David Chai
Forum Replies Created
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What about the Promise DS4600? Raid 5, very affordable and esata connection. Not good enough for uncompressed. A software 3 drive sata RAID 0 will give you more speed, but no protection.
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David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
Also having dealt with both systems. HD format editing is much slower on Adobe Premiere, and that includes Mpeg2 not just H264. I cannot get realtime playback fullscreen on the same machine (macpro 8 core) in Premiere Pro with the same files as I can on FCP which is smooth like butter.
SD is not such a problem. But definitely agree with Shane, stay away from Long Form on Premiere.
David
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David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
There’s a new version for download on Apple’s download page under video. Follow the link:
https://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/x264encoder.html—————–
David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
Paul,
you could just put three drives in a raid zero on one of your mac pro systems and export a self contained ProRes HD file to that for playout. This way you get the benefit of shared storage during editing and have a reliable way to playout without dropping frames. I always render to my local drive even though I have a shared storage server. Renders are faster this way and also does not kill the throughput on the file server for other people. The ProRes Proxy format is equivalent of the DNX36 on Avid and will hold up miles better on a big screen than DV.
Listen to Bob though, get a good quality RAID chassis, or you’ll hate yourself. This is all a fraction of the price of a unity anyway. A 4 drive array is usually only good as Direct attached storage for one machine. If you want to keep decent performance when your drives get full, and you do more renders, you’ll need more drives in a bigger array. Make sure you have hardware RAID 5. A bad drive will be your worst nightmare otherwise, and having a backup drive is not a bad idea either.
Good luck!
David 😀—————–
David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
Hi Marcus,
Welcome to the brave new world of DIY shared storage!
You can use the benchmark tools from AJA/Blackmagic, but nothing is better than the real thing. Copy some video files over to the new storage and then try to play them back on your multiple macpros simultaneously to get an idea of how much your server is going to take. Open the “activity monitor” application and look at the network throughput to see how much you are able to get to each machine. Also open up the same on your server and see what throughput it’s giving out.
If you are bonding (trunking) the ethernets (absolutely essential for the server, optional for the clients), take a look at small-tree article on how to do it correctly, link here: https://www.small-tree.com/kb_results.asp?ID=12 but the switch also has to be configured for that to work.
Let us know how it goes…
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David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
Marcus, the Enhance RS88 has a built in RAID controller, so you don’t need to have a second one with an Areca or a Attotech. You can just use a SAS card like the LSI SAS 1068E which costs around $120. If you want to use the Areca or Attotech Raid controllers, then you can use the RS8 MS for around $756 or RS16 JS. Enhance has a compatibility matrix and includes seagate 1.5tb and also Attotech R380 and Areca 1680x. You can always contact them and ask if they have tested a config with the exact raid controller/drives/Raid level you are thinking of using. I have a friend who had issues with Areca and Seagate 1.5tb drives. Not sure if that issue has been resolved, may be worth contacting Areca to be sure.
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David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
>Hi David –
>where did you get the driver for the Intel 4 port card from for your G5?The driver believe it or not is built into OSX server 10.5.6 and above. I’ve only tested up to 10.5.8 server, and have not tested with client version, but suspect the driver is also there.
Plug card in and it literally just works. I first tried with 10.5.3 or something like that and it definitely did not work, until we did an OS update. I think we got the 4 port card intel MT/1000 PCIX for something like $85 on ebay.>I am amazed that you wanted to build a budget system, yet you chose the most expensive switch,
>and a fibre array ! I am also amazed that you are able to get 3 streams of XDCam or ProRes422HQ
>without jumbo frames, as ethernet with an MTU of 1500 will max out at about 50Mb/sec !We already had the cisco switch in place, that’s why we used that. It’s a 48 port switch and there a lot of traffic going around as the switch is full, but we do not see any throughput issues on the file server to clients. We cannot switch to Jumbo currently as some legacy systems are not compatible. Yes I was pleasantly surprised to get 5-6 streams multicam of XDCAM EX, I tried 7 streams but I got dropped frames. So around 60-65MB/sec. We got a fibre array, because we wanted something that was hardware RAID based and separate from the computer (easy to move around), and also fibre incase we wanted to expand in the future to a SAN based solution. (We also had unused fibre cards already for the G5) I have nothing but good things to say about Enhance Technologies. The product has been rock solid and not one failed drive yet, We have just added a 2nd Ultrastor RS16 FS enclosure, and plan on using the SAS expansion chassis when we run out of space.
>Cisco won’t help anyone without a support contract – how did you get the Cisco working ?
>Did you know an IT guy that was Cisco certified ?We have a cisco CCIE who helps us out with switch configurations, he doesn’t come in often as the stuff just works once it’s all setup. I’ve tried playing with cisco myself and with the 100mb switches on ebay for around $50 now, it’s worth it to just get one to understand how it works. It’s basically linux command line, which definitely has a learning curve, but the online guides are very helpful. And it can be done by a non CCIE if you are willing to persevere. Read up on Etherchannel (cisco speak for trunking – use LACP Active for MAC compatible trunking) and VLAN.
>People ask me why I am on these forums so much – it is because of your excellent post (and others like it).
>Now, I have to try the G5 again, as I did not get the results you did.
>Please answer my questions above, and thanks for posting your results.Bob a big Thank you for sharing all your wisdom! Finding information about shared storage is very difficult especially when you’re doing it on a budget. These shared storage systems can cost so much, and if you want to it without an integrator, it can prove very expensive, especially if it doesn’t work. So a big thanks to BOB! Happy new year!
David 😀
By the way, about the Areca cards, be careful if you are using Seagate 1.5TB drives with them as not all firmware versions are supported, and my friend had issues once he updated the firmware. In the end he switched to WD drives. The seagate 1.5TB work fine in the ENHANCE enclosures with the built in RAID controllers.
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David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
Just want to chime in with my experience. I was originally inspired to build this based loosely on Bob’s cheap shared storage setup and was surprised how well it worked.
Using an:
Dual 2ghz G5 as File Server running OSX server 10.5.8, 4.5GB ram.
Enhancetech Ultrastor RS16FS with 16 x Seagate 1.5TB drives. RAID 6. (We paid around $6000 total. We bought the drives separate and installed ourselves.) You can buy the Chassis direct from enhance or from BH, CDW or NEWEGG. Enhance have great support.
Intel Pro/1000 MT Quad Port Server card Gigabit (10.5.6 or higher has built in drivers) PCI-X.
Apple Dual 2GB fibre channel PCI-X card.4 ports Trunked through Cisco 2960G switch. (not a cheap switch, but excellent quality).
Read/write is around 300MB/sec (limited by the Dual 2GB Fibre card)
The Ultrastor Chassis can easily do 600MB/sec, but you need dual 4GB fibre cards to get that. Besides 4 ports trunked matches the 4GB fibre throughput of the fibre cards as a good match for the 4 workstations that needed access to the file server.I’m getting 5-6 streams of XDCAM 35mb/sec to 3 workstations simultaneously, without dropped frames. Latency will take a hit with so many streams, but it’s usable. G5 is around 50-60% CPU load. Do not run too many other services on it as the G5 is way slower than the Intel Xeons.
ProRes 422 streams can get 2-3 per machine. Figure around 60MB/sec as your top with random access and burstable to around 100MB/sec for a straight file to file copy. This is a Non JUMBO frame setup. You can probably get 10-15% more throughput on Jumbo, we just have other systems on the switch that are not compatible with Jumbo.
I recommend rendering to local and then copying back to the server storage afterwards, as reading and writing to the file server definitely kills your performance, but just reading is ok. Saves tons of copying time. This setup has saved me countless hours over the last six months. And the intel Card and apple fibre card can be found on ebay for really little money, and we had a G5 sitting around, so might as well put it to work. If you only need a few clients, you maybe able to get away with using AFP file sharing on a client OS system. We just needed more administrative control over who can access what files so we used the Server version of the OS.
This setup maybe more than you want to spend, but it’s expandable (up to additional 4 chassis for 80HDD or around 100TB of storage or more if you use 2TB drives) and it’s a hardware raid controller, so it takes a load off the G5. I would have to agree on Bob on a lot of points. You can get cheap direct attached storage like the Highpoint (which I have used), but when you want to go to a shared environment and be able to rely on it, the price starts to climb high very quick. Good quality gear, Raid controllers, switches are absolutely essential if you want a nice fast, stable working system. Still this was so much cheaper than XSAN or even the Promise chassis.
good luck with your ghetto SAN.
David—————–
David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
I’ve seen this problem on a friends Quad Core macpro. 10.5.8, QT 7.6.4, FCP 7.01. Template opens fine in Motion but is always a white screen in FCP. Video is fine, only Motion Templates are a probIem. I suspect its to do with either not enough memory, only has 3GB, or the graphics card, ATI 2600 in this quad core machine. 8 core machines don’t seem to have any issue. Another quad core with 1900XT is also ok, but it also has 11GB of RAM.
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David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159 -
If you are using interlaced footage, make sure that it’s interpreted correctly with the right fields before starting the optical flow analysis. Sometimes the footage is not interpreted on import and the calculations will be off. You can check the field ordering in the media tab, by selecting it and looking at the inspector under media, and see what the field ordering is. If the ordering is off. The optical flow analysis will be off.
Hope this helps,
David 😀—————–
David Chai
Director . Camera . Editor
http://www.davidchai.com
dc@davidchai.com
212 363 0159