Macbook, AJA io, disk array questions

[Ed Dooley]

Sorry, I have owned an IOLA for a couple of years and I have no idea what “this dropped frame business” means. Fast enough drives means no dropped frames.
For location editing, I use a 2 drive ATA FW800 unit, RAID0 with my PB. I can usually write 8bit UC to it, but it bogs down on reads. So I usually do a 8bit UC to DVC50
project using that combination. SATA drives (still need to stripe them most likely) will give better performance. The Firmtek card is apparently shipping,
and although there are others announced, I’m not sure if any others are shipping yet. There are a bunch of 2 drive SATA units out, but I’m not up on their
specs. As long as connectors are correct, any 2 drive unit would work. FW400 with UC works as advertised. FW400 throughput is plenty for that. There are a few reasons why a FW400 drive can’t play back UC, such as disk access times for reads and writes, but a pure signal at FW400 through the IO works fine.
Ed

[Dennis1949] “I have just purchased a Macbook (17″). Has this dropped frame business been settled with the AJA? I work in 8 bit rather than 10 bit. Was the dropped frame business ever a problem with 8 bit? I have a firewire 800 1/2 terabyte single drive (actually 2-250 drives). Can I digitize BetacamSP in full resolution to that drive or do I really need an array? If I need an array is the Firmtek Express Card/34 SATA host adapter really working now? Do I need to use the Firmtek SeriTek 2-EN2 or would another array work? Is firewire 400 port going to work okay with 4:2:2 full resolution BetacamSP thru the AJA io?
I realize this is cutting edge stuff, but hope someone has walked this way before me. Thanks for your help.”

[Jeremy Garchow]

i can get 8 bit UC on a single SATA from my G4 POWERbook. Due to the limitations of the PCMCIA slot, I cannot RAID the drives (the performance slows down to less than that of a single SATA). I know there have been some issues here in this forum with 10 bit and the Macbook Pro, but I’m not sure it’s related to the drives. The initial disk read/write speeds will support 10 bit UC, but I’m not sure if anyone has them working. Call Maxx Digital in LA see what they say. They can set you up with a Firmtek card and a Firmtek array. Even with one drive you will be fine with 8 bit UC, but by now maybe the drivers for the card have been sorted and a RAID 0 for 10 bit UC is possible on a laptop. Like you said it’s all cutting edge.

Jeremy

[Ed Dooley]

Jeremy,
Are you using the FWDepot card for that? Barefeats.com did a test with that card and although the sustained writes were 77MB (compared to their FW800 50MB writes), the sustained reads were only 60 (the same as FW800). Have you tested your speeds? They also reported the slowdown when raided.
Ed

[JeremyG] “i can get 8 bit UC on a single SATA from my G4 POWERbook. Due to the limitations of the PCMCIA slot, I cannot RAID the drives (the performance slows down to less than that of a single SATA).”

[Jeremy Garchow]

Why yes I am using the FWdepot card. i don’t have all the materials now to do a speed test but it was around the barefeats numbers. I did a mobile edit at 8 bit uncompressed and had no issues. 60MB/sec is plenty of bandwidth for 8 bit.

Jeremy

[Ed Dooley]

The 60MB takes quite a nose dive as the drive fills up. I did a test a couple of years ago that I posted here with drives empty,
and various levels of capacity used, right up to 90%. The performance went way below uncompressed needs.
Ed

[JeremyG] “Why yes I am using the FWdepot card. i don’t have all the materials now to do a speed test but it was around the barefeats numbers. I did a mobile edit at 8 bit uncompressed and had no issues. 60MB/sec is plenty of bandwidth for 8 bit.”

[Bob Zelin]

I just used an Apple XServe RAID with 14 drives on it, that was over 90% full, and it’s write speed was only 44mb/sec on the AJA Kona System test. So don’t start blaming SATA for being useless when it gets full. So is everything.

Go to http://www.barefeats.com to see performance tests on the Firmtek. You can get it at Maxx Digital in LA.

bob Zelin

[Ed Dooley]

Actually Bob, nobody blamed SATA for being useless, where did you get that from? The tests I did (years ago) were with ATA drives *not* SATA.
The context was full drives and performance loss, not whether SATA compared to anything else is useless (again, they weren’t even SATA drives).
Ed

[Bob Zelin] “I just used an Apple XServe RAID with 14 drives on it, that was over 90% full, and it’s write speed was only 44mb/sec on the AJA Kona System test. So don’t start blaming SATA for being useless when it gets full. So is everything.

Go to http://www.barefeats.com to see performance tests on the Firmtek. You can get it at Maxx Digital in LA. “

[Bob Zelin]

I apologize for seeming defensive, but there is a mindset out there, that if you get an Apple XServe RAID – all of your problems will be over, so stop screwing around with these HUGE, Medea, ADTX, Rorke, and SATA drives.
Apple is NOT the ultimate solution, and there is a “common knowlege” from many people that it is “if only I had the $13,000 to pay for it”. This is not accurate information, as products from HUGE, Medea, ADTX and assorted SATA companies outperform the Apple Xserve RAID.

I think that my background for this attitude comes from AVID, where the philosophy of “if you just buy AVID Everything – everything will be ok” – comes from. This was never true, and it applies to Apple as well. Currently the best facilities and systems for FCP come with AJA and/or Blackmagic hardware, and drive arrays from the companies mentioned above – NOT from Apple only.

Bob Zelin

[Ed Dooley]

No problem Bob, I just wasn’t sure where the reference came from. One thing I wish was freely available (and maybe
a software RAID vendor *does* in fact offer it) is what G-RAID does with their striped units, one drive reads/writes
from the outer first and the other the inner first. The maximum performance takes a hit (not a problem usually) but the average
performance stays higher than a plain vanilla stripe. Not the total solution for a full array, but in less than full situations, it
seems to outperform others.
Ed