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Storage Solutions For Compressed HD Video
Hello,
I work at a small corporate communications company that produces videos. In the last few years our volume has increased to the point where we need to consider options for storing all of the footage we’ve acquired.
We shoot on a Sony EX-1 generally in 720 24p. I edit on a Mac Pro Quad Core 2.66 with 6 gigs of RAM.
I’ve filled two external drives and am rapidly filling the 3 internal drives I’ve installed into my computer. I know better storage solutions exist but I’m not 100% confident choosing one.
At the moment I’m the only one here who needs access to the footage, but I can see the day coming when someone else will need to work on the same files at the same time.
Ideally I’d like to buy something that can be networked and run with final cut server when the day arrives. I don’t think we will ever need to work with any sort of uncompressed HD video in case you’re wondering.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
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4 Replies
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Ryan,
instead of tooting my own horn, why don’t you read thru the posts on this forum for the last month (it will take you about 1 hour, which is a lot less than it will take for you to understand how shared storage works). There are many wonderful manufacturers that talk on this forum, that discuss their cool solutions. Most are advertisers on Creative Cow.Based on your post, this is the #1 thing you need to understand. You are currently spending $200 – $300 for a disk drive, (maybe not even that much) and you need shared storage. No matter what you research, no matter which you think is “cool” or “crappy”, everyone’s solution will ultimately cost you over $15,000, no matter what. And when you find solutions that say “only costs XXXXX” – you will find that this does not include the server, or this, or that, or cabling or installation. If you have over 10 grand to spend on shared storage, let me know, and I will cut to the chase on what you need. But if you have been spending $200 for an internal drive, and now are willing to “move up” to spending 2 or 3 grand for a shared storage solution, well – you can’t have it – not from anyone.
Bob Zelin
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Hi Bob,
Thanks for responding to my post. I’m not at all knowledgeable about this topic so any information is appreciated.
I read through a number of posts and its pointed me in the right direction. I have a few questions about things i read.
1) You have talked about 10 gig Ethernet. Is this a more cost effective solution to a fiber based system? What’s the benefit of installing a 10 gig solution?
2) You also mentioned that there are cheaper 10 gig solutions on the way. Do you have an ETA for this?
I’m asking from a research stand point, not because I read a post about 10 gig Ethernet and now I “know” that’s what I need. The truth is I don’t know very much so I’m trying to wrap my head around all this stuff so I can try and begin to understand what I need and what I don’t need.
Thanks again.
Ryan
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I am seeing questions like yours more and more. You are working with COMPRESSED HD. You don’t need 10 Gig ethernet, you don’t need Fibre channel. Regular “cheapo” ethernet will do just fine, and you can hook up multiple computers, with no site licenses, including iMAC’s and MAC Book Pros. There is NO REASON to try to “future proof” your system, because let me assure you – you, me, or anyone CANNOT future proof your system – Apple and the other manufacturers will make sure of this – you will get 3 – 4 years out of it, and that’s it. Look at all these guys with MAC G5’s and SCSI drive arrays – all dead garbage (but state of the art 4 years ago).
All you need is a simple ethernet based system. You can do ProRes422HQ and DVCProHD all day long with simple ethernet. If you want more details, just let me know, and I will tell you how to do it. You DO NOT need 10 Gig or Fibre channel to accomplish Compressed HD shared storage.
Bo bZelin
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Hi Bob,
I’ve been looking at things for the last few weeks trying to wrap my head around things, and I’m still a little mystified. I appreciate your offer of explaining how to best network my computers and store my data.
I’d like to know what you think is the best solution. I must tell you that I had a conversation with our IT guy and he thought we should add more storage to our existing file server. We have had a PC file server for years, There was a time that we didn’t do video here so the thought never crossed anyone’s mind to use the server for video storage. It’s being used right now to store the print work we do here. We all use Mac’s with OS X if that makes a difference.
I read a more recent post where you mentioned using a mac pro as a dedicated server. Would you suggest we get a new (or used) mac pro and set that up as a separate server, or add more storage to our existing PC server?
Also, I’d like to make this system as fail safe as possible. I’m guessing we should have some sort of RAID configuration involved with this.
Third, I’d like to make sure our footage is safely stored in the event anything happens to it. Would you say backing it up to external drives and storing them off site would be a good idea. USB drive are cheap and plentiful, and I wouldn’t be editing off of them but I thought it would give us a good option for backing up thing that we need to as We are shooting on SXS cards and can’t keep that footage stored forever. Our IT guy suggested we burn all of our footage to Blu-Ray disk? Your thoughts?
Sorry for the length, but I’m trying to find the best solution for our circumstances. Money isn’t an issue I just don’t want to spend money on something we don’t need or something that’s no good.
Thanks,
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