eSATA performance?

[Tom Brooks]

Just curious, is the read also faster now? Seems like it might be the same with RAID-1 but write would be much faster.

[Tom Matthies]

It’s set up as a RAID 0 configuration. Right now, the read & write times are very similar-around 120MB.sec.
It’s handling DVCProHD footage right now…but just barely.
This is my home editing system, but I’m going to have to invest in something a little more robust since HD has come into the picture.
Tom

[Russell Lasson]

[Tom Matthies] “It’s handling DVCProHD footage right now…but just barely. “

120MB/sec is just barely handling DVCPROHD? How many streams are you trying to play back at once? DVCPROHD at the most is only about 16MB/sec. 120MB/sec should handle it with ease.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Universal Post
Ridgeline Digital Cinema Mastering
Salt Lake City, UT

[Tom Matthies]

It’s playing back without dropping any frames but the two activity lights are on almost constantly. So far, I haven’t imported the footage into FCP. I was given the clips on a drive and copied them over to one of my local drives for editing. They were captured thru a Kona3 at 1920×1080. I was told they were DVCPro HD codec but I haven’t examined the real format yet. I’ll take a closer look at them tonight and see for sure. It seems that the drives are working pretty hard for DVCPro HD clips.
Tom

[Russell Lasson]

Flashing lights aren’t a good indicator of how hard the drive is working. It really is just saying that the drive is working. Sustained playback of just about any footage will cause the lights to blink.

If you want to really test the drives, open up several different files in QuickTime Player and see many files you can playback with out having the video stutter. Or put several clips in FCP an try it.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Universal Post
Ridgeline Digital Cinema Mastering
Salt Lake City, UT

[Tom Matthies]

That’s the plan for tonight. I just got the footage delivered yesterday and I copied it over to the RAID. When I opened a clip in QT player, I was surprised that the playback was stalling. That’s what lead to the whole thing. After I found that I had RAIDed the drives incorrectly,(duh) I copied everything off of the RAID onto another drive, stripped the drives together and then this morning I left the machine on to copy the rest of the clips back to the RAID. I’ll look into it more closely tonight when I get back to the project.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Evening update for Russell:

Got home and stacked six streams of DVCPro HD on a single timeline, scaled the clips down and had no problem playing it back without rendering. The drives seemed to keep up without any problems.
I guess that I underestimated them.
Tom

[Tom Matthies]

Actually that would be six streams of the DV50 version of the footage.
The drives were chugging on only two streams of the HD version.

In looking at the footage, I was told that it was DVCPro HD. In fact, it is 10-bit uncompressed at 1920×1080 23.98fps!
“It is??! It’s not supposed to be!…Hmmm” was the response I got back from the producer.

Just slightly different data rate than Pro HD…
Fortunately its a mostly single layer, cuts only edit with a graphic tag.
The saga continues…sheesh.
Tom

[Russell Lasson]

[Tom Matthies] “In fact, it is 10-bit uncompressed at 1920×1080 23.98fps! “

It’s a good thing you got your drives working then. Even then, you’re cutting it close if you’re only getting 120MB/sec as 10-bit uncompressed 1080P at 23.98 is about 132MB/sec.

You could always make offline DVCPROHD 720P version of the footage, edit, then reconnect to the uncompressed footage when you’re done.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Universal Post
Ridgeline Digital Cinema Mastering
Salt Lake City, UT

[Tom Matthies]

That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Along with the HD files, they included the same footage only at DV50. I’ll cut the spot in DV50 then Media Mangle it and conform it using the HD files. The drives are holding up but they are working hard.
Time to look at a more robust RAID solution.
Maybe the topic of a future post.
Tom