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Mac Pro and Drives
First of all I want to thank all of you that gave me feedback on Media 100 verses Final Cut Pro.
I am going to go Final Cut Pro and am in the process of purchasing a new Mac Pro tower. My question is drives and how to arrange them. With the Media 100 I had a raid tower setup with four drives. Do I need that for FCP? Can I get by with two 500GB built in drives for the Mac Pro?
Also…is 2 Gigs of RAM more then good?
Thanks.
Steve
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7 Replies
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I have just recently started using the CalDigit SATA arrays and I would highly recommend them. Their S2VR Duo offers up to 1.5TB in a two drive RAID that can easily do 8 and 10bit uncompressed SD. I’m now running S2VR HD model which can do uncompressed HD in a 5 drive setup. Both are very reasonably priced. click on their links here on the Cow or http://www.caldigit.com
Yes, you can go with internal storage, but I perfer external as it’s easier to expand than opening the box each time.
I like 4GB RAM as it gives plenty of overhead for both the OS and FCP to run. FCP can access up to 2GB RAM but keep in mind the OS requires some too, so you can’t run a full 2GB RAM for FCP if that’s all you have.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Walter,
How are you getting 4GB to work? Can you selectively allot just 2GB to FCP?
Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com -
[santellavision] “How are you getting 4GB to work? Can you selectively allot just 2GB to FCP?”
What do you mean how am I getting it to work? Are you referring to the initial 2GB limits on Fibre Channel cards? That’s been resolved from what I’ve seen on the Cow. As far as FCP is concerned, there isn’t any sort of RAM problem on the Mac Pros that I’m aware of.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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I posted a ‘Memory Crashes’ thread just below this thread that I am having issues with more than 2GB RAM. (Specs are in the other thread) Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com -
I would use the internal bays first. Why spend the money on the external box when you have built in bays readily available? That is my opinion.
What format of footage will you be cutting? The internal drives separately can handle DV, HDV, DVCPRO 50 and DVCPRO HD. And you can RAID them to handle Uncompressed 8-bit and 10-bit SD. To get uncompressed HD, you’d have to raid ALL the drives in those bays (all 4) and have a separate drive for the OS. Since there is a SATA connection and power on the logicboard for this, and room in the second optical bay, this is possible. And what I’d do if I had a Mac Pro.
https://barefeats.com/quad07.html
https://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&Product_ID=158Shane
FCP Preferences set to UNCONTROLLED ADVICE
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
We just acquired a Mac Pro tower with four internal 500 GB drives. Three are striped as a RAID and there’s no problem capturing 8 or 10-bit uncompressed via our Kona LHe. Not only is it fast enough, but quiet as well.
Lee Berger
http://www.leebergermedia.com -
I’m using three striped Samsung drives (the newer ones with 16 MB cache) in a MacPro and they capture uncompressed 8 bit HD from our DeckLink Extreme without a hiccup to the very last bit. With 10 bit HD it’s getting tight, you’d have occasional dropped frames in the last 20% or so of RAID space.
So, to be on the safe side I’d rather go for four drices in the RAID
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