Is my Quad getting old?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Imagine Video] “I also noticed that my system got clogged and I kept getting the dropped frame warning and that I need to buy a faster computer 🙁 I trashed prefs, repaired permissions and it seemed to get better but I still got the occasional warning…”

Nothing to do with your computer, everything to do with your media array. If you’re filling it up,then you will drop frames as all media arrays slow down as they fill up. Usually you don’t see any appreciable difference until 75% full, but once you cross that line, you will definitely see degredation in performance. Especially if you’ve allowed the array to get fragmented.

Get yourself a larger and much faster array and you’ll see improved performance.

[Imagine Video] “Will I experience dramatically faster render times and better overall performance with the Mac Pro’s? (specs of my current system in my signature below)”

Not unless you get an 8 core with a much faster Media array. our G5 Quad and Mac Pro Quad 3.0 run about the same as far as render times.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

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[Jeremy Garchow]

[Imagine Video] “I also noticed that my system got clogged and I kept getting the dropped frame warning and that I need to buy a faster computer :(“

HIlarious. I hate that warning.

Walter is right. What kind of media drives do you have now? Instead of souping up another computer, soup up a nice array. I have a review of the Sonnet D800RAID online at the cow.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/garchow_jeremy/d800.php

Walter has a similar array from MaxxDigital.

Luckily for you, the Quad has a PCIe interface so you can connect to the latest less-expensive-than-fibre-but-just-as-reliable storage technologies.

Also, it has been noted here that rendering motion projects from within FCP causes loooooong render times. It appears to a bug within FCP6/FCS2. Hopefully, it gets fixed.

Jeremy

[Arnie Schlissel]

[Imagine Video] “I placed photo’s and other images over this background and everything had to constantly be rendered.”

Next time, don’t insert the template until you’ve nearly locked your edit. If you didn’t have the template to worry about, you wouldn’t have needed to render as much. Or, you can put your photos over the template, but keep the template’s track turned off.

Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog

[Jay Wolf]

[JeremyG] “What kind of media drives do you have now?”

I’m a little embarrassed to say it’s just a single drive; an ordinary 300 gig Maxtor harddrive- nothing special.
I work with HDV and DV (and without having read your review of the Sonnet: keep getting an error page when I want the printable version) – do I really need a RAID-system or will a larger drive suffice? (I can backup my projects to my current firewire drives.) Or should I just make sure my drive doesn’t fill up beyond 75%, as Walter said?

G5 Quad, 3.5 Gig RAM, OS 10.4.10, FCS 2

[Jeremy Garchow]

Here’s the printer link:

https://library.creativecow.net/print.php?id=946

FCP’s rt is dependent on fast drives to help crunch rt. Without them, your system is profiled as more slow. If there’s no fast drives to write a buffer to, then FCP can’t crunch as fast.

Jeremy

[Jay Wolf]

[Arniepix] “Next time, don’t insert the template until you’ve nearly locked your edit. If you didn’t have the template to worry about, you wouldn’t have needed to render as much. Or, you can put your photos over the template, but keep the template’s track turned off.”

Not a bad idea- I like to see what I’m doing with all the elements in place but I’ll definitely give it a try next time. Thanks.

G5 Quad, 3.5 Gig RAM, OS 10.4.10, FCS 2

[Jay Wolf]

[JeremyG] “FCP’s rt is dependent on fast drives to help crunch rt. Without them, your system is profiled as more slow. If there’s no fast drives to write a buffer to, then FCP can’t crunch as fast.

Jeremy”

I’ve always worked with regular drives in my system- one for the apps and one for the media and very rarely experienced this ‘clogging’.
But I guess my projects are becoming more demanding in terms of graphics. I like the idea of a RAID but 5K is a lot of money for me. My business is growing but not that big- yet!

Can you -or someone else- answer the questions I asked about a larger drive or letting the drive fill up to 75% max?

Or is there some sort of ‘inbetween’ option?

Thanks for the help,

Wolf

G5 Quad, 3.5 Gig RAM, OS 10.4.10, FCS 2

[Jason Porthouse]

Wolf,

If you’re using an internal drive then even moving to something like a G-Tech G-SATA or, if you can stump up the 2kUSD, a G-SpeedES will make a very noticeable difference, even if you’re only doing HDV/DV. 300 gigs is small nowadays, and as Walter states, filling them up will make a big difference in performance. If you’re on a really tight budget, a decent FW800 drive will make a difference (you’d need to move some of your media across and relink it) but, as you’re HDV (and using the FW bus for ingest of media) I’d be inclined to move to SATA – buy yourself a SATA card and external drive unit.

The Quad is a fine machine, and in everyday use I notice little difference between it (I’m doing a big edit for a client on one) and my MacPro. Indeed, for some things the Quad is noticeably faster. I wouldn’t thing about junking it for a long time yet.

HTH,

Jason

_________________________________

Before you criticise a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
Then when you do criticise him, you’ll be a mile away. And have his shoes.

*the artist formally known as Jaymags*

[Jay Wolf]

[Jason P] “If you’re using an internal drive then even moving to something like a G-Tech G-SATA or, if you can stump up the 2kUSD, a G-SpeedES will make a very noticeable difference, even if you’re only doing HDV/DV. 300 gigs is small nowadays, and as Walter states, filling them up will make a big difference in performance. If you’re on a really tight budget, a decent FW800 drive will make a difference (you’d need to move some of your media across and relink it) but, as you’re HDV (and using the FW bus for ingest of media) I’d be inclined to move to SATA – buy yourself a SATA card and external drive unit.”

I’ve been calling around but this store tells me the G-Tech system is only for Mac Pro’s.
His only option was a RAID 5 CallDigit system with 5 400 gig disks and the eSatacard, all for around 1800. Do you know anything about this system?

Your suggestion to buy the SATA card and the external drive, do you mean a single drive or something like the CallDigit system- or can I make a raid with an internal AND external drive?

(I’m also thinking about buying a 1TB Seagate barracuda ES 7200, 32mb internal drive and a 1 TB lacie external drive for backup. That would be the least expensive option and would at least take care of the drive filling up…)

I appreciate all of your input,

Wolf

G5 Quad, 3.5 Gig RAM, OS 10.4.10, FCS 2

[Walter Biscardi]

[Imagine Video] “Can you -or someone else- answer the questions I asked about a larger drive or letting the drive fill up to 75% max?”

Get yourself a FW800 RAID at the very least. Two drives striped together will work better than a single drive. A single drive for video editing is never a good solution.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Stop Staring Start Grading with Apple Color The new Color Training DVD now available!
https://store.creativecow.net/p/66/stop_staring_and_start_grading_with_apple_color

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi