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Activity Forums Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy sep. scratch disk for renders – good idea?

  • sep. scratch disk for renders – good idea?

    Posted by Lars Fuchs on May 26, 2010 at 7:00 pm

    Hi all,

    My primary media drive is a CalDigit VR (3TB) connected via eSata. Currently its set as my only scratch disk. I have other fast drives that are FW800 (G-Tech and LaCie available). Would there be any good reason to use one of them as scratch disk for renders?

    My thinking is that avoiding using one drive to both read AND write would be slightly faster.

    THoughts?
    -LF

    Rafael Amador replied 15 years, 11 months ago 4 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • John Fishback

    May 26, 2010 at 7:28 pm

    I believe you’re best off keeping the renders on your scratch drive.

    John

    MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
    FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)

    Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN

  • Michael Sacci

    May 27, 2010 at 3:38 am

    When you are playing back a rendered part of the clip there is no other media coming through so there would be no benefit in separating them and eSata are normally faster than FW800 drives.

  • Rafael Amador

    May 27, 2010 at 10:31 am

    Sure is better two disks instead of one.
    When you are rendering with just one disk, you are reading (media) and writing (renders) with only one “head’. With two HDs, one reads while the other writes.
    rafael

    http://www.nagavideo.com

  • Lars Fuchs

    May 27, 2010 at 12:10 pm

    [Rafael Amador] “With two HDs, one reads while the other writes.”

    That’s what I was thinking. I had forgotten of course that the eSata is faster than FW800, so when the render is done, playback performance would be better from the CalDigit. But the actual rendering process should theoretically go faster to separate drives. And when the render is a big one, might that add up to a meaningful savings?

    What about for Compressor? would the same apply, rendering to a different drive than the source file?

    -LF

  • Rafael Amador

    May 27, 2010 at 1:12 pm

    [Lars Fuchs] ” eSata is faster than FW800, so when the render is done, playback performance would be better from the CalDigit. “
    On playing, unless you are working with Unc HD or something heavier, FW800 should be enough.

    Only when the bottle-neck is the CPU/GPU (slow computer or heavy process), probably you won’t find much benefit.
    If you are rendering multilayers, the benefits are obvious.

    In Compressor should be similar.
    rafael

    http://www.nagavideo.com

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