[Craig Seeman]

Compressor 4.1.1 now seems to do its best H.264 encoding at High Profile CABAC (single pass only). It’s the closest Apple seems to get to x264 quality… yet it’s the toughest to play back on some older devices so I’d ask before doing such encode. Otherwise one can do Main Profile CAVLC MultiPass which may be slightly lower quality and take longer to encode (given multi pass).

[Craig Seeman]

You really need to know what they’ll be playing it back on.
What will struggle on a Core2Duo will fly on a current Quad i7.
If you “aim low” the quality may suffer.

Mac or Windows shouldn’t make too much difference as WMP 12 plays back H.264 .mp4 and H.264 .mov just fine without Quicktime.

[Craig Seeman]

What does the YouTube video look like at 1080?
It’s hard to know what’s happening without seeing how YouTube is handling it.
Since you’re using 50 progressive frames instead of 25 perhaps the bits per pixel is lower than it could be. Try doubling the data rate.

[Craig Seeman]

ProRes at a reasonable price on Windows. That might help.
https://www.cinemartin.com/cinec/buy/

[Craig Seeman]

Cinemartin Cinec does ProRes export on Windows and has for some time.
https://www.cinemartin.com/cinec/
Standard edition only 99 Euro
https://www.cinemartin.com/cinec/buy/

In the USA
https://www.sharbor.com/vendors/CMN.html
and
https://www.adkvideoediting.com/viewitem.cfm?id=7728

[Craig Seeman]

Interesting. I had just discovered this today which seems to be another variation. $729 for two Thunderbolt ports empty bay.
https://www.datoptic.com/ec/dual-thunderbolt-raid-with-5x-sata-bay-for-mac-and-windows.html

How long have you had it? Any reliability issues? Fan noise level?

[Craig Seeman]

But I can move an external drive bay away from my computer to some extent and I can easily move the entire Bay to my laptop if needed. I like the modular approach.

My only wish would be a way to cool drives without all the fan noise.

[Craig Seeman]

[Lance Bachelder] “They have eSATA and USB3 – no Thunderbolt.”

I was thinking of USB3 for JBOD but the new MacPro only seems to have one bus (unlike the MBPr which has two). I decided that I’d keep USB3 open for whatever a client might walk in with on USB3 drives. My concern is using client material on their drive while also using stuff on my own simultaneously on the same bus. Granted one would have to push things very hard.

With the OWC ThunderBay (or some of the listed equivlants) I could pull two non critical drives and put two others in and RAID 0 them if I needed to.

[Craig Seeman]

I’ve looked at the LaCie 5big.
My concern about preinstalled drives is that I think I need a variety of sizes to start with.
For example, my Bootcamp drive would be fine at 500GB. My TimeMachine may be OK at 1 or 2 TB.
The Photo, Music Library, Document drive might be fine at 2TB.
The “light media use” drive would be 4TB.

I want to avoid a lot of “odd size” partitioning, making it awkward for me to replace drives.
Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way.

[Craig Seeman]

[Kevin Patrick] “I will most likely wind up getting their T3 for many of the same reason you list.”

The one issue I have with the T3 is that it seems to require that you get drives from CalDigit. All reviews usually include

To ensure performance and compatibility, CalDigit limits user access to drive replacements. Users can still manually replace the included drives with almost any 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch HDD or SSD, but doing so will void the T3’s warranty. To keep things official, users in need of replacements will have to buy complete “drive modules,” which are HDDs or SSDs pre-installed into compatible drive trays. While the type of drive you receive in your own T3 may vary from ours, this restriction results in quite a large markup in the case of our 2TB Toshiba drives. A 2TB Drive Module from CalDigit costs $179 (although you get a drive tray and $10 Archive Box included in that price), while the same bare Toshiba drive model currently costs about $90. We certainly appreciate the need for compatibility and quality control, but that’s a hefty margin if you ever need to replace or purchase a spare drive.