first Laptop to have 120 GB’s of storage (8.5 hours full res. DV)
• The first Laptop to have Triple Raided Hard Drives with 180 GB’s (new option) of storage (over 13 hours of full res. DV)
• The first Laptop to achieve over 40 MB’s per second sustained disk data rate. Now over 60 MB/Sec with the new Triple Raided option.

See: Raided Hard Drive Design Considerations: Page 8 below for details

Fast Video controller with hardware support for 3D multi-media

• ATI Radeon 9000 Video controller – the first visual processor to fully support DirectX® 8.1 programmable pixel and vertex shaders in a Laptop (see below for details)
• 64 MB’s of 266 MHz Dual Data Rate separate video memory – many consumer laptops share memory with the processor’s main memory as a significant cost savings

See: 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800 Video Chip Set: Page 9 below for details

Additional Unique Video / Multimedia Features include:

S-Video In: This Laptop has S-Video In with hardware accelerated real-time MPeg 1 or 2 encoding (also built-in the laptop). This hardware allows any S-Video source to be captured and compressed on-the-fly, i.e. in real-time. The resulting files can be used for several purposes (see below).

MP3 player: A built-in MP3 player that pop’s out from the side of the laptop with the push of a button for audio enjoyment while traveling.

USB File Transfer: File Transfer to a remote location using the same device that is in the MP3 player. (a flash memory that can hold up to 256 MBs of data, complete with a mini USB cable making it possible to transfer data to any computer with USB 1 or 2)

Memory Sticks: Two Memory Stick readers built into the laptop. One for Secure Digital memory sticks and the second (perhaps the most popular memory stick for videographers), the Sony memory stick (included in most new Sony DV and DVCam Professional Camcorders).

TV Tuner: The built-in tuner can receive 8 TV format variations including: NTSC, PAL and SECAM. You can watch TV PIP or on a second Computer Monitor. This TV viewing and recording capability also includes time shifting. If you have to temporarily leave, you can hit pause on the remote control, and the computer will automatically begin recording. On return you can hit play and pick up where you left off. One day all TV’s will have this capability. See below for details.

Digital VCR: A built-in Digital VCR which can record and playback video. It will compress on-the-fly into standard Mpeg 1 or 2 from the S-Video or TV inputs.

• The problem with most TV MPeg recording devices like TIVO or RE-Play TV, is you have limited disk space and you can not “unload” or move the video to another computer or common storage center like a central disk server on the home or office Local Area Network. Their files are also not standard Mpeg, they are encrypted. So even if you could get access to them, you could not view them on another computer. Also, you can not output them to DVD for future viewing in a DVD player or computer.
  
• With the DV Pro 2800, you not only have 120 GB’s of storage at your disposal, you can unload your video to another computer or server and view it on any computer in your home or office connected to the LAN (with the proper video playback facilities.)
  
• A popular use of video systems today is digitally archiving videos on DVD’s. This both preserves important analog video tape from further degradation, but also allows it to be played on standard DVD players or computers with DVD’s (or CD’s for short videos). With the Digital VCR and Mpeg compression in real time, this is easily accomplished and in minimum time.

Digital Sound: Listen to DVD Playback with Standard Analog Stereo or Digital S/PDIF 5.1 Chan. sound output. The Audio is AC’97 2.2 Compliant, compatible with Sound Blaster Pro, Virtual AC3, Direct Soundä 3D accelerator.

DVD Playback: You can watch a movie on this laptop as a portable DVD player. Plug in your active noise canceling headphones and enjoy your favorite movies on a 15.7” screen instead of the typical 6” screen of a portable DVD player. Or, if you’re in a hotel, plug into the TV and enjoy the movies you want to see.

Remote Control: The system includes a Remote Control that can perform all normal TV functions including changing channels and volume. It can also controls the Digital VCR, CD player, MP3 player and internal Media Player. Note the simultaneous 16 channel preview button.

“Time Shifting”: The TV / Digital VCR also includes “Time Shifting”. For example, if you are watching an important TV show or movie and have to leave, you can hit pause and the recorder will automatically start recording so when you return you can pick up where you left off without missing anything. Also, once you’re behind real-time, you can skip over commercials or fast-forward over uninteresting parts of the show.

CD Playback hardware: This is separate hardware incorporated into the laptop to allow CD playback, i.e. the hardware buttons and LCD readout on the front of the laptop can control the volume, change tracks etc. But, it is also useable separate from the laptop. For example, there are times when you would like to listen to a CD without having to start the laptop. Simply point the remote at the laptop and hit play and the CD starts.

III. Detailed Technical information on some of the break-through advances of the 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800.

Raided Hard Drive Design Considerations:

The industries first Laptop with Raided Hard Drives: The significance of increased hard drive performance can only be appreciated if one has edited on a high-end desktop system and then tried the same program, e.g. Avid’s Xpress DV, on a laptop. The reason is high performance consumer laptops, by definition, can only be as fast as the fastest laptop drives. This approaches 20 MB’s per second if there are no inhibiting factors in the laptop architecture. In other words this is the maximum available from these smaller drives.

One important note here is when we refer to data rate, we do not care about peak data rate. You will hear numbers describing SCSI controllers like 160 and now 320 MB’s per second. This is peak data rate and is no help to video editing on it’s own. The only number to consider in design is Sustained Data Rate. There is a free program from Canopus that will quickly measure the SDR of system drives.

Therefore, we determined the only way to break through this laptop bottleneck was to Raid the hard drives together. This is the same solution we used in the early days of DV editing with slower hard drives on desktops. As you will see in the test results below, this turned out to yield excellent results.

The diagram below shows the Sustained Data Rate of a typical consumer single disk laptop.
Below is the same test from the Dual Drive Raided 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800.

The diagram below shows the Sustained Data Rate of a typical consumer single disk laptop.	Below is the same test from the Dual Drive Raided 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800.

New Results Including 1 Beyond DV Pro 2800 Triple Raided Hard drive option

These are actual results from the industries first laptop with Dual (and now Triple) Raided hard drives. As you can see, this is Desktop level performance. This rapid data availability makes all the difference in smooth responsive video editing. As mentioned above, when editing, you are constantly “scrubbing” the timeline to find a point on the video to review or edit. When scrubbing, you are asking for data rates many times greater than simply playing the timeline. If your laptop can barely play DV, it will be very jerky and unresponsive feeling when editing. This is one of the major design factors that explains the difference in “feel” and perceived responsiveness between a desktop and a laptop. Note, the Triple Raided hard drive option is not available with the TV Tuner, only dual Raided hard drives.

1 Beyond DV Pro 2800 Video Display Chip Set

ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 Video Controller

Overview:

MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 re-defines the notebook PC market delivering the fastest-performing 3D graphics supporting the latest video effects, real-time transitions and filters, cinematic-quality video, and features that dramatically enhance all aspects of the visual experience in every application.

• 3D performance - Play the latest 3D faster with effects never before seen on a notebook
  
• MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 is on a mobile platform.
  
• SMARTSHADER™ technology enables lighting and shadow effects never seen before on a notebook. SMOOTHVISION™ anti-aliasing technology, along with the industry’s best anisotropic filtering, delivers the best visual quality without compromising performance. MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 delivers the most advanced 3D performance for notebooks in the industry.

  Longer battery life - Get industry leading power management

• ATI’s third-generation POWERPLAY™ technology provides the most advanced power management solution for notebook graphics today. MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 uses the least power, dynamically adjusting power consumption based on user activity, resulting in longer battery life.
  
• Optimizes performance and battery life, keeping users connected with their customers, suppliers and colleagues longer.

  
  Visual quality & productivity - see more and do more on notebooks

  First with video de-blocking technology

• FULLSTREAM™ removes blocky artifacts from video and provides sharper image quality during streaming media playback.
  
• Users can experience integrated video without the hangs; a useful tool to enhance presentation software and other business multimedia applications.

  Multi-monitor management and multi-display support

• MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 provides the highest quality output support for DVI-I, TV and CRTs.

• ATI’s HYDRAVISION™* technology brings a rich set of multi-monitor features that are exceptionally easy to use.

• Connects up to three monitors at one time and HYDRAVISION™ allows user to tailor their desktop to the way they work, improving productivity.

  *OEM option. Not available on all systems.
  Handy features for the professional

• MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 provides users with exceptionally clear text, characters and images in every application; even when scaling down to lower or non-native resolutions.

• ATI’s unique ZOOM* feature allows users to scale back and forth to whatever resolution they prefer at the click of a button.

  *OEM option. Not available on all systems.
  Only universal platform architecture delivers OEMs the competitive edge

  
  ATI's FLEXFIT™ technology brings together the MOBILITY™ family of pin-compatible mobile graphics processors and the most competitive IGP products in the industry for AMD and Intel, with one common driver for all solutions. FLEXFIT™ provides the following benefits to the notebook market:

• Use the same motherboard design for multiple market segments - high-end, mainstream, and value - for scalable solutions over time.
  
• Faster time to market-OEMs can gain the competitive advantage by delivering the latest graphics technology to customers faster.
  
• Single driver architecture - OEMs experience easier qualification and faster time to market, IT departments reduce costs of ownership, and users benefit from a common interface across product generations.

  Portable entertainment on a notebook

• In addition to powerful 3D effects and games, MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 allows users to watch DVD movies at the highest quality.
  
• Connect the notebook to a big screen television for a true cinematic experience with no sacrifice in quality.
  
• ATI’s VIDEO IMMERSION™ II technology makes it possible by integrating industry-leading digital video features that not only improves the overall visual experience of watching DVD - but also lowers the power consumption of the notebook, providing longer battery life.

  Three Pin-Compatible Variants for Ultimate Design Flexibility

  MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 represents ATI's sixth generation of mobile graphics to integrated memory on the chip. With three variants, MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 offers true flexibility for numerous mobile form factors, from full size to "thin-and-light". MOBILITY™ RADEON™ 9000 has three variants:

• Discreet
  
• On-chip 32MB DDR (64-bit)
  
• On-chip 64MB DDR (128-bit) (used by 1 Beyond)