Hi there,

I recently purchased an extra 400 gig drive for my mac pro, Giving me a total of 650 gig internaly and 250 gig external. I also upgraded the RAM to 4 gigs. But now im wondering if the drives are the weakest (read: slowest) link in the chain.
I usually edit Standard DV footage. Most projects are multicam, up to 5 cams.
Will i notice and significant speed changes if i add another 400 gig 7200 rpm drive and set it up in a raid0 config along with the other drive?

Yes there will be a significant increase in performance. Having said that, since your editing DV you might not notice much of a difference.

Striping two drives should give you approximately 135MB/s which if my math is anywhere close should equal about 8 real-time streams of DV.

Does doing an internal RAID0 steal much processor power?

Thanks.
Jeff

Does doing an internal RAID0 steal much processor power?

Thanks.
Jeff
I'm new to the Mac, all the raids that I have [except the 1TB internal on my Mac Pro] are external. Generally speaking its not a great idea to set up a RAID internally because of potential contention issues on the motherboard but it doesn't effect the processor.

I asked around a bit regading building a RAID internally on the new Mac Pro's and most of the Mac integrators I spoke with didn't seem that concerned about it so I went ahead and RAIDed two out of the three extra internal drives.

Since I'm new to the Mac I don't have much experience to compare, but its working great. It was easy to configure and as Apple puts it "it just works."

I'm Sorry, the short answer is NO it doesn't steal any proccessor power.

I'm with you Chuck, I'm new to the Mac as well. In the past I did a couple of internal RAID arrays, but they were always connected using a hardware RAID controller and not stripped via Windows.

RAID 0 increase the chance of data loss (as opposed to 2 or 3 separate drives--one crashing doesn't wipe out the whole shabang), so I'm thinking it might be good practice to copy the contents of the array over to an external FW drive every other day or so.

On that note, is there a good backup program for Mac?

Thanks.
Jeff

On that note, is there a good backup program for Mac?

There's a great application called Super Duper for cloning and backing up your drive. It comes in a free and a paid version which adds more features. I got wind of it from Mike Curtis at HDforIndies.

It worked great for me when I needed to install a larger system drive in my iMac.

-gb-

Do raid drives they all need to be from the same manufacturer and have the same capacity. You cannot raid a 160GB drive with a 300GB drive, for example. Nor can you raid an internal drive with an external firewire drive.

Do raid drives they all need to be from the same manufacturer and have the same capacity. You cannot raid a 160GB drive with a 300GB drive, for example. Nor can you raid an internal drive with an external firewire drive.
Well since we're just talking about this -- you can RAID different size drives from different manufacturers, not a good idea but you can do it. The volumes have to be the same size so if you RAID a 250GB drive with a 300GB drive, 50GB's of the 300GB drive will not be usable.

There is no such thing as a firewire RAID [technically speaking]. That's becuase there is no such thing as a firewire drive. Firewire enclosures use a bridge chip to convert IDE or ASA drives for example to send data over a IEEE cable. That's why although FW800 specs out faster than FW400 many of the FW400 enclosures are faster because they have faster and better drivers. There are some very fast FW800 bridge chips on the market but they use this weird TCIP protocol so although the they may be faster they place quite a load on the CPU.

SATA and Fiber channel are native peripheral attach protocols [encapsulated SCSI over fiber] are very robust and fast.

Since we are talking about RAID 0 on a MacPro, I thought this would be a great time to ask a question. I have two WD RE 320's setup in RAID 0 on a MacPro, and I'm beginning to wonder if there is that much of an advantage for SD video, or whether a person would be better off instead, to run two identical drives, using one as scratch and the other as backup? I guess the reason I ask is that I've not really noticed that much speed increase in rendering with my RAID 0 setup. If I run a bench test, the RAID comes in around 145mbs, but so far that speed hasn't helped my rendering speed. My primary concern is that with my RAID setup I'm sacrificing a hard drive slot plus running the (slight) risk of data loss (although I only use the RAID for scratch and captured footage). I'm beginning to think that a single drive would be just as fast (rendering) as my RAID 0 setup.

So in a nutshell, my question is if you had two identical drives, would you set them up as RAID 0 or keep them separate (using one as mirrored backup) for editing SD footage?

Comments are appreciated!

Al, I don't think drive speed has much to do with render times. In the case of rendering the bottle neck is usally processor speed, bus speed, and RAM. So unless you are rendering to a really slow device, the drive won't make any difference. I think.

I'd go for the two drives being separate personally.

Al, Jeff is mostly correct.

Depending on whether the task, in this case editing, requires human intervention or is automated the computer uses data differently.

While you are scrubbing back and forth making editorial decisions the computer is blasting contiguous streams of pixels to the screen, the more SD streams you want or the bigger the streams are [HD for example] the faster the I/O needs to be. This is low processor high bandwidth.

Once the editorial process is complete and its time to encode then the computer drinks from the pool of data only what it needs. This is generally high processor low bandwidth consumption.

Keep in mind that how you edit can effect this, if for example you have 1000 edits in a half hour SD program that are cuts and dissolves and you don't apply any video filters until the last step, chances are you don't need a RAID.

But if you are applying video filters, using multicam editing or effects that require multiple streams of video while you're creating your edit decision list
then you would benefit from a RAID becuase you are combining both types of data requirements.

And obviously if you're editing at any resolution above SD you should have a RAID, even for HDV. Although HDV is only 25Mb/s every edit that isn't direclty on an I-frame requires the computer to recalculate from the I-frame to the current frame. Kind of like having a video filter on every edit.

Hope this helps.

Jeff and Chuck, thanks for your informative replies!

I'm not positive I totally understand... Are you saying that I won't really benefit from RAID unless I'm doing editing that requires access to multiple video assets, filter and effects, or working with HD? Most of my current work tends to be heavy effects laden (think music videos) shot on SD miniDV. On a current project I'm working on, I have many short video sources that are being composited together using various keys and mattes. I might have up to 8 separate clips coming together, along with a few Photoshop files on up to 10 layers in Final Cut Pro (Yeah, I should probably be using Shake or After Effects!). Anyway, I have this particular project file with 7 layers, 6 separate video files and it runs about 2 minutes. It takes my MacPro 2.66 with 2GB of ram, 7 minutes to render the timeline. Yeah, I know that I could probably shave some time off that by adding more ram...

Based on what I got out of your posts, in my situation, I'm probably better off to go with one single drive for media/scratch and back that up to another drive instead of RAIDing my two 320's? If true, I'm thinking of returning the 320's and buying another 500GB and using it in single configuration just for my media. Then it's time to save up for more Ram!

Bottom line: should I keep my current 320's in RAID or dump them in favor of a single 500-750GB drive? I could always add another matching drive if I need RAID in the future. However, I'm thinking when the time comes, a dedicated external RAID would be better.

Your posts are appreciated!!!

Al

Hi Al,

I have a 2.66 Mac Pro with 5GB RAM and the XT1900 and like I mentioned RAIDed two 500GB internal drives.

If you're applying a lot of video effcts as you go then you are rendering, some of that rendering is done in real-time in the GPU [your graphics card so you shouldn't get a red render bar], some of it can be done in real-time using your CPU and some of it is near real-time [in both cases you will get the red render bar]. Here's a tip - if you have a red render bar on a clip that you've applied a video filter too hit 'Option P' and it will play back as fast as your computer can render it. Most of the filters I have applied on the Mac Pro that require rendering play back at about 20fp/s without the audio.

Anyway, if this is how you're editing I would recomend using a RAID. If you did cuts only or dissolves then I'd just use one large disk.

Hi Chuck!

I have pretty much the same setup as you except the extra ram. That's my next purchase!

I appreciate your tips. I get frustrated having to wait for renders when I've got such a powerful computer! I suppose I should be happy... on my G4 laptop, I used to have wait for an hour (or longer) to render 45 seconds of footage. Those were fun times.

Since I do primarly motion graphics and compositing, I'm going to follow your advice and stick with the RAID0. I might send back these Western Digital RE 320's though... they vibrate too much and I've had to stuff a bunch of high density foam to get them so they don't drive me crazy. Occasionally they buzz to remind me that they aren't perfect. I'm looking at the Maxline pro's (Maxtor) or Hitachi's. I've read they are quiet, fast, and don't vibrate too much. The Seagate 7100.10 drive look nice but I'm reading around the web that there are still problems with slow write and read speed on Intel Macs. Not sure if I can trust that info as the the posters may have older versions of the drive without the latest firmware update.

What brand drives are you using? Any problems with humming and buzzing?

Unfortunately I have some information your probably not going to want to hear.

I have the Western Digital WD500KS SE16 Caviar Disks [$159]. They have 16MB of secondary cache [apposed to 8MB normally] and are generally fast and reliable. They are a bit noisy on start-up but quite down nicely after five to ten minutes.

Seagate's would be my second choice and I stay away from Maxtor, I have had several Maxtor drive fail.

Regarding the RAM, there are several places to purchase RAM on-line, I found the best price from a reputable dealer and four 1GB modules cost $640. I had erad a couple of horror stories about buying RAM on-line so I told the Mac reseller where I purchased my Mac and he matched the price.

I have the Western Digital WD500KS SE16 Caviar Disks [$159]. They have 16MB of secondary cache [apposed to 8MB normally] and are generally fast and reliable. They are a bit noisy on start-up but quite down nicely after five to ten minutes.

I have that exact same drive and use if for backup. It vibrates a little bit but not as much as the WD RE 320 models. I did have a problem at first due to some harmonic resonance, but by moving the drive to bay 4 seemed to eliminate that issue. I bought the RE drives solely for RAID and they substantially increased my vibration/sound problems until I stuffed some padding in there. They still buzz now and then but for the most part they are okay. I'm more concerned now about whether to keep them for go with another brand for my RAID setup. Are you using the SE16 Caviars for RAID?

You found a good price for RAM. I've bought ram online before and didn't have trouble but I might have gotten lucky. The prices have been slowly coming down; I would like to see them come down another 10-20% before I buy. I did find some ram on Newegg that was decent, but it's not Apple certified like they advertise on Macsales. I'm reluctant to go with anything other than the best. Ram is the most important components of the total system and a person shouldn't skimp when they have already invested so much in everything else.

Thanks!

Yes I'm using the Caviars for the RAID.

Like I said, I shopped around for a legitimate price and after informing my Apple reseller they matched the price. I opened the Mac up and inspected what they installed and it matched the factory RAM [except for the size].

I'm guessing everyone is getting the RAM from the same four or five sources, even Apple, so all the reseller might be loosing is the additional mark up. Since I purchased the system from them they didn't seem to mind.

On the topic of Western Digital Drives, I see there is a SE and RE (raid) additions. According to the newegg site--the RE version is better for RAID:

"RAID-specific time limited error recovery - Improves error handling coordination with RAID adapters and prevents drive fallout caused by extended drive error-recovery processes. Reliability in high duty cycle environments - Utilizing enterprise-class manufacturing processes, these drives are designed with enhanced reliability in a 24x7, high duty cycle environment."

Has this been confirmed? In all of my years I've never seen a drive specified for RAID and non-RAID environments.

Any thoughts?

On the topic of Western Digital Drives, I see there is a SE and RE (raid) additions. According to the newegg site--the RE version is better for RAID:

"RAID-specific time limited error recovery - Improves error handling coordination with RAID adapters and prevents drive fallout caused by extended drive error-recovery processes. Reliability in high duty cycle environments - Utilizing enterprise-class manufacturing processes, these drives are designed with enhanced reliability in a 24x7, high duty cycle environment."

Has this been confirmed? In all of my years I've never seen a drive specified for RAID and non-RAID environments.

Any thoughts?

I'm using the RE 320's that I bought specifically for RAID0. They are good drives with the exception of vibration. However, I might have gotten a fluke because one of them vibrates more than the other. Seagate has RAID type drives too. They are the ES (Enterprise Server) drives and are supposed to be longer lasting that normal drives. You pay a bit more for these kind of drives and whether it's worth it or not, I'm not sure. I bought RE drives because of the decent reviews and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Keep in mind that these drives are designed to run in a server environment, and we are running them in a single user desktop environment (at least I am).

Thanks Al. I currently capture to one Western Digital SE 16 drive and wanted to just buy two more of the SE drives to set up as a RAID. At the time I didn't know they made a RE RAID edition. I guess I'll buy three new "RE" drives if I want to stick with my original plan of stripping three drives.

Jeff

I have a very similar setup, am planning on doing a largeish (60-90 min) 720 HD project. I am a relative newbie to video editing (but have done lots of multimedia stuff)

- is it worth filling my last 2 hard drive bays with identical drives and RAIDing them?


- what sort of RAID is the best for performance (say I backup some other way)? I could make a third drive available.

- is the software RAID that Apple provides OK? Can you boot from a RAIDed set? How does it compare to getting a dedicated RAID card? (oh, the questions!)

- it seems like it'd be ideal to have 4 drives available, one for the OS, one for the scratch, one for reading the media from and one for writing it to. What matters/slows things down, and what doesn't?

- What should I use the RAID set for - media, scratch, OS...?

Thanks in advance,
Douglas

Is that 720P uncompressed, DVCProHD or HDV?

First off, I always try and discourage anyone from editing HDV natively. [but that's a topic for another thread].

So having said that I'll assume its one of the other formats. A 90 minute 720P (HD) program is a lot of data. Most of this discussion has been about a small independent project where there's not a lot of concern about the "safety" of the video.

For this large of a project you should consider a higher RAID level that will give you some redundency. The trade off is that the higher the level of security the lower the performance.

So to make up for decreased performance you need to increase the number of spindles [drives]. There are some fairly inexpensive SATA RAID enclosures that have 8 drive bays, eight would be the smallest I would go. Many have [and I don't remember the latest buzz word for this] port multiplication where they can stream all eight channels of data across two SATA cables for example.

I have a fairly simple philosophy about setting up a file system. Everything to do with the FCP project itself, graphics, budgets, stills etc., are stored in a client/project folder in my FCP folder on my system disk. This is content that generally required some human effort to create and could not be easily or quickly replaced.

If I'm using RAID0 the media, audio, video and elements created by the computer [rendered] that would require little [if any] human intervention are stored on the RAID. If the RAID fails or there are corrupt files then generally I take the batch digitizing list, which is stored with my project files and re-capture. What determines the RAID level is my threshhold for pain in re-capturing. Generally if there's more than four or five hours of work to get back to where I was before the failure I go up to the next RAID level.

I have both RAID0 and 5. You'd think I'd just use the RAID5 for everything but I actually use the RAID0 more. So far I've only done one feature film in HD, which I used RAID5, but most of my work is short form HD and its on and off the system fairly quickly so I use RAID0 [G-Techs SATA RAID]. This also makes it much easier to share the drive. I don't want to cart an 8-drive RAID around to other artisans working with me on a project.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for your time Chuck, that is great info to consider. Yes the longest thing I've done is 40min SD so it will be significantly bigger, good to think about it in advance. I can see the logic in your system.

Chuck,
you said:
"First off, I always try and discourage anyone from editing HDV natively. [but that's a topic for another thread]."

I would be most interested in reading your recommendations of how
to edit HDV. I have read that doing basic cuts in HDV then transcoding to
DVDProHD for color-correction and transitions etc is one way to go.
But, with the proponderance of information on these threads, I can't
find where I originally read that...

David

Hi David,

Basically what people are doing by using the workflow you describe is using the DVCProHD codec as a "digital Intermediate." If I wanted to use the DVCProHD codec I would convert the HDV to DVCProHD on capture and edit that.

However I am not a big fan of the DVCProHD codec. Cineform recently announced a public beta of ProspectHD to create a QuickTime version of their Cineform codec that works with FCP. I have used the Cineform codec on the PC and it is a much better codec than the DVCProHD codec. You can learn more about it at http://www.cineform.com.

There is also the Sheer Video codec which I've heard good things about but I have not been able to test it yet.

Basically these codecs transcode the HDV from an m2t stream to a frame based 8 or 10bit 4:2:2 stream using wavelet compression. When you look at the comparisons on the Cineform website they are comparing the Cineform image to an uncompressed HD image, not an HDV image. It is very impressive.

Obviously there's a penalty, the amount of data goes from 25Mb's to approximately 100Mb's which is comparable to the data rate of DVCProHD. So you will need to make sure you have sufficient I/O bandwidth. It appears that both of these codecs have much better image quality with a smaller data footprint compared to DVCProHD and arguably comparable to uncompressed.

I'm hoping to have the opportunity to test both of these codecs soon. There is a third option and that is to use the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). It works well with FCP but just like the other two codecs mentioned it significantly increases the data rate but it is a 4:2:0 8bit codec. I'm not sure why Apple would have created such a codec unless it was to enable people to edit HDV until FCP could edit HDV natively.

Editing HDV natively is a bad idea, it is 4:2:0 8bits and no matter what you do, it must render to calculate where the edit point is in relation to the I-frame in the GOP. This can take a really long time.

Editing HD(V) is relatively new to all NLE's and unlike DV, which was ubiquitous and everyone pretty much edited it the same way there is no “one-size-fits-all” work flow for HD. Where I’ve noticed most people having a difficult time editing HDV is when they try to edit it the same as DV. Yes from an interface perspective it may appear similar, but HD is more like film than it is like SD/DV and if you’re going to edit with different codecs then you’re also working in more of an IT environment than a video one. Which again is the topic for yet another thread.