RAID AND PRORES 422 Oh not again…

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jason Laville] “So If I go Prores 4:2:2 I am told I cant convert during capture as will need a capture card for this????”

You can convert via firewire to ProRes, although I’ve never personally tried it (or worked with HDV) and I have no idea what it does to your timecode in case you need to recapture at all some day. Here’s a few things to get you started:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/battistella_david/recapturing_HDV.php

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/poisson_chris/hdv-prores.php

As far as a raid, I’d simply shove three 1TB drives in your MacPro and raid them raid 0. You will have no protection on this raid and if a drive fails, you are hosed. If you want to spend some money, I’d look an external array such as the D800RAID from Sonnet. ProRes can run off one drive ok, two drives is jsut fine and three drives is absolutely no problem.

Jeremy

[Bob Zelin]

Hi Jason –
this is the lesson for the “complete noob”. You obviously are not a newbie technically, as you seem to have a full understanding of what it might take to make this happen (working in HD, and working with ProRes422, etc.). what you are a “noob” about is SPENDING MONEY. If you SPEND MONEY and buy the right equipment, you can do whatever you want. Buy some internal drives, use the free Apple disk Utility to stripe them together, and you are in business (for a while). And as you get more successful, and more advanced, you will CONTINUE to spend money. Don’t have any money to spend – oh yes you do – forget the Christmas presents, forget eating (you are too fat anyway) – forget that doctor appointment – BUY VIDEO EQUIPMENT that you need to do your job (it’s just a couple of drives), and you will be ok.
Some nice boring Hitachi or Seagate internal SATA drives from any mail order company will work just fine. Forget the 15,000 RPM drives – cheaper 7200 RPM drives from Hitachi or Seagate will do it for you.

And yes, when you go to the next level, you will spend even MORE money, and then all this will become outdated, and have to spend all over again. And you will do it over and over and over again throughout your career, and will get ulcers, and start to go crazy (like me), and this is what the video business is all about.

bob Zelin

[Jason Laville]

Ha ha you are crazy thankyou for that erm… insightful and some what scary explanation you gave me about the editing world… I am now off to spend all my savings on ice cream and stick my middle finger up at the editing world, lol just kidding. Okay gotta spend more money, thanks for the advice, if I buy Seagate internal SATA drives will I be able to mix this with the standered drive I have. Or do I have to either go all sata drives or all ata drives? Not exactly sure what the stripe them together part means byusing apple utility, will google it now.

Thans for your time

[Bob Zelin]

Jason –
you write –
“I have a Mac Pro 8 core 3.0 GHZ, only 320gb storage and 2gb ram. ”

You already have a MAC Pro, and this uses an internal SATA drive. You have THREE more slots for SATA drives. Buy just 2 SATA drives, stripe them together using the free Apple Disk Utility that is on your computer right now, and you can go to work, without issue. You are a smart guy, so don’t call yourself a “noob” anymore !

bob Zelin

[Jason Laville]

Thanks mate,

Working with Serial Ata can I still keep my parallel 320gb ata drive in slot one or will this have to come out when the sata drives are installed? Are external raid systems no good?

cheers Jay

[Jeremy Garchow]

[jason laville] “can I still keep my parallel 320gb ata drive in slot one”

DOn’t you have a MacPro? How’d you get a PATA drive in there? My hunch is that you have a SATA drive in there, and no you don’t have to take it out, you can leave it in and then stripe three other drives together. Just know that if one of those three drives goes down, you lose ALL of your data across those three drives in RAID 0.

[jason laville] “Are external raid systems no good? “

They are generally much better and more secure if you are running a raid protection scheme such as RAID 3,4,5 or 6. You will pay more for them, though.

Jeremy

[Jason Laville]

Sorry you are quite right I have a SATA drive in there not parallel as I thought. So if I get 3 more Sata drives in there and stripe them they will become raid 0. Is there anyway of making them work where they are a different raid setting so if one goes down I dont lose everything? Also what do the different raid numbers mean?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jason Laville] ” Is there anyway of making them work where they are a different raid setting so if one goes down I dont lose everything?”

Not easily, but yes, you can and it will cost you more money. If you’re going to spend money, I’d recommend an external raid system that you buy from a reputable vendor. That way if something goes wrong or you have questions about how to install it, you have a human that you can call and complain to, and that human will be able to answer your questions. Sonnet has dropped prices on their external D800RAID Systems. It’s a very good value for their money and I highly recommend their raids in a studio environment.

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

[Jason Laville] “Also what do the different raid numbers mean?”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

[Jason Laville]

Thanks for all the info mate,

So If I go with internal, I purchase say another 2 sata drives, I stripe all three with the Apple utility software, I take it dont need a raid card as thats for external raid system? If one goes down, will my mac still operate or will the who computer need to be rebooted again from scratch?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[jason laville] “So If I go with internal, I purchase say another 2 sata drives, I stripe all three with the Apple utility software”

No. You keep your boot drive separate and stripe the other two together. You MacPro has room for four internal drives. SO, you have 1 as your boot drive (the way it is now) and then you stripe together any remaining drives you put in there as raid0.

[jason laville] “, I take it dont need a raid card as thats for external raid system?”

Correct.

[jason laville] “If one goes down, will my mac still operate or will the who computer need to be rebooted again from scratch?”

You mac will work as your boot drive will be in working order (hopefully, unless that the drive that goes down) but if your raid0 fails, you can still turn on your computer, but you will have no media.

Make sense?

Jeremy