HD speed test

[Bob Zelin]

NO – 4 drives currently are not fast enough to do uncompressed HD.

It is disappointing how things get misinterpreted. People say “SATA drives can do uncompressed HD”, and then someone tries to use ONE SATA drive, and fails, and complains that SATA does not work. Cal-Digit is an excellent company, but they do not produce magic tricks. They are the first company that can get 230mb/sec with only 5 drives, but you can’t get these speeds with only 4 drives.

With that said, I just saw a new report on http://www.barefeats.com, where they did a test with a MAC Pro, and used all 4 INTERNAL SATA DRIVES (with Seagate SATA 750 Gig 7200.10 drives) all stripped together, booting off of an external drive, and got these FOUR drives running faster than the Cal-Digit.
Now, I do not recommend running a professional system like this, booting off of an external drive, but it shows you that our business is changing very quickly, and every few months, there are dramatic changes for the better.

In the mean time, you can do 8 and 10 bit uncompressed SD and DVCProHD with your Duo SATA drives, but you will need at least 5 drives, and a Cal-Digit FASTA-4e or 4x to do uncompressed HD.

Bob Zelin

[Dean Decarlo]

Even 4 WD Raptors?

[Bob Zelin]

It is amazing to me how many people who are involved with hi end 1080i HD production, using the most expensive VTR’s on the planet, are so concerned with saving $300 on one disk drive.

Bob Zelin

[Joedully]

It is a matter of being able to scale up systems for more streams for me. I have a budget and want to get the max content out of my investment/shoot… really no different than buying film or tape in my case… Capturing HD direct to disk offers me a 4 camera shoot rather than three if I can afford it. Also, All streams need to be backed up live in real time so the more the better.

[Brett Howe]

After all this interesting drive discussion, I think the key here is….can we have a disk speed test from blackmagic, that will run without the BM hardware? Then we can make the call on our system specs simply…..please blackmagic….you know you want to!

Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd

[Miles Blow]

Hey Bob how does the cal digit compare to the sonnet fusion 500?(i think that was the model you mentioned a while back) That was the ones we were thing of going with in raid 0. And it looked cool cause you could built it with your own sata drives.

Hey we were comfortably working with 8bit hd(prempro2)with our motherboards(a8n32)onboard raid(4x seagate 300gb satas)….it didnt like 10bit hd much …but know we are loveing the new 8bit hd mjpeg format its just like editing dv and looks great up on the dell.

merry christmas !!!

[Bob Zelin]

The 5 drive Cal Digit S2VR is faster than the Sonnet. But if you already own a sonnet, you can add a second chassis, stripe all 10 drives together RAID 0, and do uncompressed HD as well. The Cal Digit is fantastic, however.

Bob Zelin

[Deleted User]

Hello,

I have the Asus A8N32 SLI DELUXE as well. I am looking into the Sonnett 500 and the Caldigit S2VRHD. The Sonnett seems cheaper as opposed to the Caldigit but with the Caldigit on their website it says protected mode as well so that would be better in case of a drive failure. As looing at the Sonnett it only supports Raid 0 a re-seller in London told me so no protection on the units.

Bob do you know if a Caldigit S2VRHD can be in protected mode but still able to capture/playback Uncompressed 8bit and 10 bit 4:2:2 HD, 1280×720 and 1080 with fault protection?

Hope you have a nice Christmas.

Thanks,

Leo

[Miles Blow]

Hi Guys
I looked at the tutorial on the cal digit site it looked like the windows version only supported stripe configuration. Anyone else see that? Yeah i was hopeing that the pxie card will be able to plug into the second graphics slot on the a8n32 ….have you ever seen this done?