FCP 7 / Multitrack on Yosemite?

[Michael Brown]

Nick, just FYI and to the benefit of other multitrack editors who have financial aspects to consider before going for expensive raid solutions:

I followed your advice on some of the footage, downrezzed it to ProRes Proxy 1280×720, hence creating a new project that I called my Proxy version:

It works very well with up to 7 cams in 9-angles, very smoothly, no bogs or hiccups, RT set to safe and dynamic, all on a single 4TB USB3 external drive! I have the Canvas on full-screen mode above me on a 32″ LG monitor, my tools and TL to my left on the 23″ NEC, and my 9-angle viewer on the right on the 27″ iMac (close and big enough to work comfortably from).

Re-importing the TL to another project and reconnecting is child’s play, and the Proxy footage weighs in at less than a third of the ProRes LTs.

This is a very satisfactory compromise, even if you have to give your Mac the 15 hrs to re-compress the media. It’s worth it.

Nonetheless, I’ll be getting 2 2TB internal drives tomorrow and I’m going to try to rack them up in an ICY BOX 2-bay Raid 0 array – this was my affordable option.

Thanks all for so much helpful advice, will keep you posted.

Best from the learner’s corner 😉

Michael Brown

[Roger Poole]

Hi Walter, whilst what you are saying is maybe correct, things are a little different with the Mac OS and SSD’s. As far as I can understand, the Mac OS, particularly Yosemite, disables the trim function on third party SSD’s and this leads to premature failure. Apple certified SSD’s and fusion drives are ok but in Michael’s situation where he might buy a “Lacie” external SSD for instance, he would have to be sure that it is Mac qualified. That may be a sticking point.

[Walter Soyka]

[Roger Poole] “As far as I can understand, the Mac OS, particularly Yosemite, disables the trim function on third party SSD’s and this leads to premature failure.”

You can enable trim on third-party SSDs with Yosemite 10.10.4 and higher:
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/07/01/os-x-trim-ssd/

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Roger Poole]

Interesting, thanks for the link. It sounds good in the main article but reading further down it seems things are not quite so simple. For now, I’ll be using spinning disks for storage for the foreseeable future, they are big, reliable and cheap.

[Christopher Mcdonell]

[Roger Poole] “I checked out the Lacie 4tb thunderbolt and the specs suggest speeds around those you are experiencing. “

I’ve come to defend the honour of the Lacie 2Big 4TB drive, which I happen to own. First of all, there are indeed 2 drives in there running at 7200 rpm’s. Secondly, Michael’s read/write speeds are in fact slower than they should be. Connected directly to my rMBP with thunderbolt, I’m getting up to 285 MB/s for both read & write. It fluctuates from about 260 up. Here’s a screen grab:

My specs: FCP 6.0.6, El Capitan, rMBP 15″ i7 2.6 GHz, 16 GB RAM

[Bobby Hall]

Thanks for the info Walter! I have a mid-2015 retina MacBook Pro with 512 GB of flash storage. Do you know how long that computer’s hard drive can last in terms of moving large amounts of data on and off it?

[Michael Brown]

Nick, just FYI and to the benefit of other multitrack editors who have financial aspects to consider before going for expensive raid solutions:

I followed your advice on some of the footage, downrezzed it to ProRes Proxy 1280×720, hence creating a new project that I called my Proxy version:

It works very well with up to 7 cams in 9-angles, very smoothly, no bogs or hiccups, RT set to safe and dynamic, all on a single 4TB USB3 external drive! I have the Canvas on full-screen mode above me on a 32″ LG monitor, my tools and TL to my left on the 23″ NEC, and my 9-angle viewer on the right on the 27″ iMac (close and big enough to work comfortably from).

Re-importing the TL to another project and reconnecting is child’s play, and the Proxy footage weighs in at less than a third of the ProRes LTs.

This is a very satisfactory compromise, even if you have to give your Mac the 15 hrs to re-compress the media. It’s worth it.

Nonetheless, I’ll be getting 2 2TB internal drives tomorrow and I’m going to try to rack them up in an ICY BOX 2-bay Raid 0 array – this was my affordable option.

Thanks all for so much helpful advice.

Michael Brown

[Roger Poole]

Chris, thanks for the info. Those are impressive speeds for a two disk raid. The info I found was for a single disk Lacie. Hopefully Michael has the single disk model which would account for the slower speed he is experiencing.

Here the year is 2010 and has been for quite a while, so Thunderbolt has not been invented yet. :o)

[Michael Brown]

That’s precisely the case, Roger. I purchased the 2-bay ICY BOX Raid enclosure and I’m waiting for the 2 WD disks to arrive, and I’ll check the speeds and keep you posted. At any rate, rezzing down to Proxy 1280×720 really did the trick with only 1 disk! Very smooth working, and the picture so more than good enough for editing 6 or 7 angles, also in 25 fps which makes the big difference.

Michael Brown

[Roger Poole]

Good to know you are making headway Michael. I’m a big fan of WD black series drives. I have a 4 disk box containing 4 WD Blacks which lasted 5 years until one drive dropped out about six months ago. Now just sitting there as I should change all the disks, but they served me well. FYI Drives with fractional spin speeds such as 7210 don’t RAID well.

keep us posted.