Alex Gerulaitis
Forum Replies Created
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[Santanu Bhattacharjee] “1. Why do you suggest 4 spindles? 2 x Raid 0 ?”
The more spindles the faster the disk I/O (assuming they’re all in the same RAID set), the more configuration options including RAID5.
[Santanu Bhattacharjee] “That’s exactly we tried to test. Map drive letter on the other PC exactly as the local”
I meant the same PC, not the other PC. Just a test. You can map a local drive as a network share on the same PC and access it via the network rather than locally.
I’d also run a benchmark (HD Tune, BMD Speed Test, ATTO) to measure transfer rates and ideally, latencies on your network shares to get an idea what the speeds are.
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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[Santanu Bhattacharjee] “Is there any inexpensive server solution? Existing SAN drives like Edit share / Final share / Facilis / Small Tree or server solutions are a bit expensive for just a 2 seat suite.”
Thecus, QNAP, Synology make relatively inexpensive NAS/SAN appliances ($500-$6K before drives) with generally nice performance and reliability, many upgradeable to 10GbE. No support for video apps and workflows of course. You could also build a DIY NAS for less – but not much less. A box such as this can also be set up as a SAN: an iSCSI target and SAN management software like SNS SANmp – which helps each computer see the shared volume as a local disk, minimizing lag and latency.
For a few HDV streams shared between two systems, I don’t think you need more than four spindles – unless you prefer the redundancy of RAID6 (which can be set up on four drives, but ideally needs six or more). In other words you could look at a 4- or 5-bay NAS, which is around $600-1K from the usual suspects I mentioned above.
Oh, and you’d probably want to make sure your switch and router are adequate for the task. Nothing too fancy (Netgear unmanaged switches work) – but not too cheap either. Speaking of which, what are your switch and router?
Also, could you run a couple of tests?
If you re-assign the local drive letter to something else, and then map it to the same letter as a network share and open it on the same computer, does it behave the same? (I.e. lag, etc.)
What if you stripe a couple of drives and try again?
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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– are Pr preferences on the two systems identical?
– opening the project on a different machine with the same user/pwd combo – same result?
– administrative privileges don’t mean you have full write privileges to a folder (locally or on the server) – only mean you can change (enable) them. Ensure you have read-write-execute privileges to all relevant folders – on the server and locally
– systems: domain-joined? workgroup?
– Mac or Windows environment? -
Looks like it’s stuck on loading something QT related?
I’d check:
– if your QT plugin is up date (re-install perhaps?)
– for errors or warnings in the system log (applications)
– if Pr will run under a different user account (with admin privileges)
– if clearing Pr preferences helps (back them up 1st) -
Sorry. 🙂
[Jack Benson] “I’m wondering what would be wrong with working off the internal SSD and then archiving externally?”
That will certainly work – done that myself Premiere Pro and FCP7. Can’t imagine FCPX behaving differently.
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[Alex Gerulaitis] “The rest – Intel Iris (Pro) graphics, which is unlikely to do hardware GPU acceleration despite its hardware OpenCL support: too weak.”
Boy was I wrong. But then I did have a hunch about it…
Not sure yet how it’ll stack up against 750m but Intel Iris graphics will have some nice GPU acceleration benefits.
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[Jim Wiseman] “Does the Thunderbolt 4K have one or two Thunderbolt ports”
Two ports according to specs and press images. It’s UltraStudio Express and some other BMD products that only have one.
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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The connection is the difference.
If it’s FW800 or USB 2.0, the speed is limited to about 75MB/s and 30MB/s, respectively. USB 3.0 – anywhere from 150 to 250MB/s. It could potentially be faster but I haven’t seen that happening yet. Thunderbolt2 – up to 2GB/s via a single link theoretically, with the right array.
If we’re talking about a single spinning drive, there shouldn’t be much of a difference speed-wise between an internal and an external (Thunderbolt or USB 3.0) connection.
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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…and before I forget to do my daily sales pitch: if you’re interested in getting something that’s perhaps more expensive yet something studios and a lot of post shops use for a good reason, consider a Z820 configured by a good integrator – like yours truly. Some things (like build quality, swappable PSUs, on-site support) are unique to it (and some Dell models).
Perhaps your guy can take a look at Z820s?
If you’re buying a system that’s supposed to last 3-7 years, it may also make sense purely on $$ with TCO in mind.
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA
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[James Huenergardt] “Should I go for more cores, or a faster processor with fewer cores?
Like this CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2687W v2 Ivy Bridge-EP 3.4GHz”
On paper, I like more cores, yet for AE purposes, I think E5-2687W v2 is a better choice: far from all CPU-intensive tasks in AE are massively multi-threaded to take advantage of 24 phys cores at all times. This may change in the future of course.
[James Huenergardt] “the majority of my work is motion graphics”
Mostly 1080p resolutions, or something higher?
[James Huenergardt] “Nvidia GTX Titan
700 Watt Power Supply”700W is probably enough for a Titan (250W) plus two E5-2697v2 (130W ea) plus whatever else is in the system. But what if you add another high-power GPU in the future? I’d perhaps be on a safer side and look for a 800W to 1KW PSU for this build.
Also: consider GTX-780 Ti vs. Titan. Cheaper, faster.
[James Huenergardt] “USB 3.0 Interface Card
E-SATA External Interface Connection”Is that the plan for media storage?
— Alex Gerulaitis | Systems Engineer | DV411 – Los Angeles, CA