Hi all, I need help because I'm about to blow $6,000 if I get this wrong!!!

I want to buy a G5 dual 2ghz system that will be the bare essentials for editing in FCP footage from the HD10u. I've read all the related posts and it looks like a G5 dual 2ghz machine with 1gig RAM, and the standard on-board 160 gig HD will work? I'm trying to spec out a machine that will allow me to edit in real time with minimal efforts. I read a lot about the new DVCPRO codec that comes with FCP HD, and its been mentioned that it works for realtime editing with a dual G5.

I just want to make sure I buy the right one. Has anyone checked out the http://www.wiebetech.com firewire 800 drives? I read online elsewhere that they were "HD" 8bit and 10bit real time editable drives. I'm trying to figure out what external firewire drive would work instead of having one in the machine other than the default shipped drive.

Thanks to anyone who can help!!

Murph

Ok, no one replied. :(

I am leaving to pickup a G5 2ghz, 1 gig Ram system! :)

I'll be posting results when I try and edit HDV on it.

Murph

Christopher,

First I would put as many internal SATA drives as you can. They're cheaper and with the G5 new serial connection you can take advantage of larger drives.

Secondly, the Lacie 800 Firewire drives are fine for us.

We have been experiencing issues using external drives and monitoring DV on an NTSC monitor via the HD10U. Only on footage located on an external firewire drive. This issue is consistent across 3 machines so I am convinced it is a camera problem. The issue by the way is spotty pops on the audio and the video.

Anyone else experience this?

Hi Frederic,

I just got the new system...I'm going to setup now! Thank you for the advice and I'm going to be using the 1.0 version of your software to check everything out. I just need to make another trip to buy FCP again for my new machine. The 23 inch screen is going to rock!

Murph

let me know what drive config you're using... I'll be doing what you're doing in a month or two...
Thanks

Josh, I'll definately let you know. I just made a trip back to the Apple store for the 5.1 Kipslich speaker package....what the hell right??! If you're going to spend $6,000...what's another $300?!

Murph

Sorry I didn't see your post until now Christopher. The setup I use is a G5 dual 2 ghz with 2.5 gb RAM.
I have 2 *250gb SATA drives mounted internally (the G5 can only take 2 inside as standard), and I have 2*250Gb SATA drives mounted externally in an old dual firewire case. The two external ones are only using the power (and fan) from the firewire case, the SATA data connection to these is via a SERITEK/1s2 SATA interface card ( ($70) from www.firmtek.com )
All four SATA drives (model # Maxtor 6Y250M0 - $209 each online) are striped as a software RAID. This gives you 120-150 MB/sec constant throughput, enough to edit 4 streams of DVCPRO HD 720p and have realtime effects with full resolution HD monitoring on the cinema display, it will also playback a stream of Uncompressed 10 bit HD, which is handy as I use that as my final output format now.
I boot from an external firewire 400 drive, which has all my apps and system on it. I used a firewire 800 case for a bit but didn't see a lot of difference in speed.
This setup works very well and reliably now, though I did have some issues with a bad drive in the RAID for a while, and also when I changed my exterrnal firewire 400 and 800 drive configuration ( I also have an external 800 drive for backup), OSX seemed to have a problem with it for a bit.

If you have money to burn, Promax sell a kit that allows mounting 3 more SATA drives internally, but it costs $2000.

I also use an older VGA monitor as a second monitor right now (via the DVI->VGA cable that comes with the G5). When editing DVCPRO HD in FCP you can switch between the two monitors as your principal HD monitor using the Apple-12 key combination, which is handy for critical color correction etc.

I hope this helps.

Paul

Christopher,

Good luck with your new system. You must to feel like a little kid with a gigantic toy. Please let us know how it performs down the line. Are you planning to run other apps such as After Effects or 3D animation?

Thanks to everyone who has posted!

First, get this...I buy this brand new top of the line G5 dual system. I come home and set it up...I'm downloading, installing etc etc. All of a sudden (unknown to me because I'm totally immersed in my G5 world) thunder comes rolling in....lighting came and literally 60 seconds before the power killed TONS of people's computer in my area I turned off the system. My girlfriend saved everything from getting killed because she told me to shut it all down...literally 60 seconds or so more...and bye bye uninsured $6,000 system! (I have a Monster power thing, but apparently tons of people lots appliances in my area over the last 24 hours.)

Anyway, let that be a lesson to all of us...shut down in a lightning storm! (I'm in New Hampshire by the way, so if anyone lives by me...you know what I'm talking about it was bad.)

Ok, I have a question for Paul Moog. When I setup a software RAID (which I see where to do it in my iDisk program) - will it blow away all my current data? I want to setup a RAID either on my new internal 160gig drive or on my Firewire 400 drive.

Any help would be appreciated. I actually dragged the Firewire drive into the RAID area in my iDisk window, but nothing happened. Is something suppose to happen? Yes, I read the Help for this topic...nothing mentioned there!!

Thanks!!!!!!!

Murph

Yes, if you create a software RAID it will destroy all the data on all drives in the RAID, it re-initializes them. You use "Disk Utility" to create the RAID and just drag whatever disks you want to be in it into the window of the utility, it's very simple to do. The drives you use should be of similar capacity and type, don't try and mix firewire and internal drives for instance, I don't think that would work. If you use different capacity drives, for instance a 160gb and a 250gb drive, the final RAID would be 2*160Gb, so you would lose a bunch of valuable space on the 250gb drives. If you're thinking of editing in the DVCPRO HD format I would recommend using two internal SATA drives in your RAID, you can just use two and get pretty good performance. Then put your apps and system on a firewire drive and boot from that.

All the best,

Ideally you would want to RAID two identical drives. A RAID configuration such as you're purposing might actually perform some functions slower than a single drive. The RAID setup is in Disk Utility (Your Drive>Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility>click the RAID tab) not iDisk.

Wait a sec, if I "RAID" my single internal...could I do that?? I have the external Firewire 400 drive available to RAID (200 gigs available) also.

I tried to drag the Firewire and it doesn't do anything...the options are greyed out. I can still drag the drive in and it stays there, but nothing becomes available as an option.

Do I need to reformat the drive, so nothing is on it and free to be "RAIDED" like the lost Ark?? :)

Note: I've already encoded DVCPRO HD files in LumiereHD. These files are imported into Final Cut Pro HD...and playback in real time. I haven't done anything fancy because I want to setup the drives properly before I do anything creative.

Question: I'm encoding DVCPRO HD at "60" frames per second....is that what you guys are using? I tried the 29.97 option and the video looked like crap.

Murph

You cannot make a RAID from a single drive, the concept is that data is split up and is written to multiple drives simultaneously, making the process of reading and writing very fast.

for most of my dv edits I use 2 sancubes... 10 drives (not raided but possible) enough space...
I'd wonder if I could work it into an SD/HD solution>>>?

Ok, so if I partition the Firewire drive that's technically 2 drives? It's not really, but..

I guess I should go buy another Firewire then? Darn, more money...HD is expensive even at the cheapest level.

Murph

if one drive writes at 10,000rpm (uw scsi)
than two drives writing the same info simultaneously work at 20,000rpm
3 at 30,000 rpm etc...
A raid controller operates multiple drives simultaneously as one drive... only downside is that if one fails they all go boom. Also firewire raids aren't supposed to work this way... anyone back that statement up?

You might want to set it up like Paul's, Christopher. Buy another SATA drive and mount it internally so that you can RAID the two internal drives. Use your existing FW drive for all your applications and system software etc. The external FW drive will become your startup disk. This will be easier, faster and less money than what you're proposing. The only thing is you'll have to clone your current startup disk or reinstall all your software. Cloning will take a little time.

"Disk striping improves sustained disk transfers, not access times. So,
application launches, games, etc. won't really benefit. However, video
editing and other applications that make sustained reads and writes to the
hard disk will benefit from an almost 100% improvement in data transfer
rate, if it's at all like the RAID software built into Windows 2000/XP (I
don't see why it should be any different)."

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=b
bfc143a.0110040710.3de2bfa3%40posting.google.com&rnum=16&pre
v=/groups%3Fq%3D%252B%2522firewire%2Braid%2522%26hl%3Den%26l
r%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26start%3D10%26sa%3DN

Remember you only really need a RAID array if you're going to be editing in HD native resolutions, and a Firewire RAID array is NOT going to be fast enough for multiple streams, even a firewire 800 RAID array is not that fast in practice. That's why I'm using SATA drives and interfaces, they're a lot faster than Firewired drives.

in case it didn't work

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=bbfc143a.0110040710.3de2bfa3%40posting.google.com&rnum=16&prev=/groups%3Fq%3D%252B%2522firewire%2Braid%2522%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26start%3D10%26sa%3DN

Ok, looks like I'll buy another internal drive. Any preference you have for one? I have about $200 to spend.

I probably want to buy the exact same drive that's in the machine right? I remember reading one of Paul's posts in regards to a controller or some type of extra piece you need to install the drive?

I'm not worried to much about re-installing everything. But, is it safe to run a Mac off a firewire drive? What if the firewire dies? Do you stick in the Apple recovery discs and re-install on one of the internals?

I know I'm paranoid, but I like to know the worst case on everything because my last name is "MURPHY" after all. :)

Oh, speaking of "RAID" stuff...I was looking around and found this and thought I would pass it on. It might be useful? It looks like a new version just came out.

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/system_disk_utilities/softraid.html

Murph (aka Murphy's Law expert)

Try to match the internal drive you already have. Same size, brand, etc.

Ok, I'll do that...thanks everyone for the replies. This place rocks and Apple should be PAYING all of us at dvinfo!

Murph

Chris, check my previous post, I detailed the exact drive I use, or get another 160gb one like that which came with the machine if you want a smaller RAID and save some money. There is a very good program that will clone all your apps and system to the new drive, I will try and find the name for you.

Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/13260). It's easy to use and the price is right, $5.

Awesome I will download it and get the new HD asap.

Just a note, tonight I've been capturing clips from the HD10u into the LumiereHD 1.0 app without any problems. I'm demuxing a ton of stuff now....anyone know where I can post some DVCPRO HD clips from the HD10u? I know space is hard to come by, but I could upload a bunch of really cool clips from my surrounding land....horses, donkey's, old barns, outhouses, flowers, the neighbors tractor mailbox! (yes, i have a functional outhouse for guests!)

Murph

How much space do you need?

As I'm also strugling with the HD and Hard-drive questions I found in one of the forums (I don't remember where) this indeed useful url: [http://www.barefeats.com/]. It explains a lot on the different possibilities with RAIDs. The writer found also a very bad bug in the G5 concerning the speed in writing to a firewire drive. It seems much slower then on the G4 CPUs.

Jeff, I think about 200 gigs to start would suffice.

I didn't read anything about the G5 bug? It would have probably been noted or address elsewhere if it were on every system. I'll have to check into it....the G5 can't have it to bad because they're still selling and it's speed is its selling feature!

Murph

Murph, I thought you were looking for space to upload some images?

Oops, I thought you meant my internal drives here.

I have videos not images I can upload. They're pretty big, but I can make them smaller. Depending on space available on a server?

Murph

Yup, that's what I'm asking. I can give you some space on my iDisk. You can upload directly to it.

Keep in mind, Murph, when you set up your RAID that first (like everyone else said) try to use identical drives, and second, note that is generally considered a VERY good idea to keep your OS on a separate physical drive from your stripe. So, I would recommend three drives total - and firewire is not generally recommended for RAID. Actually, I wouldn't even try it.

Another suggestion before you setup your stripe is a hardware RAID controller. They're cheap (under $100), and this way, if your entire system drive goes down, you save your precious RAID stripe. Because remember, if you use software RAID and your system crashes or your system drive crashes, you will lose your RAID stripe as well. The same goes, obviously, if you stripe your OS, as well.

Just my two cents.

Anybody else have any good RAID tips?

-Will

Great info, thank you! I'm going to get my head wrapped around my new system for a few weeks and then tackle the RAID thing. It looks like I'll do exactly what you said and buy an internal exactly like my current one. Then I'll use Firewire for my system drive.

I've never had my OS on an external drive, so that's weird to me. But, apparently it's common? I'll do it because its the best option...

Thanks again!

Murph