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SAS vs SATA drives with RED camera
Hello,
I want to know if my SAS Raid 5 system is that much faster for video editing, using a Red cam, than the standard SATA configuration for hard drives.
I welcome real world experience, your trials and errors, so please let me know what your doing, what you think, what works and any suggestions. Thank you.
I have a new Mac Pro 2009 Nehalem.
1) 7,200 rpm SATA 1TB hard drive.
VS
2) 3x 15,000 rpm SAS 450GB promiss Raid 5 w/ Apple RAID card (unable to use boot camp)
*Primary use: Editing footage shot with the RED camera.
In “Log & Transfer” I’m limited by the REDs firewire 800. So the drives shouldn’t make a difference here.
Copying files: SAS is gonna be 5x faster or so it seems.
Editing in Final Cut Pro 7: Heard hard drives make little difference, it’s all about processor?
Coloring in COLOR: Heard it’s all about the GPU & the Processor, again, no real world experience to make this up.
Final Output: I’ll probably just leave it in PRORES HQ, this part I’m willing to wait on.
THE REALLY REALLY BAD: no boot camp with Apples RAID card.
I’m exited to see what you guys think out there. The apple RAID card just isn’t going to cut it, I must have boot camp. I was thinking of selling the RAID card to someone who could really use it, maybe someone doing server stuff, with the SAS drives and getting 10k raptor drives and making a software raid? Or maybe someone else out there makes a RAID card that works with boot camp? Dunno
Your experience and advice is much appreciated.
Will Keir
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3 Replies
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Will,
There are several different ways of working with RED footage. Do you plan to edit using ProResHQ from log and transfer or do you plan do use the native or proxy files? Will you color from the ProRes files or the R3D files?
Generally for video, SAS drives haven’t been a great investment because of the cost. SATA offer good speed and allow for much larger sizes at prices that are much more affordable. It’s always nice to have a RAID to work off of, but when dealing with R3D files, most often times the processing power is the bottleneck.
If the RAID card doesn’t work for you because of Boot Camp, you’re on the right track to look for something else that will do the job.
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net -
Russ,
You sounds like your know your stuff, been editing with RED footage much?
It’s good to hear confirmation of my thoughts and I appreciate your intelligent response. My primary goal is going to be festival projection. I’m not sure if I’ll edit with ProRes HQ or use the proxies. I wish I could answer this question, this whole raid card SAS/SATA issue has taken up much of my time. I’m thinking I would like to editing in the highest quality settings. It’s why I bought a brand new 2009 Mac Pro but I am not sure on how to do this exactly. Any work flow you’ve found works best?
It seems like coloring from the R3D’s is going to give me the most information and highest quality on the grade. So I’d like to be able to go back and forth. I also heard that ProResHQ files can reattach to R3D files. Can you shed any light on this process?
Finally… been editing with RED footage? I’d love to see samples of your work and the power of the tools I now have.
Best,
Will Keir
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[Will Keir] “You sounds like your know your stuff, been editing with RED footage much? “
Our partner production company has a couple of RED cameras that they’ve been using over the past year and a half. We’ve also done post on a bunch of independent projects, some of which we did the digital cinema mastering so they could play in theaters. So about 95% of the projects I’ve worked over the past year have been shot on RED. I’ve been so spoiled that it’s kind of a let down not to have RED RAW files to color with now.
One of the first thing you need to address is the festival requirements for deliver. Do you need to deliver a DCP, HDCAM SR, HDCAM, Blu-ray, or DVD? This will largely dictate the type of workflow that you need.
You’re right about reconnecting to the R3D files for color grading. It amazing how much flexibility you have. I’ve also graded directly from R3D files encoded to ProResHQ. While it’s not a great as the native R3D files, it’s still has less compression and greater color depth than the majority of HD cameras on the market.
Finishing a film in Color with the new FCS3 and ProRes4444 is a great tool set. There are two key points that you need to focus on. First, you need to have a color accurate set up. The display needs to be calibrated or it can mess everything up. Second, you need to have a talented operator. This will make the biggest difference. This doesn’t mean that you necessarily have to send the project to a full time colorist, but it does mean that you should at least be comfortable with whoever does the work that you’re getting the look that you want.
There are several different options for workflows. If you’re considering a Final Cut Studio workflow, I’d strongly suggest reading the RED FCS3 White Paper located on RED’s support website.
At our facility, we finish everything through Scratch. So we process all the RED footage through Clipfinder and edit. When we’re done, we export an EDL for Scratch. It’s a very slick workflow and we really like how well Scratch handles the native R3D files.
[Will Keir] ” I’d love to see samples of your work and the power of the tools I now have. “
I’ll work on getting a reel posted to the cow:)
-Russ
Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net
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