Firewire 800 & Vegas
 

Thinking about purchasing an external Firewire 800 case for a fast (7200 rpm, ATA-100) 120 GB (or higher) hard drive. I know that it will require a Firewire 800 PCI card. I'm hoping that it will provide a faster, sustained flow of information to use with Vegas 4.0 (and other audio editing software that I use). First off, anyone using the Firewire 800 (800mbs/sec)?? If so, any significant performance issues using such a device with the Vegas program?? Finally, any recommendations for manufacturer??

If you use such a device, do you notice an performance improvement with Vegas (and video editing as a whole) over a regular Firewire 400 type of device??

Thank you ahead of time! :)

Ted

Haven't tried one yet but HAVE used a standard firewire drive. Would be interested in hearing the results of your testing if you decide to get one.

<<<-- Originally posted by Edward Troxel : Haven't tried one yet but HAVE used a standard firewire drive. Would be interested in hearing the results of your testing if you decide to get one. -->>>

I have a "regular" firewire drive as well. Sadly, it seems to be failing me. It kicks on and off, on and off, on and off. The external firewire case is made by ADS Technologies (and I think the 120 GB drive is a Western Digital). I want to get any new external firewire case (from another company, at this point) and transfer the information from the current external hard drive to the new one before the entire drive system is completely lost. (As it stands, it's stable for about a few hours at a time, then it ADS Technologies IEEE1394 system goes bonkers.)

In the meanwhile, while looking on the internet for new and different IEEE 1394 hard drive cases, I came across the Firewire 800 type external casings. They handle ATA-100, 7200rpm type of drives with what appears to be stable sustainable data transfers. But before I spend the $$$$, I seek second and third opinions. . . . especially with stability with the Vegas 4.0e program.

In the meanwhile, I'm hoping that my ***CURRENT*** ADS Technologies external IEEE 1394a device doesn't fail me completely. . . :(

Sigh. . . .

Ted

I've been seeing the same thing from my Dual Firewire/USB2 box from ADS. It happens in both USB and Firewire modes. You get a click as the heads on the drive are seated and you can no longer get data from it. Then you have to power down the drive, unplug it, power on, and plug it back in. Really annoying.

Well... I definitely wouldn't anticipate and PROBLEMS with Vegas. I'd just like to know if the access is faster. I could tell an immediate difference on a 3 camera edit between the internal 5400rpm and the firewire 7200rpm drives.

I don't anticipate problems either
 

I don't anticipate any problems with the Vegas program either if I get a Firewire 800 type of external drive system. I'm just not sure if my older Dell Precision 420 Workstation can fully utilized this type of drive to its fullest potential.

For now, I think I'll get a regular Firewire 400 external drive. . . from a different company. ;)

Thanks the input, everyone.

Happy Holidays :)

Ted

Internal drives are faster and cheaper, but that may not be practical in this case.

On Macs FW800 drives are virtually the same speed as internal drives and a lot faster than FW400 drives. Some people encounter problems using FW400 drives.

On PCs internal drives are a lot faster than FW400 drives. Not sure how fast FW800 drives are.

where can one get a fw800 pci card for PCs?

<<<-- Originally posted by Joe Carney : where can one get a fw800 pci card for PCs? -->>>

I'm purchasing mine from the following company:

http://www.firewire-1394.com

This is the particular brand & typed of external firewire HD setup I'm purchasing:

http://www.firewire-1394.com/smart-hard-drives.htm

Here's some info in the FW800 pci cards & drives:

http://www.firewire-1394.com/firewire-800-1394b-products.htm

Hope this is helpful! :)

In the meanwhile, I purchased a Maxtor USB 2.0 based external 120 GB hard disk drive (7200rpm, ata100). (Sadly, the local Staples store didn't have any Firewire-based external HD setups.) I'm backing up my failing IEEE1394 drive as we speak because I just don't trust it to last much longer. So far, so good!

What's sad is that up until these past few days. I have've not any problems with the ADS Technologies IEEE 1394a drive. But it's getting worse and worse. . . YIKES! I'm hoping that I can still salvage the hard drive within the casing. If not, at least it's backed-up. Hopefully I'll be able to switch the drive numbers around without much hassle.

97.5% of the time, things run smoothly. I can record & edit audio and video projects for hours and hours. It's that 2.5% of the time that when things go bad, they go really freakin' bad.

In regards to using the Vegas program with my current set-up: Near flawless! Except for this nerve-wracking 2.5% of the time!

Ted

P. S. One thing I've learned is that one can not have enough HD drives doing video editing! And. . . back-up, back-up, backup!Yikes!

Same thing here---the ADS cases are very unreliable--but dont lose faith--in both cases where my cases failed, the drives were intact and readiable. ADS should get there act together.

Do USB2 drives work for video editing? I haven't heard of anyone using them successfully.

At least Staples has a refund policy...?

USB 2 drives have problems with sustained read (playback) and write (capture). They are fine for average computing, but the strains of editing can cause dropped frames on capture and stutter on playback.

I've switched to FW800 external drives - all LaCie - after trying one. They are noticeably faster than FW400. The first card I bought was from www.firewiredirect.com, and the second was a LaCie. Both went into Dell PCs with no problems. I also use FW800 for networking the PCs together.

I capture into Vegas using a 4-9 pin connector between a DSR-11 and a FW800 card. No problems.

Best,
Helen

I hope the busses in your system can cope with the data flow.
I'm not sure what the gain is here if you are not going to use
a striped RAID set. I mean, to my knowledge no IDE harddisk
can get you 80 MB/s or more then 40 MB/s (max of firewire 400)
as well.

Then again I do have the feeling that most current firewire
controllers aren't running at 400 mbps or that efficient. But
that is just a "feeling" at the moment.

Current IDE hard drives run at max (beginning area of the disk) 65 MB/s (apr.)

IEEE1394a interface limits drive's speed to just under 40mB/s.

If you look a graph of such drive it will be flat 35MB/s in 2/3 of the disk space then fall off with normal curve to about 25 as it would if it was interanl IDE drive.

I guess the 1394b (800MBps) standard will give headroom for this limitation and the drive should be operated at full potential.

I just configured my new FireVue External S*M*A*R*T IEEE1394a devise with a Western Union 120 GB HD (7,200 rpm; ATA100). What's interesting about this particular device is that it has its own LED read out of how the HD drive is doing, like how many MB's/sec it's running, etc.

Trust me, I'm no expert about any of this stuff. . . but I did read the manual before putting everything together! :D

So. . . . for giggles I put an avi file on the the new firewire based HD and let Vegas play it back. No effects were added. According to the FireVue's LED read out (and assuming that it was accurate), I was getting between 18 to 20 MB's/sec. with no effects.

When I ran a full video project complete with basic audio and video effects (nothing too fancy), the FireVue's LED was indicating that about 5 to 6 MB's/sec of digital information was flowing from the hard disk drive.

I guess my poor, aging Pentium III 733 mhz Dell Workstation has lots of "bottle neck" areas to slow down the video editing process.

But. . . I'm happy. At least for now, I have what appears to be a dependable firewire drive again for my audio/video projects! And it even lets me know just how slow my computer can get! (chuckle!)

With regards to a Firewire 800 device (IEEE1394b). My aging computer's PCI slots would not utilize such a device to its fullest potential. I guess the makers of the Firewire 800 devices recommend a 64-bit/33 mhz PCI slot in order to get the best performance. My computer only has 32-bit/33mhz PCI slots.

Oh!!! Having a newer, faster computer that can fully utilize a Firewire 800 device housing an ATA-133, 7,200 rpm to use with my Vegas software would be very, very sweet! Such a device should make Vegas all the more funner to use! And just in case you didn't know, Vegas 4 is one of my prized software programs!! ;)


Ted

I doubt the increase would be that significant without a striped
RAID set or a SCSI drive. But that ofcourse can only be proven
by tests.

As you pointed out the CPU is primarely the bottle neck here
since it has to do all the work. I think most harddisks can transfer
the footage faster then the NLE can handle because it has to do
a lot of things.

DV is 3.6 MB/s. So even with a 20 MB/s (and I am talking sustained
here which is a very different thing then max throughput!) you
should be able to have 5 streams (or perhaps 4 with taking
extra overhead into account). So I'm still not seeing what you
would want such a fast harddisk for normal DV work.

Now if you are using uncompressed footage somewhere in
your process etc. then it will be a different ballgame all together.

I'm learning as I go, Rob. A RAID set up, right now, seems very foreign to me. I don't even know how it works or what its benefit would be.

BUT! I'm willing to learn! ;)

Financially, I'm little away from purchasing my next computer system. When that time comes, I will consider a RAID set up. Financially, for an even longer while, I'm "stuck" in the DV world. And for me, it is a happy world to be.

Guess I have more reading/research to do. :)

Until then. . . I'm happily using my current system which, up until recently, was doing just fine for me. ;)

Thanks for the information, Rob. I learn so much here! :)

And now that my current IEEE1394 problem is solved with a new unit. . . it's back to my projects! :)

Ted

Just to be very clear, why are you considering a RAID system
when you don't fully understand what it is? I don't think anybody
who works with only DV would need a RAID system for performance.

Using RAID for safety (as in mirroring or parity) is a whole
different thing and can be very good to have if you don't want
to loose anything.

I'm not sure if there are RAID setup for firewire yet. BUT,
perhaps you can get it to work with software RAID in Windows
XP. Otherwise there are IDE RAID cards from both Promise
and Adaptec.

<<Just to be very clear, why are you considering a RAID system
when you don't fully understand what it is? I don't think anybody
who works with only DV would need a RAID system for performance.>>


Part of the joy of doing what I'm doing with video is learning. Music and video . . . and learning how to use all of this new stuff. . . is my tension relieving hobby from a tough night's work at an ICU/CCU.

I said that I would "consider" a RAID system, not run out to the store and buy one tomorrow. I'm at least a year or so away from purchasing a new computer system (maybe sooner if I build my own, which I'm also "considering".) In the meanwhile, I am going to happily use my normally very stable and very functional (and aging) computer set up that I now OWN.

And thanks to our little conversation, I'm going to take it upon myself to learn about RAID. The operative word, here, is "learn". To me, "the learning" is an important part of the computer-base audio & video recording/editing world which brings me such joy.

Rob, I do want to thank you for taking the time to provide me with information on RAID. Please be patient with this "student" as he stumbles his way through this wonderful world of video editing.

Peace! :)

Ted

Testing 2 different hard drives (a WD 80GB 8MB cache) versus a Quantum Fireball (20GB, quite old), I saw a 2% difference in rendering Vegas' CC filter. Crippling one of the drives (set it in PIO instead of DMA mode), it took about 2.5X times as long to render.

It seems like a faster hard drive will help very slightly with rendering speeds. I haven't tried other filters where the difference may be a lot less than 2%. My test might have problems since my motherboard is old and might be limiting the speed of the faster drive.

If the hard drive is a bottleneck then performance will be seriously degraded.

RAID- if your motherboard has a built-in RAID controller then it *might* be worth it to use RAID. Buying a RAID controller isn't worth the money. The slight gain in performance will be offset by the unreliability of RAID 0. RAID 0 = more performance, less reliability. RAID 1 = more or less performance, more reliability, less capacity.

Keep in mind that you wouldn't notice a 2% difference in speed. However, if you combine 2% with other improvements then you may notice a very slight improvement in speed.

Thank you!
 

I want to thank everyone for their input to this thread I started. I'm normally a lurker here. I learn a lot from your collective wisdom. However, every so ofter I post a question or two here. I am never disappointed by the responses.

Peace to you all! :)

Ted

Hello Folks,

I'm in the research mode myself for a larger faster hard drive. I have an onboard serial ATA connection but don't know much about it. The intel board that i am using has onboard sound, LAN, and IEEE 1394 controllers that have been perfect, if the SATA connection is anything like the rest of the board, using it should be easy. My question is that this thread hasn't discussed SATA much, is it because it's not liked, it's slow, or it's not on your board. Also Does anyone know the speed of SATA and pros/cons of attatching hard drive using SATA.

Thanks
Donny

Or, it could be that SATA hasn't been discussed because the thread was about external firewire drives.

I'm sure the SATA connections would be fine for adding an internal drive.

I"m hoping that external SATA drive connections become standard on Laptops.