COW Reviews: CalDigit: S2VR HD

[Dan Riley]

Great article Bob.
A question if I may:

If you go to the CalDigit site, it says 450MB/s in the performance mode ( I assume
this is RAID O ) and 250MB/s in the protected mode (assuming this might be
RAID 5 ?). Your review numbers are in the 200s and above for all the systems.
Were your tests all done in protection mode? Or am I reading their ad wrong?

Thanks,
Dan

[Shane Ross]

The CalDigit drive units do not do Raid 5. They do RAID 1, which is mirrored protection. Meaning that the media that is captured is stored on two drives, or partitions, at the same time. So if one fails, you have a backup. Since this is a 5 drive unit, I believe that you can only use this option with four of the drives, but Bob might know better than I.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

[Danrnw] “If you go to the CalDigit site, it says 450MB/s in the performance mode ( I assume
this is RAID O ) and 250MB/s in the protected mode (assuming this might be
RAID 5 ?). Your review numbers are in the 200s and above for all the systems.
Were your tests all done in protection mode? Or am I reading their ad wrong?”

You’re looking at the wrong unit. You’re looking at the new HD 4:4:4 unit. Bob reviewed the S2VR HD, which is the same unit we run here.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Dan Riley]

so the 444 unit is also in the S2VR series?
I didn’t understand that from the naming sequence.

So Walter, you use the 5 drive unit, and like it?
Doesn’t seem like enough storage for HD.
Do you find 3.5 TB to be enough?

Dan

[Walter Biscardi]

[Danrnw] “So Walter, you use the 5 drive unit, and like it?
Doesn’t seem like enough storage for HD.
Do you find 3.5 TB to be enough?”

Love it, I reviewed the S2VR Duo and immedialy ordered the HD after that test was over. Excellent purchase. 3.75 is enough for the one suite so far, we have 2.5TB in the second suite and about 2TB in the third suite. We might add a 4:4:4 unit after NAB

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Shane Ross]

I have 2.5 TB for my DVCPRO HD editing. That is plenty for over 100hours of full res DVCPRO HD.

I’d never edit uncompressed HD as on offline anyway…I have that for onlining as it takes up so much space. 3.5 TB is plenty for a feature film using the uncompressed 10-bit setting. Again, online only. I don’t know anyone who offlines uncompressed HD.

Oh, and I too am reviewing the S2VR Duo unit, with plans to get the S2VR unit when this project is over. It is just too darn good.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Dan Riley]

So Shane, you offline DVCPRO HD?
Is this common? Do others do this as well?
Seems like a decent idea.
(just gathering workflow and hardware info for our change to HD in a few months).
I offline in DV now for my SD uncompressed projects.

Thanks,
Dan

[Shane Ross]

[Danrnw] “So Shane, you offline DVCPRO HD?”

Uhm…sorta. That is the online resolution as well. I capture Varicam footage via firewire at full resolution and import Panasonic P2 footage at full resolution and edit it all at full resolution. 720p24 running at 23.98, so it only takes up 23GB/hour…less than double what DV takes. A lot of that is the 7 less frames per second. So I edit at this resolution and then use the Kona 3 card to upconvert it to 1080p 23.98 when we output to D5 or HDCAM.

[Danrnw] “Is this common? Do others do this as well?”

Yes. Walter Biscardi does this as well. As does Gary Adcock I believe. Three heads at the top of this forum. And many more. This is common practice. Others also (Walter included) capture HDV as DVCPRO HD and work with that. Or conversely, people will DOWNCONVERT to DVCPRO HD and use that as an offline codec for their HDCAM SR masters, or DPM (viper) footage.

I blog about my workflow and address current issues all the time. Click on Underdog.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[Walter Biscardi]

[Shane Ross] “Yes. Walter Biscardi does this as well. As does Gary Adcock I believe. Three heads at the top of this forum. And many more. This is common practice. Others also (Walter included) capture HDV as DVCPRO HD and work with that.”

Absolutely, we have been using a full DVCPro HD workflow for over two years now for HD Broadcast work. Most of our material is originated in DVCPro HD so that’s an easy decision. The HDV material we convert to DVCPro HD through the AJA Kona 3 during ingest. We master back out to DVCPro HD via our 1200A deck. It’s a beautiful codec.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Dan Riley]

You master out your project at DVCPRO HD?
So this is an acceptable format for your cable network client?
That’s good news. I guess I had been reading there were issues
with DVCPRO HD as a finishing format. Kinda like BetaSP to acquire
and DigiBeta to finish. Not a good analogy with DVCPRO HD to D5
for instance?

dr