[Chad Braham]

Ok. I just bought a setup with the Mercury Elite Qx2, and a MAXPower 6G RAID card. I’m running on a brand new MacPro 8-core with 12GB of RAM. I keep getting the drop frame error with smal 1-4min sequences of ProRes footage, and the error message says my drives are too slow. I tested the Qx2 with AJA’s system test, and it says the Read/Write speed is only 173MB/s and 241MB/s. I tried different PCI slots and the speed just gets worse. The 8TB RAID still has 7.83TB of space and is set to RAID 0. Any ideas? I made sure to install the driver that was 10.6 compatible (on my 10.6 system)

Thanks.

[Chad Braham]

Hey Victor (or anybody) when running the AJA System test on my Mercury Qx2 enclosure (set to RAID 0) – I’m only getting a write speed of 173MB/s (and a read of 241MB/s).
It seems the write speed should be around 200MB/s. I suspect this is the eSATA card I am using (NewTech MaxPower 6G RAID).

Can anyone confirm and suggest how to get better speed?

Thanks.

[Chad Braham]

Thank you for the reply Victor. I have a few more questions though.

I guess this may show my ignorance, but I thought render speed was determined by the processor and RAM on your computer, and had nothing to do with the RAID. I thought the RAID just allowed for multi stream editing (maybe multiple cameras, etc.) Am I incorrect? Should I expect a render speed increase when switching from a firewire RAID to an eSATA RAID?

Thanks,

– Chad

[Chad Braham]

What kind of performance are you getting with the OWC when editing HD footage? Are you using ProRes422? Full 1080p?

I just bought a Qx2, but haven’t been that impressed (even at RAID 0).

Thanks.

[Chad Braham]

Thank you for your help everyone. Sorry for my late response – I was out of the studio for several shoots.

Don: I like the ATTO card you suggested because it has the two ports, that would allow for future expansion. iStorage was one of the enclosures you suggested, but is there another brand you could suggest? In fact, does anybody else have enclosure suggestions that work great with Highpoint or ATTO raid cards? I have to place my order through macsales.com, and they don’t carry the iStorage brand.

Side question, there used to be a salesmen at OWC that people on this forum recommended for FinalCut setups. Is there still a name out there people are using?

[Chad Braham]

Yes. Preferably, I’d like a card that would allow me to have an internal raid, and connect to an external eSATA enclosure too (similar to the CalDigit Raid card).

[Chad Braham]

Shane and Walter – thank you for your responses. It sounds like spending $800 is a crap shoot as far as a good preview monitor goes. I have been reading about the HP DreamColor ($1800), but It’s probably too pricey for me.

Maye I should back up. What is everyone buying instead of the Apple Cinema display? Is the Dell U2410 have the similar speck/performance?

Thanks

[Chad Braham]

Shane, is there a monitor in the $500-$800 range that would be more adequate for color correction with the Matrox MXO?

Thanks

[Chad Braham]

I’m curios about this too. After searching this forum, it seems the “budget” option is to us the Matrox MXO (or MXO2), with a computer monitor. Some seem to like the Dell options, but I can’t tell if they are using it for preview or not. What are the preview options that would stand up in quality and spec to the Apple Cinema Display? What is everyone else using with the Matrox MXO-preview-monitor setup?

[Chad Braham]

I was going to buy a new MacPro anyway (I’ve been editing on my MacBook Pro). But, it would be nice to have the price of the Blue Ray already included in the price of the computer (by providing a BluRay drive as a standard feature of the new MacPro). Now I have to budget for an additional drive. It’s no big deal, I won’t really need a BlueRay until later – but it would have been nice to have it included in their MacPro.