[Ben Price]

For my system, I have my Mac cylinder mounted in a Sonnet xMac Pro Server enclosure. The 3-bay PCIe expansion chassis included in the enclosure houses a AJA LHi video card which allows me to output via HDMI and SDI to an external monitor. The other two slots have an ATTO H680 mini-SAS card and a Sonnet Allegro Pro USB card which enable connection to a 3-bay JBOD HDD enclosure and access to my OWC Mercury Rack Pro 16GB RAID5 array.

I also have a Sonnet Echo Express III-R rack chassis. This has a Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro Plus card and an ATTO R680 mini-SAS card. (One slot is open.) The Tempo card is eventually going to be used as my boot disk for Mac and Windows. It is already set-up for MacOS, but I don’t have Windows installed yet. The ATTO R680 mini-SAS card is the controller/interface for an OWC Jupiter Kore 8-bay HDD enclosure.

———————
System #1
———————
MacPro 2013 Cylinder OS10.12.6
2.7 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon E5
32GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.8
Kona LHi
Sonnet xMac Pro Server Enclosure
OWC Mercury Rack Pro RAID5 USB3
OWC Jupiter Kore mini-SAS

———————
System #2
———————
MacPro4.1 OS10.8
Single 2.66GHz Quad-core Xeon
3GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.2
Kona LHi

———————
System #3
———————
MacPro3.1 OS10.10.5
Dual 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon
24GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.6
No input card

———————
System #4
———————
MacBook Pro OS10.11
13\” Retina, Late 2013
Single 2.4GHz Intel-core i5 (4-cores)
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.7a
No input card

[Ben Price]

Congratulations on wrapping up the documentary!

Aren’t the Graffiti files compatible with Red? That is, have you tried manually opening the templates or your saved title files in Red versus going through the library browser?

If the Graffiti files won’t open in Red, it sounds like the title templates you’re needing are fairly simple and could be recreated in no time. A high proficiency is not required and you probably already have the skills necessary to do it.

If all else fails, screen-shot the look you need and post it here. I’ll walk you through how to do it.

———————
System #1
———————
MacPro 2013 Cylinder OS10.12.6
2.7 GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon E5
32GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.8
Kona LHi
Sonnet xMac Pro Server Enclosure
OWC Mercury Rack Pro RAID5 USB3
OWC Jupiter Kore mini-SAS

———————
System #2
———————
MacPro4.1 OS10.8
Single 2.66GHz Quad-core Xeon
3GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.2
Kona LHi

———————
System #3
———————
MacPro3.1 OS10.10.5
Dual 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon
24GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.6
No input card

———————
System #4
———————
MacBook Pro OS10.11
13\” Retina, Late 2013
Single 2.4GHz Intel-core i5 (4-cores)
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.7a
No input card

[Ben Price]

The MultiClip is comprised of three camera angles. All of the media was conformed upon import to a single standard (Apple ProRes). The clips were brought in to the MultiClip and aligned using the ‘Sync mark’ option (only one camera shot with TC, the other two were DSLRs).

For audio, the main (non-DSLR) camera clip has one track of audio from a wireless mic. The other two camera angles have one track of scratch audio from the built-in mic. All audio tracks are set the same (A1).

[Ben Price]

I received the OWC Mercury Rack Pro this morning. (16TB, 4-bay enclosure in a RAID5 configuration). It only took around 15 minutes to unpack, install, and have the array mounted to the desktop and ready for use. Unfortunately, transferring the multicam project that necessitated this purchase took a little over 2 hours. That said, I still couldn’t be happier.

The project media files that would not relink when moved to other HDDs was immediately and automatically found upon project launch. The multicam (MulitClip) clips play back without a single hiccup. These clips contain three tracks of 720p60 Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) footage with realtime ColorFX and AudioFX settings applied. I also tested a MultiClip with eight (8) tracks of 720p60 Apple ProRes 422 for playback. In this instance, I did get some performance hiccups after about two minutes of playback. I can’t be sure if it was the array or not as my Activity Monitor app was also indicating that all 8-cores of my CPU were at 100%.

Oh… this thing is quiet, too. My MacPro makes more noise at idle than the array does during playback.

As it stands a few hours in on day #1, I would absolutely recommend this as a possible solution for those of you looking to add an array to your editing set-up.

[Ben Price]

Great question… and yes… the HDD is formatted for Mac – OS Extended (Journaled).

[Ben Price]

The MacBook Pro does have thunderbolt, but it’s not my everyday editor. In truth, I almost never use it because my wife has claimed it as her own.

The MacPro3,1 I have locally (in Colorado) has a 4-port USB 3.0 PCIe card installed. That’s what I use to edit off of with the single drive enclosures and what I’ll use for the new 4-bay RAID enclosure.

The other MacPro4,1 system also has a USB3.0 card in it, but it is in Texas and not my ‘daily driver’.

[Ben Price]

Well… wish me luck.

I’ve ordered an OWC Mercury Rack Pro 4-bay 16TB RAID 5 box. I have no idea if it will solve my multi-clip performance issues, but with all four drives striped together it SHOULD provide the fastest data throughput possible on my system outside of a SAS setup or maybe fiber channel.

All of the math and forum comments I could find say that this drive solution will provide enough bandwidth support through a USB 3.0 port for at least seven streams of ProRes (HQ) and easily one or two streams of compressed 4k. Dunno… the last RAID array I used was a pair of 4-bay Rorke Data SCSI 320 arrays… and that was at least eight to ten years ago.

So… fingers crossed and I’ll let you know how it goes.

———————
System #1
———————
MacPro4.1 OS10.8
Single 2.66GHz Quad-core Xeon
3GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.2
Kona LHi

———————
System #2
———————
MacPro3.1 OS10.10.5
Dual 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.6
Kona LHi

———————
System #3
———————
MacBook Pro OS10.11
13\” Retina, Late 2013
Single 2.4GHz Intel-core i5 (4-cores)
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.4
No input card

[Ben Price]

New development…

I was thinking that the client-supplied USB 3.0, 2.5 inch, bus powered drive is only a 5400 rpm device. So, I duplicated the entire project (file structure and all) to a drive that I know is 7200 rpm (3.5″ w/ separate power supply) and tried running the project. Unfortunately, all natively imported video media is deemed ‘offline’ and missing from the project. However, the associated audio tracks are still ‘online’ as well as any other media (video, stills, and audio) that was imported and converted to the project media standard. (Meaning that the native import process is less reliable?)

With the exception of the HDD name, the file structure is the same. The media attributes (via Info) is exactly the same. The ‘Media Locations’ tab is pointing to the right folder. Everything is where it should be, but the media can’t be found. If I plug in the original HDD and either manually point to the original media location (via Media Locations) or simply run ‘Relink Media’ (where the project finds the original media on the slower HDD), my media is found. My media works off of one HDD, but not another?

[*Edit* – I renamed the duplicate HDD to match the client-supplied one and give the project the exact same file structure. Unfortunately, the issue persists.]

I’m a bit confused. I’ve been editing with natively imported footage for the last three years without any problems. And, I back up (or transfer) projects to other HDDs all the time and haven’t seen this issue before.

Thoughts?

[Ben Price]

Well… ok… I sit corrected.

I’ve honestly never seen an embedded photo in any of these forum threads. I just went back through the forum and randomly sampled about 20 of the longer subject threads and couldn’t find any. I also did a search by ‘photo’ and came up with one linked photo (that was to the FB page).

Perhaps there are others like me who have simply assumed (incorrectly) that this CC forum doesn’t support photos? Thank you for showing my error. I will certainly use this option in the future.

———————
System #1
———————
MacPro4.1 OS10.8
Single 2.66GHz Quad-core Xeon
3GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.2
Kona LHi

———————
System #2
———————
MacPro3.1 OS10.8
Dual 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.2
Kona LHi

———————
System #3
———————
MacBook Pro OS10.9
13″ Retina, Late 2013
Single 2.4GHz Intel-core i5 (4-cores)
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.4
No input card

[Ben Price]

The CreativeCow forum is definitely a better place for tech / troubleshooting questions simply because the forum is searchable. It is a knowledge base that we users can refer to first for whatever ails us. However, the FB page is likely a little more immediate in terms of response time AND Facebook allows for the inclusion of photos and video in support of comments submitted to the help request.

———————
System #1
———————
MacPro4.1 OS10.8
Single 2.66GHz Quad-core Xeon
3GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.2
Kona LHi

———————
System #2
———————
MacPro3.1 OS10.8
Dual 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.2
Kona LHi

———————
System #3
———————
MacBook Pro OS10.9
13″ Retina, Late 2013
Single 2.4GHz Intel-core i5 (4-cores)
8GB RAM
Media100 Suite 2.1.4
No input card