Dean Sensui
Forum Replies Created
-
I master a one-hour show every week and hadn’t had any sync problems until the other week when I decided to master from a Firewire drive.
It’s a portable 400 Mbps drive that takes power via the Firewire buss.
I walked away from the process to take care of other things as mastering to tape is usually trouble-free. When I came back 45 minutes later the audio sync was way off.
The drive was really hot, too.
I transferred the project to my 2-drive SATA RAID and remastered the show without a hitch.
As Matte suggested, mastering from a solo Firewire drive might be part of the problem, if not -the- problem. You might be able to stream a single, contiguous file from a solo Firewire drive without a problem. But if the project consists of a lot of clips and effects then the drive may not be able to keep up with the demand.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
-
[walter biscardi] “When doing reviews for the Cow I will run speed tests … but that does not automatically guarantee that the drives can actually run any particular footage with Final Cut Pro.
“Good point, Walter!
There’s no substitute for a fully integrated test run to get an accurate idea of how a system will perform.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
-
I’m using a Blackmagic Decklink card so I can’t vouch for the system’s performance with an AJA setup.
But with my 2-drive RAID 90 percent full I got a test reading of a bit more than 90 MB/sec which is supposed to be able to provide about 72 frames/second with 10-bit 4:4:4 NTSC video.
With 4 drives it should handle the load easily.
See test results at barefeats.com to see what an drive system with lots of free space can do.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
-
The Barefeats.com website also makes note of the writing speed difference between Firewire 800 and SATA.
The G5’s have some sort of problem with the Firewire 800 port that hobbles the write speed. Doesn’t matter if it’s a RAID or not. It’s been that way for a while now, and it hasn’t been solved in the newest machines.
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
-
Michael…
I’m using it as a Level-0 RAID for speed and to ensure against dropped frames. Ever since I began working with a RAID I hadn’t had any problems with dropped frames.
Having a RAID also helps if you’re working with several clips in a composite or with other applications such as Live Type or Motion.
The only time I work uncompressed is when I’m doing a composite in Commotion or After Effects. Otherwise it’s pretty much native DV.
Dean Sensui
http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com -
Hi Michael…
I work with DV, mastering to Betacam SP.
The drives are about $140 each.
Package deal for the Seritek Bundle: One SeriTek/1SEN2 External Enclosure & One 2-Port Host Adapter — $260.
https://store.yahoo.com/firmtek/sata1sen2.html
Dean Sensui
http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com -
I’m using a SATA RAID based on a pair of Hitachi/IBM SATA drives in a Seritek 1EN2 housing. Using the SeriTek 1SE2 SATA card with external ports.
It’s nice to be able to swap RAID’s for different clients. That way each project or series of projects have their own storage space.
It’s also less expensive when more space is needed. Just have to purchase the bare drives and a pair of hard drive trays.
These were ordered from Other World Computing.
Dean Sensui
http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com -
I think there are a lot of us in this particular boat.
With FCP Studio going for less than an XR system it’s little wonder the used M100 market has dried up.
While I hate the idea that all this nice hardware is gathering dust, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that it’s probably a market limited to those who already have existing M100 systems and are looking for replacement or backup gear.
Dean Sensui
http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com -
I would recommend SATA drives.
External RAID enclosures from Sonnet and Firmtek that allow hot-swapping drives provide an economical option in the long run.
I’m using the Firmtek 2-drive card and enclosure and they’re working nicely. Sonnnet’s solution was just announced and their enclosure has 4 bays instead of Firmtek’s 2, and it also has an internal power supply instead of an external one. Slightly cleaner installation… no brick.
Hitachi 250-gig drives are about $140 each plus another $20 for a “sled”. At about $160 for 250 gigabytes of fast storage, it’s not a bad deal.
Dean Sensui
http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com -
My setup is working OK so far.
I’m working on a dual 2.5 GHz G5, 4 gigs RAM, SATA RAID.
Installed a seperate boot drive in the G5 and did a clean install of Tiger and FCP Studio. All drivers and other associated software was also installed from scratch.
Opened up a previous hour-long episode of our show and mastered it to Betacam via a UVW-1800. No problems nor issues. Color corrections, effects and audio adjustments and filters remained intact. The timeline is full-resolution DV NTSC.
Dean Sensui
http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com