Sata Raid arrays

[Bob Zelin]

If all you are looking to do is DVCProHD (I am confused as to exactly which HD you want to do), DVCProHD requires only 2 SATA drives in one enclosure. Even SATA I in an “old style” 2 bay box will do DVCProHD with ZERO problems. Uncompressed HD is what requires all the drives.

Bob Zelin

[Kevin Wild]

I can second this setup. I have it…with the 5 500 gig drives. Works perfectly…no problems.

Kevin

[Nick Franco]

hi Bob

in response to your posting i’m not entirely sure which codec i should use to deliver an online HD from the sony HD cam or any other single link system if the DVCPRO HD is the codec i should be using then that’s fine. i’ve still in my infant stage of understanding codecs.
the reason for the raid array is to have some kind of economical expandability so that i won’t be in a position where i tell my customers that i can online HD then not be able to deliver due to inadequate harddrive speeds.
as i mentioned originally i have the Kona LHe card. so i can’t capture the sony cine alter for example but i should be able to capture hd cam and other single link hd cameras?

i think this is turning into a workflow problem and it’s important that i purchase the right hardware now so that i can do larger projects in the future.

am i making sense or have i got this completly wrong?

nick

[Bob Zelin]

I am not going to answer all your questions. Every client will have different delivery requirements. Some want DVCProHD, some want uncompressed HD, some want DV25, some want HDV, some want a Beta master. I have no control of what clients want, and neither do you. Delivering an HD master means NOTHING – what format do they want? Don’t know ? Neither does anyone else (that is why cross convert is the miracle feature from NAB2006).

DVCProHD is perfect for most markets, and is the native format for the Varicam. But if you have CineAlta clients, you may or may not be able to work with DVCProHD. If you need uncompressed HD, you need a big drive array. I usually use HUGE Fibre arrays for this, but the new SATA configurations will probably work – they are new, and I have not tried 10 SATA drives on a Sonnet E4P.

If you are new to HD, you aint’ gonna buy “the right hardware now”, because it’s all gonna change. Buy what you can afford, and make money with. IF you get an Uncompressed HD job, it will pay a LOT of money, and you will be able to afford new storage for this. If I find out that you are “giving away” your system for an uncompressed CineAlta job, I will find you and kill you. Working in uncompressed HD is expensive, and everyone pays – from the production crew, right into post.

Bob Zelin

[Ian]

Nick,

One nice thing about the sata raids is that you can grow with them. We started with a 4 drive enclosure for SD work. When we were starting to move into big-iron HD, all we needed to do was add a second enclosure to the card. In fact, we keep two types of drive sets, one made of 4 drives, and one made of 8. The 2 enclosure system allows us flexibility- we can 1 or 2 raids of the 4 drive SD type, or quickly swap them out for the 8 drive HD raid. This has proven to be a very flexible system for getting shows into the color correction suite. Often we will consolidate shows from the SAN to these drives for finishing. This is especially true for uncompressed HD.

As far as your needs, it is true that DVCPro HD is a very small file, especially compared to uncompressed HD. These files can be managed quite well by something as simple as a FW800 Graid. The trouble comes if you find yourself needing to bring this material into an uncompressed HD sequence, add FX and layback with the resulting render files.

Also, check with Jason over at Promax. They were out there as early suppliers of this stuff. I know that they have some new options that are even more flexible than what I am using, in terms of expandability. We can never have large enough or fast enough drives!

Ian

Rogue Post
HD Film Mastering
Uncompressed Online
Feature Film/Broadcast/Commercial
212-366-5011

[Rich Harrison]

Hiya Nick,
DVCPro HD will run fine on standard SATA drives or Firewire 800 drives. However, be aware that the speed of the drives will limit the number of video layers available to you/your editor.
I would also suggest that if you are looking at HDCam work at some point in the future, you shouldn’t be looking at a gradually scalable system. Instead you should be looking at a Fibre channel RAID system which will adequately handle the future work load.
Best wishes

Rich Harrison
Final Cut Pro Manager
Films@59