[Al Bergstein]

I shoot AVCHD on a Panasonic HMC 150, and I log and transfer instead of log and capture into any supported format I want. While it is not as optimal as using something like Sony Vegas where you just bring in the AVCHD without transcoding, I still end up with a very high quality choice of format to bring it into. ProRes “standard” works fine. I was using Prores HD but it’s not worth the extra file size unless you are attempting to show your work on huge screens in a movie house. Most of us aren’t. Determine your output needs, then transcode appropriately. Logging has it’s advantages, as you can discipline yourself to capture only what you need. Also building a log file to share with clients is very useful.

I wish that I could just bring it in without transcoding. I’ve been pondering going back to Vegas for that reason, as the transcoding process doubles the storage you need for your video efforts, but support of external drives, etc. in Windows has always led me to blue screens of death. Apple has been so much more forgiving of various external devices by controlling the hardware as they do. While I really liked Vegas, and frankly hate my FCP workflow, the trade off in problems overall has been worth it…sigh…

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

So you haven’t said whether you are doing your editing on the same drive as your OS. If you are, stuttering is often (not always) caused by competing with your OS for disk access. And moving it off to an external drive might not solve the problem if you move it to a USB drive. The recommended setup for high def on all platforms (as I’ve read it) is e-SATA or Firewire drives on a drive OTHER than the OS boot drive. If you are trying to do editing on the boot drive or on USB you will likely encounter stutter. Does that seem to point in the right direction? Or ?

An example of this is that Pro Tools for audio editing specifically states that they will not support anything other than what I stated above. Everything I’ve read about editing video also seems to state that you should follow the procedures I’ve outlined above. I have my OS on the primary internal drive, FCP on a RAID 1 array, and raw footage on another Firewire drive. No stuttering. Ever.

Any other ideas? Thoughts?

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Thought I’d update this thread. I just had to rebuild my 1TB internal OS/X software raid array, and, after backing up the remaining drive, the OS performed a rebuild with no problems in about 3 hours on the 1TB drive. So while I would never rebuild without backing up, if you were absolutely in a crisis to get something done quickly, it appears that you can rebuild the RAID 1 (mirrored drives) without destroying the data on the remaining drive. The failure of the RAID was not due to the hard disk. It was due to a mechanical failure of the slot it was in, due to a mistake made by a technician reinserting it (one of the drives) after installing a blue ray disk. So no blame on any drive makers, nor Apple. Hope this helps!

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

The answer to my question appears that the rebuild of the moved RAID drive, and in general a rebuild of the RAID drive (specifically a Raid 1 mirrored set, not a striped drive), is that you won’t lose your data on the rebuild of the raid if one drive goes down. I backed up all my data on the remaining drive, put in the new drive, and rebuilt it. When it was done (about 3 hours for the 1 TB drive), all data was still on the primary remaining drive, also known as a slice. So while I would never rebuild a RAID array without fully backing up, it’s nice to know that it appears to work.

I also want to clarify that I’m using Apple’s OS/X software RAID, not with the RAID card.

Hope this helps anyone in the future that is stumped with this issue.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Dan, my original AVCHD footage is stored on an outboard 2 TB drive. I also use Blue Ray to backup to DVD and then move that DVD to a safe deposit box, so that if my house burned down, or a junkie stole all my gear (which is not unheard of around here) then I can recreate from originals. I can then not worry about RAID for the AVCHD footage, as I have it backed up, but if I was paranoid, I’d have a RAIDed set of disks. I use a RAID set internally for all my FCP project based stuff. I also have an external SATA dock coming, as I will undoubtably run out of disk space at some point sooner than later on the internal RAID.

That way my FCP stuff is separate from the original footage.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Thanks. You are correct. Backup is essential whenever doing anything to a RAID array, unless you are extremely experienced (and therefore confident) in the process. I’ve not posted on what happened because I’m (slowly) backing up to Blue Ray, which takes forever. That way I can take the video to a safe deposit box and store offsite as well as on. My 2 TB drive is due here today. We’ve had a rash of home burglaries in our neighborhood lately, probably some meth freak, so I’m not taking any chances of losing footage. These home raiders seem to drive away with all your gear.

Once I figure this out I’ll post what happened in case anyone ever experiences this situation. It seems like rebuilding should NOT affect the good drive at all. We’ll see.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

I’m going to answer my own post so that others in the future may be able to find this, since it doesn’t seem like anyone has experienced rebuilding an OSX software RAID array.

It *appears* that I will be able to rebuild without reformating both drives. I have found this on Apple’s web site:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2559

It says that rebuilding *appears* to be non destructive.

I certainly will make sure everything is backed up before attempting this. I’ll let the forum know how it goes.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Hopefully last thought on this issue:

So it appears, despite all I’ve read and not quite understood, that to properly work with project “media” defined as raw video that the log and transfer/capture may be pulled from, jpegs, tiffs, etc. I can perhaps store that on say an external RAID or not RAIDed drive (let’s call it RAW VIDEO), then set the SYSTEM SETTINGS to put VIDEO and AUDIO capture on say my internal RAID array, (and as I have read, I can have many multiple drives that are setup as CAPTURE drives), and VIDEO & AUDIO RENDERING could even best go on their own external drive which probably doesn’t NEED to be RAID, correct? Does it matter if you lose your render files? You could rather easily re-render? Or am I too naive here? I think that what I understand now is that the RAW VIDEO (given that I’m using HD AVCHD) can go somewhere that FCP doesn’t track (correct?), because I specify where it is in the LOG & TRANSFER (it could be on a tape that I’m LOGGING & CAPTURING correct?) and that once I CAPTURE that it gets stored somewhere where it does track…

So my bottom line problem seems to be that I’ve used my internal RAID to store both my RAW footage and my CAPTURED footage, backed my raw footage up to my external 1 TB, AND set it as my secondary SCRATCH disk, so I’m filling up both my internal and external drives more quickly than I would have if I would have not put both on the same drives (!)

Thanks in advance, your help has been great.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

Ok, thanks David. As we can probably all agree, written word is sometimes less than perfect in description, and it didn’t seem as clear to me, as a relatively new user to FCP than it did to you. Probably some kind of walk through of what I call “archiving” or “moving” of this would have helped. The notion of what constitutes the “project” is less clear to me than it probably should be. Why? Well, I suppose I could interpret it to mean that out of a single days shoot, I could have multiple “projects” that I could make with that raw footage. If I move the footage using Media Manager, do I still have it assigned to all the possible projects that I have created with it?

My main concern was not moving the ‘project’ as I thought of it, but just the underlying raw footage. I’ll certainly give it a try. Just didn’t want to go try something that ended up screwing up my time that I’ve spent bringing the project to this point.

Thanks again.

Alf

[Al Bergstein]

In looking at the media manager documentation in FCP, it did not describe this scenario. It seemed like if you wanted to move some pieces of clips, or unused portions of clips. When you open Media Manager, there is a Summary of what’s about to happen. This is VERY confusing, and that screen does not make me comfortable about using it to migrate projects. So I go to the User Manual (since I’m not about to buy yet another supposed Bible of FCP that doesn’t even include basic backup/archive info in it, (Diana Weynard, you are lame), and read through the “What can you do with Media Manager” section. No real covering of what appears to me to be a basic function.

This is not like I haven’t been trying with FCP. I bought Final Cut Pro 7 the Apple Certified manual, and it says to understand Media Manager I need to go buy Final Cut Pro 7 Advanced Editing to get an overview, or go to the FCP User Manual.

sheesh…

Thanks David…
So thanks VERY much for your clear explanation of this. I’ll give it a try.

Alf