External Drives
 

Currently, I am running a 15" Macbook Pro with FCS 2. The current external drive is a 1TB HD in a external enclosure connected to my computer by eSATA. I would really like to get a MXO2 MINI for laptop for color correction. I am currently having a problem because I am using my express card slot on my laptop for eSATA and I need it to connect the MXO2 MINI.

I thought that maybe connecting my external drive via firewire would help. I started looking into getting a external enclosure that has 1394B to open up my express card slot. Do you think that this will really slow down anything in FCS? For instance, would it slow down render time or have any other effect?

Thanks for your time,
Chris

I occasionally edit on a Firewire external hard drive without a problem. You can always set the render to be done on the internal drive if you like although if you move to another computer you'll need to re-render.

Yeah, I really wish there was a way for me to use both eSATA and use the MXO2 MINI to color grade.

You could get the original MXO which doesn't use the slot, it has pass-through DVI connectors and a USB cable.

I'm not sure the original MXO gives you the level of control required to calibrate your monitor the way the MXO2 does. If it does that might be a good way to go.

How well you can edit from a Firewire attached hard drive depends on the format. If your editing compressed HD - HDV, XDCAM, ProRes (140) you should be fine. You obviously can't edit uncompressed HD or probably not even uncompressed SD and you'd probably only get one or two streams of ProResHQ.

Also not all external FW drives are created equal. You might consider something like this: G-Technology - G-RAID3 - Quad Interface, Dual-Drive RAID Solutions. Its a dual drive RAID for performance with multiple interfaces.

I've even edited off a portable myPassport from WD with a FW800 connection. It worked fine when travelling.
That was xdcam ex 1080 25p footage

And just to prove what works for one, doesn't work for another: my WD myBook 1TB gave up the ghost this month and won't mount via FW400 or USB2.0 so I can put the (non-mission critical) data off of it. Throughput on it was fine, although it spun down if not accessed for 10 minutes (NOT user selectable on the external myBooks.)

I have been editing HDV on several iomega and WD firewire 800 drives for the past year with no problems. Am also using an original MXO. It was designed for use with the 23"Apple Cinema Display (which I think is now discontinued). You can also connect other DVI monitors to it but I don't think they promise color accuracy with them. I guess the MXO 2 uses HDMI? Original MXO doesn't support that.

Yes, I have two monitors I was thinking of using with the MXO2 or MXO. I have a 24" Dell and a 20" LG LCD HDTV. Do you think these will give me good color accuracy?

These are the models it was tested with. I think Dell has made a variety of different 24" monitors, haven't they?

Matrox Video - Support - MXO tested DVI monitors

There's a new technology I've been hearing about called iSCSI. The new DroboPro RAID uses it. (Data Robotics, Inc.) I don't know much about it except that it's fast and that it uses an ethernet connection, so you'd be able to keep using your MXO2. I need to do some more research about the speed of iSCSI and how it compares to other technologies.

OFF TOPIC
The other big attraction toward using the new Drobo Pro is when you someday run out of space on the drive, you can easily swap out the drives for larger versions.

Actually, iSCSI has been around a while. It is integration has been wide with numerous products including our Facilis TerraBlock 12D. I haven't been blow away by its performance as you'd be lucky to get upwards of 80 MB/s- even with 12 drives in RAID config.

FC (Fiber Channel) really leaves iSCSI in the dust- like a four-lane highway vs a two-lane.
When will these guys implement Fiber?
-C

That's too bad. I was hoping they chose iSCSI because it was a good alternative to Fiber. I agree, they'd have a great product if only it was faster. I've got an email into them to clarify some of these and other questions. I'll let you know if something interesting comes of it.