Firewire drives, mirroring and editing

[David Roth weiss]

[Matt Campbell] “will mirroring them slow down my realtime limits?”

Yes.

Raid1 is specifically designed for those who require redundant backup without the need for performance.

So, the choice is simple, if you’re a professional back-up artist use Raid1. If you’re a professional video editor use Raid0, Raid5, or Raid6.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Matt Campbell]

Thanks but I’m sorry I forgot to mention that at home I’m only using an iMac G5. I’m basically using it for a demo reel and DVD creation. I use my work computer and my Ciprico RAID 0 for the heavy lifting. I just want to be able to edit together reels and such having the piece of mind knowing everything is being backed up as I work. Performance is not an issue but I want to make sure the mirrored Firewire drives will be able to handle the DVCPro50 or DVCProHD footage. I know 1 drive will but I’m worried about mirroring them.

Thanks

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[Pat Mcgowan]

So what is it RAID 0, 5 or 6?

I know you’ll give me the right answer.

[David Roth weiss]

[Pat McGowan] “So what is it RAID 0, 5 or 6? “

The choice depends on your hardware and your need for backup, or your need for mission critical backup. Raid 0 has no backup, Raid 5 keeps chugging and rebuilds itself when one drive fails, and Raid 6 keeps chugging and rebuilds even if two drives fail.

In your case Pat, with four drives and a CalDigit raid card, Raid 5 is probably just fine. It comes at small cost in terms of overall performance and you lose about 20% of your overall storage space, but you gain piece of mind.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Steve Eisen]

And the time you took to post this this, you could have Googled and gotten your answer.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[David Roth weiss]

[Matt Campbell] “Performance is not an issue but I want to make sure the mirrored Firewire drives will be able to handle the DVCPro50 or DVCProHD footage. I know 1 drive will but I’m worried about mirroring them. “

Matt,

You’re looking at this all wrong brother. To those of us who spend 8, 10, 12, sometimes 18 hours a day editing, there’s more to life than meeting the minimum requirements to handle a specific codec. Having the overhead to edit multiple video layers, multiple audio tracks, transitions with realtime performance is what you do all day, every day — backing up can be done manually in just matter of minutes.

So, if you aspire to become a backup artist and you want to throw performance out the window in favor of the least efficient performance-sapping automatic media backup, then go with Raid 1.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Matt Campbell]

Thanks David. Your right, I should stick with performance vs. mirroring the 2 drives. With a G5 iMac, I’m already lacking the muscle that I have at the office. No need to slow that even more. I can back up manually and thats actually what I do everyday in the office. My Ciprico RAID 0 gets backed up every night to an external Firewire drive and upon job completion, it goes up on our network.

Thanks for your help. I’m going to stick with what I know.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card

[David Roth weiss]

Glad to see I made my point Matt. You won’t be sorry… Unless of course you forget to backup… then you’ll probably want to blame me. 🙂

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Matt Campbell]

Hey thanks. Appreciate the help.

OS 10.5.5, Mac Pro 2 x 3 ghz quad-core intel xenon, 9 gb ram, with BM Intensity Pro card