User manual

Harmony 2ES and 4ES 25
Multi-Card Servers
Mixing 2 and 4-Channel Cards
Both 2-channel and 4-channel Harmony cards may be used in
the same server. However, it is important that they be installed
with the 2-channel cards in slots closest to the CPU, so that the
driver will map the cards and their channels properly. For
more information, see
Multiple board server - channels mapped
incorrectly
on page 64.
Multi-Threading and Drive Mapping
Depending on hard drive speed and bitrate, proper drive
mapping can be crucial for MPEG playback performance. This
involves configuring the Harmony driver so that it reads from
multiple physical hard drives simultaneously. In a system with
two hard drives storing MPEG content, maximum
performance occurs when data is read from both drives at the
same time.
MaxDisks drive parameter
Use the MaxDisks driver parameter, see MaxDisks on page 47,
to specify the number of playback storage hard drives used in a
system. The driver divides the available playback channels into
MaxDisks groups with each group performing concurrent
reads; in software terms, each group has a separate thread of
execution. Therefore, it is important to configure the
application so that each group of channels should read files
from a physical hard drive that is not used by another group.