[David Council]

Hey Tero, thanks for your sensible response. That’s kind of what I’m looking at. Thanks for making time to think about it.

DC

[David Council]

Thanks for a very entertaining response Jeremy. I’ve read it carefully:
“I don’t think anyone said as fast as possible.”
You yourself said “faster is better”
Jim said “buy a lot more computer than you think you’ll need”
“You asked about NVMe.”
No. I asked about general drive speed, and used the insane speeds of NVme as an example
“Get yourself a single hard drive. It seems like it’s all you want to spend.
I said “I’m happy to invest in something like the OWC Accelsior
“And yes, writing raw data from sensor is going to be different than playing back raw footage from disk in resolve. It’s a completely different process.”
I didn’t say they were the same process, I questioned if they need different drive bandwidth. I didn’t see you answer that question. Can you?
“A three drive raid-0 hard disk array would be the least amount of kit I’d recommend with reservations. A five drive raid5 wound be better.”
“faster is better” (That’s what you said, isn’t it?) Why use raid 5 over raid 0? I’m aware how they both work, which is why I didn’t ask for anyone’s opinion on the comparative merits of different raid configurations. Or expect a recommendation to use a slower array when “faster is better”.
There seems to be quite a lot of – how can I put this – overcompensation – with fast drives and fast cars here ….
Enjoy your trip to the shops! Your imaginary Ferrari is making me very jealous ….

[David Council]

Hey David. Thanks for your learned reply.

My assumption is that at some point, hard drive speed will cause a bottleneck in the pipeline, and that this point is calculable. Approaching this as a scientific experiment, we’d have to theoretically remove all other bottlenecks, and look at just the speed of the drives, therefore assuming that gpu / cpu are not bottlenecks. This is not to deny the blatantly obvious fact that CPU / GPU are important in decoding footage, it simply acknowledges that these obvious facts do not help us perform an accurate calculation about required drive speed.

***This number does not mean much regarding the need for your hard drive speed. It tells you the bandwidth needed when recording RAW footage***

You’ll have to forgive my ignorance here, but it seems that you’re suggesting that the bandwidth required to write raw F55 data onto media at, say 24fps, is different from the bandwidth required to play the same data from a raid array at 24fps? Writing at 24fps and reading at 24fps require different drive bandwidths? Can you explain this to me further?

Everyone’s answer of “as fast as possible” leads me to guess you’re all driving Ferraris to Asda for the groceries. I need to look at my rate card again …

Best

DC

[David Council]

Hey Jeremy.

Thanks for your response. The assumptions I’m making are broadly in line with what you’re suggesting. I’m just hoping to find someone in a white coat who can share practical numbers so I can estimate at what point the hard drives would cause a bottleneck.

Cheers.

DC

[David Council]

Hello Jim.

Thanks for your reply.

I’m asking a question about hard drives. To make sure the replies are about hard drives, I suggested we assume the CPU / GPU are good enough to handle what’s thrown at them. I don’t think anyone needs reminded that different codecs cause different stresses on cpu / gpu.

I’m not sure how your business is doing, but if it’s ok with you, I’m not going to “spend money until it hurts” if it’s completely unnecessary. To put it a little more elegantly “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?”

DC

[David Council]

Thanks Jeremy.

I get that faster is better, I’d just like to be able to make more precise calculations, as this is going to be a sizeable investment and I want to put the money in the right place.

Yes, the NVMe drives are stellar, but do 4 streams of footage that run at a total of 600MBps need storage that runs at 6000MBps? Would it run on a sata ssd raid at 3000MBps for instance? Maybe even an external Thunderbolt 3 raid at 2300MBps? Not being able to work this out is what is exercising me!

If I’m going to plump for NVMe storage, I think it’ll be striped in raid 0 with a daily backup to slower / cheaper storage …

Thanks again.

DC

[David Council]

Hello Joseph.

I did not ask how to measure a disk’s speed, but thanks anyway.

Also, thanks for pointing out that different media will have different system demands (who knew?) even though I specifically removed CPU/GPU from the equation.

I don’t mind that you don’t know the answer, but it seems to be a bit of a waste of your time writing an irrelevant post to illustrate that you didn’t even understand the question.

DC

[David Council]

Here’s the information I was given by Sony today.

“As discussed I send you a short summery of your query after I had a look at it again.

The PMW-F3 has a HD-SDI Dual-link output which delivers a 4:2:2 1080 50/59P signal. In order to achieve this, the firmware on the camera needs to be 1.3 or higher (Latest version is 1.45). In the VIDEO SET menu, the ‘Dual-link & Gamma Select’ must be set to ON (1.5 YPbPr422 &Video). The dual-link signal will then always be 4:2:2 1080 50P. Even if the camera is set to record for example 720 50i. You do not need the S-Log upgrade for this.

I hope this helps.”

[David Council]

Gentlemen

Thanks both for your learned responses.

I have a prep day on Tuesday before a shoot on Wednesday and your advice will be invaluable.

I’ll post if there’s anything I can add…

Best.

DC

[David Council]

Thanks for your reply Ian.

Put simply, I want to record overcranked footage (50fps) from my F3 at 1920×1080

It seems to be possible (both on the SRR1, and Gemini), but it would be very useful to speak to someone who has real world experience of doing this.

DC