4k editing playback

[Andy Patterson]

If you are editing 4K R3D files or Pro Res the average hard drive will not allow you to speed up the video by much. A RAID would be needed. Having said that you should be able to playback several layers with several effects with your setup if the hard drive has enough throughput.

[Jon Doughtie]

If by “one SSD” you mean only one drive in the system, period (meaning you are playing media off the same drive with your OS and apps) you will be fortunate to get much playback at all.

You will, as Andy mentioned, a separate RAID spec’d for the throughput your media requires.

System:
Dell Precision T7600 (x2)
Win 7 64-bit
32GB RAM
Adobe CC 2015.02 (as of 6/2016)
256GB SSD system drive
4 internal media drives RAID 5
Typically cutting short form from HD MP4 and P2 MXF.

[Andrew Soto]

thank you for your reply!

Okay so basically it comes down to needing to improve my drive setup. Do you have a recommendation of what drives I should start to buy for a raid setup for video editing? 5400 or 7200 rpm?

I am on a bit of a budget so I’m hoping I can just start to buy a drive at a time here and there but I want to make sure I’m on the right track when I do.

Thank you!!

[Andy Patterson]

Six 7200 PRM HD should work well. If you want you could stripe together more (16).

You will probably want to get a SAS RAID Card. The SAS can work with regular SATA drives. Some SAS RAID cards come with the cable but some do not. There are also external RAID controller options but they will cost more money.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2F859D1860

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6703JY7744

[Chris Borjis]

I have very fast pci express direct connected raid storage
to a 2009 mac pro with 32gb of ram and an NVIDIA GTX 670 gpu.

From my experience I can say I’ve never had full res 4k playback smooth unless it was a single track
with no f/x applied.

You’d likely need the massively faster speed of an SSD raid to get reliable smooth full
resolution 4k playback in premiere.

[Andy Patterson]

[Chris Borjis] “to a 2009 mac pro with 32gb of ram and an NVIDIA GTX 670 gpu.”

A GTX 670 is not the best GPU for 4K. Also the CPU from 2009 would be outdated by today’s standards. In your case it probably is not the fault of the hard drive why you cannot playback 4K at full resolution. Unless you output to a 4K client monitor 4K at 1/2 resolution or even 1/4 resolution will still look great.

[Jeff Pulera]

Hi Andrew,

I’m in total agreement that you must get the video off the C: drive and onto a fast, dedicated media drive. However, you should not need 6 – or 16 – drives ????

Please tell us what type of 4K footage – from what camera? I shoot 4K with a Sony PXW-X70 and the .mxf files are only 100mbps and will play back just fine off a single 7200-rpm SATA drive. Of course if you have 4K ProRes or RED files or similar, then you would need more robust storage for sure! But if we are talking about highly compressed 4K from a GoPro or consumer/prosumer camcorder or DSLR, those files are pretty light.

My typical PC editing drive setup (internal) would be two 7200-rpm SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration. This can be easily configured in Windows, no RAID controller card needed.

RAID 0 combines the two drives into one – data gets split and is written to both drives at once, basically providing double the speed of writing to a single drive. Two 2TB drives in RAID 0 would give you a single drive letter in Windows, with 4TB capacity. Keep in mind that RAID 0 is not redundant – if either drive fails, you lose ALL data, so you should have a backup plan. Large USB 3.0 “storage” drives are very cheap these days to use for backup (about $100 for 4TB external unit).

Actually, whether using RAID 0 or a single video drive, ALWAYS back up your data! Since we don’t have tapes to keep on the shelf anymore, always have two (or more) copies of the data from your SD cards on different drives before you even begin editing.

What kind of drives? You want high-performance, meaning 7200rpm with 64mb cache. Like Seagate Barracuda or WD Black models. Never use “green” drives, they are low-performance.

You might also look at external RAID storage. I have a 4TB G-RAID from G-Technology, which is an external enclosure with two drives inside. Connects to PC using USB 3.0 and is plenty fast for HD and (compressed) 4K editing. Newer external drives are coming out with USB-C which is faster yet, if your computer supports it. Besides G-Tech, check out Glyph and LaCie, other vendors that make external drives well-suited for media production work.

If you have Thunderbolt 3 on the PC, that will be the fastest connection of all, but the drives will cost more with that option. I should mention that external drives with USB-C connection are backwards-compatible to work with USB 3.0 and will include the USB 3.0 adapter cable.

As the budget increases, there are external RAID units with 4 or 8 or more drives inside. When you get to 4 drives, you can get more RAID options, such as RAID 5 which is popular for video editing. Not as fast as RAID 0, but adds redundancy – if one drive fails, replace it and the data rebuilds, nothing lost.

But knowing that you are on a budget, the two internal drives in RAID 0 is the most economical route to go and have nice performance. If money is really tight and you are working with the compressed 4K, you could get by with a single media drive. Think Glyph Black Box Pro with USB 3.0, G-Drive USB 3.0 from G-Tech, or the d2 USB 3.0 from LaCie for example.

Thanks

Jeff Pulera
Safe Harbor Computers

[Andrew Soto]

Yeah mostly just consumer level 4k like from go pros, drones and I will probably be getting a sony a6500 soon. I currently just have one SSD so I will definitely be getting some 7200 RPM hdd’s soon . Thanks for the detailed response!