How many HD streams on FCP 5?

[Fred Connors jr.]

David

If I understand your question correctly, it is not true.

We are getting 6+ streams of DVCProHD 24p.

You should be able to do the 2+ streams with the LaCie S2S.

The “guy” may have been confused and was thinking about Uncompressed HD. If this was the case, the LaCei will not do a single stream of HD uncompressed.

Fred

[David Garcia]

Thanks Fred,

I really appreciate the response. What kind of array are you using? And what is the minimum bandwith for 1 stream uncompressed, out of curiosity. We will be doing DVCPROHD, but for edification’s sake I’m curious.

If we up to the 2.5 LaCie do we get up to 4+ streams or do we have to go Fibre Channel or SCSI for that.

By the way, I didn’t name the “guy’s” company because they are a pretty big outfit in New York and I don’t want to unduly cast aspersions if I just misunderstood him (which I kind of figure I did.) I will say the sales rep from LaCie told me his drive would do 10 streams of DVCPROHD but he may have been selling sofas last week for all I know.

Thanks again,

David

[Gary Adcock]

[david garcia] “I ask him How many streams of DVCPRO HD I can get out of a raid that’s clocking 180MB/s. (lacie’s claimed speed) “

David,
720p24 on an 2.5 Dual and an S2S array I get about the same performance with as I do over 320 SCSI, but not as much as I get over a real fibre connection, but for a single user well worth the price difference. (that would be 6 layers on screen with scaling)

1080i60 / 720p60 you should get about 4 (2.5 times as much data means less real time)

I do not know if it was me you were talking to, but a single SATA drive will only do about 2 streams, a array like the S2S has multiple disks and therefore you get better performance.

gary

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[David Garcia]

Hey Gary,

No it was not you I was talking to, but we did take your seminar on the Digital Facility Workflows. Very informative. Thank you.

Does it matter whether we go with the 1.25 gig S2S or the 2.5? I would consider 6 streams to be a minimum. And we’d love to be able to do one stream uncompressed for greenscreens and effects.

I just noticed that PROMAX has an array that looks like two four drive housings together (8 drives) that clocks around 400 MB/s with 2TB for about the same price as the big S2S.

What do think.

Once again I want to thank you guys profusely for the advice.

David

[T. J. shank]

Hi David,

I have the smaller S2S and get 4-5 streams of DVCPro HD. According to the literature, the larger array runs at just about the same speed as the smaller one. For what it’s worth, 2 small S2S raided together clock in excess of 400 mB/sec.

tjs

[Bob Zelin]

Hi David,

I will describe the ProMax array again, as I have done in a post just a few ones from this one down. The ProMax is an excellent array – the products used are the Sonnet Tempo X eSATA 8 port card, with 2 Kano Technologies SATA enclosures and 8 Hitachi SATA drives. ProMax is a great company to deal with, but these are generic products that can be purchased from many sources – probably including your “experts” in NY. There is no software or drivers to install. This array (which we have discussed on this forum many times) CAN do uncompressed HD, but some people (including me) are nervous about the stability of 8 port SATA I configurations. It does work however. I use SATA drives on almost every installation, but also recommend Fibre or SCSI for uncompressed HD.

As far as your “well established firm in NY” – many of these guys have NO IDEA of what they are talking about, and give out incorrect information. Even I give out wrong info, when I am told incorrect info from a manufacturer (I have been guilty of this on this very forum). Forums like this are great, becuase you can get feedback from real life users that have suffered thru the problems, and can relate their experience.

You can do what you want, but given a choice between the ProMax and Lacie, I would personally choose the ProMax array you have seen.

Bob Zelin

[Fred Connors jr.]

David

You are getting great feedback from some of the best “guys” arround.

Now just to throw a monkey into the wrench…

Inorder to use a new Quad Core G5, you will have to wait for AJA to release a KONA-2e, PCI Express KONA2.

When that happens, you will also need a PCIe HBA, Host Bus Adapter.

Also, most current Serial ATA RAIDS offer no data protection at all. And they are have very flimsy serial ATA connections to each enclosure/drive. (See other comments)

You may want to consider a pair of Highpoint RocketRAID 2224 cards. They use a special “Infiniband” connector that is much better for external devices.
https://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr2224.htm

And a pair of Highpoint X4 Raid enclosures, also “Infiniband”, that have controllers with RAID5 protection built in. Then populate the X4s with four 500GB drives each. Create a RAID 5 on each X4 and then software stripe the two into a RAID0.
https://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/x4.htm

Yes they are limited to 4 drives per enclosure, but for under $5,000.00 you can have 3 TB of Raid5 storage with 300MBps+ performance and RAID5 security.

Fred

[Gary Adcock]

[Fred Connors Jr] “norder to use a new Quad Core G5, you will have to wait for AJA to release a KONA-2e, PCI Express KONA2.”

The Kona LH-e is shipping today and is currently the only PCIe card shipping for capture in FCP for the new Mac’s.

[Fred Connors Jr] “Also, most current Serial ATA RAIDS offer no data protection at all. And they are have very flimsy serial ATA connections to each enclosure/drive.”

The S2S array from lacie can be set to run in raid 5 and the cable from my machine to the array is no more
“flimsy” than a FW or SCSI cable is.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Gary Adcock]

[david garcia] “Does it matter whether we go with the 1.25 gig S2S or the 2.5? I would consider 6 streams to be a minimum. And we’d love to be able to do one stream uncompressed for greenscreens and effects. “

Bigger storage will last longer. But are you really talking about needing to have 6 live streams of video
on the screen at all times? thats one very busy piece of video.

Notice also that not once has someone mentioned that the compression / decompression load is really the issue, even with the frame scaling being handled by a kona card the CPU still is handling the file compression and that is what is limiting the number of layers to about 6 in DVCPROHD

I have hit 8 layers on a 4G fibre array on 720p24 8bit.

Gary Adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation
Chicago, IL USA

[Fred Connors jr.]

Gary

Just cause you said so I checked…

LaCie Biggest S2S 2.5TB does not have RAID 5 according to their web site.

https://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10458

Fred