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More Hard Drive questions
Earlier people had mentioned other video storage solutions for SD and HD. I think I have the the differences down as far as compression goes but what about drive speed? I noticed if you go with internal hd’s the drives are SATA and 7200rpm, if you go with the XRaid they are UATA but still 7200rpm. I thought 7200 was unacceptable for video storage as the seek times are too slow and can lead to errors with editing. Furthermore the XRaid’s 7200 matches some of the other solutions so what exactly is uncompressed HD used for? I’m noticing more people seem to be content with HDV and HDDVcpro but then there is uncompressed HD. From what I can see the Panny HPX500 only shoots dvcprohd, dvcpro and dvcpro50 (this one I’m not familier with. If this is the case do I really need external drives?
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10 Replies
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[Chris] “I thought 7200 was unacceptable for video storage “
We’ve been using 7200 rpm for years.
Uncompressed HD needs a multiple drive raid to playback. It isn’t for everyone or every project. But some projects/clients need to have the absolute best quality that they can get. That’s when people use uncompressed.
Many, many cow users don’t need it and they finish in other formats like DVCPROHD, HDV, or DVCPRO50 (DV50 is for standard definition) or even other formats.
-Russ
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I guess I’m used to Avid drives which are faster and Avid always seemed to pound it into you that 7200 was unacceptable.
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Chris,
From your post no one really has a clue what your ultimate goals are, and it sounds like you are just wrapping your head a lot of this stuff anyway. So, my advice to you is, put three Hitachi SATA 500gb hard drives inside your new MacPro and stripe them together. You can get them from Newegg for just $120 each. The are great hard drives and with three striped your system will do everything except uncompressed HD. Thats a $360 investment that will always be useful. If you decide later that you absolutely must finish uncompressed at your facility then invest the many thousands of dollars additional when you understand more.
David
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles -
[David Roth Weiss] “put three Hitachi SATA 500gb hard drives inside your new MacPro and stripe them together.”
Hey David,
I did just that (well, four 250GB Hitachi SATA II drives actually) when I got my G5 and they’ve been rock solid. One disappointment I had was that the Hitachi SATA II drives came set to SATA I, and the only way to reset them was with a dos utiity which I couldn’t run. Do you know if that’s still the case with Hitachi drives?
Thanks,
David -
[David Smith] “the only way to reset them was with a dos utiity which I couldn’t run. Do you know if that’s still the case with Hitachi drives?”
Honestly can’t answer that. There is a new generation of Hitachis out now, but I don’t know if they’ve change that. The reason it exists is because you can run 1.5gb/s drives on a 3.0gb/s controller, but the opsosite won’t work. So, at least everyone can get them up and running.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles -
Like I said I’ve been editing SD for years since Sony tried to have a system called the ES3. Back in the day things didn’t change so fast as they do now. My Avid system that was once 30k and near the top is now worth 7k if I’m lucky and near the bottom. HD has moved in quicker than I thought it was going to so I’m just trying to at least future proof myself better than where I’m at now.
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It would probably help to tell you guys what direction I’m going in. After doing events, weddings, etc. for many years I’ve been fortunate to have worked on a few documentaries, a number of commercials, freelanced on a number of pro projects and freelanced with ESPN for the past year. So now I have made some good connections and I plan on moving away from the weddings and such into more commercials, corporate and other higher end projects. Inevedably people are going to ask for HD so I’m trying to future proof myself now instead of waiting until its too late.
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Well with a three drive RAID in you Mac Pro, you should be fine editing all flavors of HD except for uncompressed. Get a Kona card or the new IO HD and you’ll be able to use ProRes as an alternative to uncompressed.
-Russ
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Russ,
Thanks for the reply. On the Apple site when you configure the MacPro you can throw in up to four different sized drives. Knowing that to stripe RAID they have to be the same size I should just go with four 750’s then?? Or just one 500 for the programs and such and three 750’s. I’m already planning on the new IoHD, I have dealt with AJA before and they are fantastic. -
Technically, Apple’s Disc Utility doesn’t care about having the same size drives for a RAID, but I would suggest it as you have.
I wouldn’t buy the drives through Apple as they are typically over priced. Just get the system drive that you want, then add in 750s or 1TBs.
-Russ
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