System update and/or HD formats

[David Roth weiss]

You’ll be fine cutting either HDV or DVCPro. A SATA raid with two drives can handle both. A four drive SATA raid would give you more realtime capability, but as long as you don’t mind some rendering you’ll be fine.

[Rapdigital]

Hmm I actually do mind rendering times. I’m pretty new to all this and impatient too. Would I be better of spending more on drives than ram are 4 drives going to make things faster than having an extra 2gb of ram.

[Debe]

The only thing that speeds up rendering times signifigantly enough to merit noticing is a faster CPU.

More RAM helps, because it can get things organized more efficiently, but you are still limited by how fast the CPU can process the data. More RAM just makes the que neater.

More drives will do absolutley nothing to speed up render times.

debe

[David Roth weiss]

Well Debe, in a way I would disagree. A faster drive array means more realtime functionality, therefore less rendering while editing. So, while less rendering is not exactly faster rendering, it means faster working, which is what the goal is.

[Debe]

I can’t argue with you there David, but the original poster specifically said he didn’t want to wait for long renders because he was impatient.

While being able to work faster with more layers in real-time, I agree, is a faster workflow, he would still have to render for output. The only way to significantly speed up rendering is to get a faster CPU.

But you make a very good point!

debe

[David Roth weiss]

Debe,

We’re both right!!! In the end, I guess I would say that, having learned to live with the inevitability of rendering, I like to do it when I’m not trying to make creative decisions. A faster drive array allows one to essentially defer the rendering to a later time — better to render on machine time than my time.

DRW

[Debe]

Yep! I couldn’t agree more.

Faster workflows, however, lead to fewer coffee breaks!!

I’m all for faster workflows, but I like getting up and walking away, too!

debe

[Shane Ross]

Impatient? Then don’t edit HDV native. That format requires a lot of transcoding for preparing it for ANY type of output (Jerry Hofmann made me hip to this). It would be best if yo shoot HDV to capture it as DVCPRO HD and do all your post work in that format. This of course would require an HDV deck and HD capture card like the Kona LHe. But that would really streamline your workflow.

And SATA Raids are hard to beat.

Shane

Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net

[David Roth weiss]

Good advice Shane. Agreed on all accounts…

[Rapdigital]

Thanks so much for the responses guys. So I’m dont really love the idea of spending money on pciX cards for a machine that is going to be replaced pretty soon. Ok so I’m cutting this project as a favour for a friend and I dont really want to spend too much on this project, its going to cost a whole lot of my time anyway. I can justify spending some cash on ram as it want hurt me to have for my day job anyway and extend the life of the machine as a second tower once its replaced as the primary. And Sata Raid array’s can always be recycled but a deck and capture card seems a waste for pcix. Does that rule out dvcpro? Sorry for the noobie questions.