Storage and advice for large FCP project

[Mark Raudonis]

Arthur,

Just look at the ads on this page. On your right “G-Tech”, or your left Matrox…

I’d suggest clicking around all of these sponsors and you’ll find many answers to your questions.

Mark

[Brian Alexander]

For a Mac Based, Final Cut workflow I use Apple ProRes; it really is the next best thing to uncompressed media. Files are a fraction of the size compared to uncompressed video but the quality is visually lossless. I’m currently collecting up to 2,000 minutes a week of HD material.

ProRes, when used with HD material, is easy to calculate: Standard Quality = 1 GB per minute; High Quality 1.5 GB per minute. Standard def files are much smaller.

I use the AJA IOHD because it is the only product in the industry (that I’m aware of) that support hardware acceleration for ProRes.

There is a lot to learn when it comes to digital video. Creative Cow is an excellent resource for your education.

Brian.

[Shane Ross]

50 hours? Heck, you can fit that on 2TB with room to spare…depending on how you capture. DV? 13GB/hour. DVCPRO HD? Between 22GB/hour (720p24) and 60GB/hour (1080i29.97). ProRes 1080i? 75GB/hour.

50 hours of 1080i ProRes is just under 4TB. But you are talking SD right? Mentioning Hi 8. 50 hours of DV is 700GB. Not even 1TB. Buy a 1TB internal SATA drive (you are getting a MacPro, right? You have 3 drive bays open) and you are set. Buy 3 1.5Tb and you have 4.5TB of storage…PLENTY for what you need.

Shane

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[Arthur Schlenger]

Ahh, it appears I am mistaken and uneducated about how much hard drive space video takes up. I was under the impression that video is 300 GB per hour, so 50 Hrs would be 15 TB, plus backup, etc….

The footage is not HD, and we don’t need HD quality, but we want it to look decent.

Where can I learn about the different video formats you guys are referring to (DVCPRO HD? ProRes 1080i? SD? What the difference is and how much space the take up, so that I can learn and make informed decisions?

…buying 2 TB of storage sounds a lot better than buying 40.

Thanks,
Arthur

[Arthur Schlenger]

Thanks for all your input.

I have a few more questions:

1. Will internal SATA drives work as well as external FireWire drives? I can save $$ by buying internal drives and fill up those extra three internal bays on a Mac Pro.

2. Yes, the project will be combining Hi8, VHS and Mini DV. From what I’ve gathered so far, the way to go is transfer all the Hi8/VHS etc to Mini DV which will give me time code and a back-up. Then digitize at a lower rate. When I finish the edits, I can re-digitize at a higher rate only the footage I need….Does this sound practical. (Most of the final films will be shorts – 3 to 5 mins) Any thoughts on how to technically combine this Mini DV footage with the Hi8/VHS so that things go smoothly? I’m not so concerned with the visual difference between the resolutions, I’m really at this point trying to foresee technical headaches.

Thanks,
Arthur

[Brian Alexander]

Sounds obvious but there is a load of wonderful information in the FCP user manual. You can get through all 2000 pages of it a lot quick in pdf form than you can in print.

I would suggest opening it up in Preview and bookmarking it. This way you can access it without opening up Final Cut. You can locate the manual under the help menu in Final Cut Pro.

[Brian Alexander]

Hi guys,
I know this is elementary but just so Arthur is aware of how to calculate bit rates into storage space I’m including my math breakdown.

147 Mbps = 18.375 MBps
18.375 MBps = 1,102.5 MB per minute or 1.07 GBpm
1.07 GBpm = 64.2 GB per hour
64.2 GBph * 50 hrs = 3210 GB
3210 GB = 3.13 TB

You can also skip the mumbo jumbo and just download this calculator: https://wsidecar.apple.com/cgi-bin/nph-reg3rdpty2.pl/product=10730&cat=17&platform=osx&method=sa/BitratePro.dmg.zip

[Shane Ross] ” 60GB/hour (1080i29.97). ProRes 1080i? 75GB/hour”

Shane, one question I have for you: How do you figure that you end up with different file sizes for 1080i and 1080p? How are you calculating this? 1080i @ 59.94, 1080p @ 29.97 & 720p @ 59.94 are all the same in terms of storage space and bit rate. ProRes Standard Quality for these resolutions is 147 Mbps (although depending on complexity of the footage I’ve seen this fluctuate from 135 to 152 Mbps).

Just wondering. Thanks.

[Walter Biscardi]

If you follow this link to the AJA support page for the Kona 3, just scroll down and you’ll see the link to download the free AJA Data Rate Calculator. This will give you the storage requirements for pretty much any format.

https://www.aja.com/support/kona/kona-3-3x.php

When planning storage, I always recommend people get double what they think they will need. If you need 2TB just to hold your storage, you’re also going to need room for render files, audio files, graphics files, etc…. That can all add up.

Also, you want a lot of overhead in your array because as they fill up, they slow down, sometimes dramatically. Generally you start to take a speed hit at 75% full and then the drives will continue to decrease with each addition 5% the drives fill up. So I like to have enough storage where I’ll rarely go over 70% full. Currently we run two 8TB EVO HD units and one 16TB EVO HD2 unit from Maxx Digital and they hum along like a champ. https://www.maxxdigital.com They’re great folks and they sell pretty much every brand of storage out there in addition to their own.

As for the I/O, I recommend the AJA Kona LHi. This gives you analog and digital I/O along with SD and HD capabilities. (Upconvert, Downconvert, CrossConvert) We run the AJA Kona 3 boards here and they’re the only company I recommend because they’re broadcast centric, they perform all conversions in realtime and the quality of the image is outstanding.

I’m currently cutting the first of three documentaries here that have approx. 160 hours of footage, and counting, for all three features. The first feature is using about 75 hours of material. We’re using our new Maxx Digital Final Share SAN for these, and you can read about this system in an article for the Cow. That’s the system that features the 16TB EVO HD2.

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/biscardi_walter/media_san.php

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

Read my Blog!

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[Arthur Schlenger]

Thanks. Actually, I don’t even have FCP yet, I’m in pre-production and budgeting. But downloading the FCP manual is a great idea.

That AJA calculator is great, but I still don’t know what NTSC rate, frame size or compression I should use. Any suggestions on the best way to determine this?

Thanks,
Arthur