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Read/Write Speed Required for 720P60?
I’ve been editing 720P60 footage nicely with a CalDigit S2VR 2.5TB drive. It measures out at 170 MB/s read and 150 MB/s Write.
But just as a fluke I tried editing on one of my backup drives – a SATA Western Digital 640GB thru an eSata external box. It measures at 100MB/s read and write speed. (both using Kona’s speed test).
While using this drive, it runs perfectly – no hiccups or anything. I guess I have 2 questions:
1. What is the preferred throughput needed for editing with 720P60 footage?
2. Why can’t I use this $100 drive instead of a $2500 CalDigit?
I understand it’s always betyter to have bigger/faster RAID drives, but if it works nicely on an eSata, what’s the harm?
Thanks,
Bill
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3 Replies
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720p60 can be editing off of a single firewire 800 drive. Firewire 400 might be pushing it. But you can get about 2 streams off a firewire 800 drive. Raided drives like the Firewire VR and G-Raid will get you 4 streams. Single eSATA drives work well too…And you already know about the S2VR Duo.
The lowest I’d go is either single eSATA drive like the G-SATA, or raided firewire drives like FirewireVR or G-Raid.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
One of the biggest problems you will encounter is that the drive (physical drive) itself cannot keep up with the I/O. The interface (eSATA for example) can handle all sorts of throughput but it bottlenecks at the drive. So, the solutions are cages with eSATA or the like interfaces that stripe the data across multiple drives so each drive gets a portion of the (eSATA) pipe.
On this note, I am looking forward to the eSATA version of the Drobo if and when it ever comes out. For the price it is one heck of a archive box. I just got it and haven’t tried to edit off of it so I can’t comment on the speed there. I am just using it to keep backups of client footage, etc. I have a pair of eSATA external drives and a 2 channel eSATA express card for my MBP. When I really want to crank things up, I set one to my scratch drive and put my raw footage on the other. I do know for a fact that I can pull a 3 stream multiclip (NTSC DVCAM) off of one eSATA external drive without any noticeable glitches.
If you need more info, I have some links to various cages with multiple eSATA interfaces or multipliers. Hope this helps.
kris@wotipka.com
Image maker -
You haven’t said what codec you’re working with. Compressed formats, you can edit on almost any drive, including an iPod. Uncompressed you need a fast raid.
Download the AJA data rate calculator.
Sean
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