Eric Hansen
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I have not tested that exact setup, but yes it should work as the ThunderRAID Mini allows passthrough on Thunderbolt. Connect one TB port to the Mac Mini and the other TB port to your monitor.
I would call Maxx, ask for Matt Stone, and he can answer your questions. Immediate phone support is another reason why I choose companies like Maxx over larger corporations like Lacie.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
You should have at least RAID-5 protection, which means one drive can fail and you’ll still have your media. I would suggest a 4 drive system such as Maxx Digital’s ThunderRAID Mini, and a spare hard drive to swap if one drive fails:
https://www.maxxdigital.com/thunderraid-mini.html
As far as anything better in 2014, all manufacturers use similar drives, controllers and enclosures. Anything new in 2014 is just going to be a reshuffling of those things with a prettier enclosure. I lean toward companies that use the most robust parts and have the easiest return/replacement policies.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
That is true. You need multiple drives to see the speeds that TB is capable of. Lacie’s 2 drive RAID 0 should perform about twice as fast as a single drive. Lacie doesn’t help things by writing “10Gb/s*” on their packaging for the Rugged, when really it’s closer to 100-150MB/s.
I’ve never used FCPX, so I can’t help you there. But I will say I almost never cut using a single drive as the source. I always use a RAID. Even when clients send me a small drive (like the Rugged), the first thing I do is copy them to my 4 drive RAID-5. The problem isn’t the transfer speed, in which FW800 is fine for ProRes. If the clips in your edit are spread all over your drive, or if you drive is fragmented, it will spend a lot of time searching and piecing together the clips. This happens a LOT faster on a RAID. So it’s the single drive, not the connection, that could be your limiting factor.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
I don’t think my problem was with ProRes. In reality, I think it could happen with any codec. Since I wasn’t able to figure out the source of the error, just that I experienced it with multiple random files spread out over years. It reminded me of the glitches I would see on old BetaSP tapes.
DV50 is just another codec. It just so happens that it’s also a tape-based codec, but I don’t think that really matters. I think any playback device that can do ProRes will also be able to do DV/DVCPRO in the future. It was one of the top codecs.
With DPX, the only reason that I prefer it is because any possible data corruption (not tape or disc or drive), will be limited to a single frame. It’s pretty easy to rebuild a single missing frame in After Effects or similar.
There’s never a guarantee in digital. I wouldn’t have guessed 10 years ago that DV would still be playable today, and it still is. I have no reason to believe that it won’t be playable 10 years from now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if other codecs go away.
The easiest way to create DPX now is with Resolve Lite – import your file and export it as DPX. You can also export as TIFF, which I’ve seen occasionally for DCP delivery. You will need to keep separate audio files that are synced.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
Tim made a great point that storage is cheap compared to labor and cost of creation/acquisition.
But I want to address your other point about project files and re-exporting.
It’s a bad idea.
You alluded to it right at the beginning: “I am using Premiere CS4(I know old but that’s what I got)”
Imagine what you’ll be using 10 years from now. Will it be able to open your project without screwing it up? Will the project file corrupt? Will the files all reconnect (that’s the biggest problem I’ve run into even a few months later). If you later take up Creative Cloud and then decide to end your subscription, you will be locked out of your project files. You will want masters that don’t require an app to play back.
I’ve always operated under the idea of the ‘tape on a shelf’ or ‘negative in a vault’, which is why I eventually adopted LTO tape. No matter what system you used to edit, if you printed an HDCAM tape, it can be played back in any HDCAM deck. This is a godsend when you realize that your intern accidentally deleted all your files, but you still have a master tape.
The other question is codec, and that’s a complicated one. Never save a master as a web-quality codec. You want to save the highest quality that you can. But, I’ve had feature length ProResHQ files develop errors in playback (glitches or ‘hits’ in the video), and some even become completely corrupted and won’t open. I’m not sure exactly why this happens. I switched to DPX for masters because it is frame based – if one frame corrupts, it doesn’t screw up the entire movie. yes, DPX exports take up a LOT of space, and slower systems can’t play them back in realtime. But as Tim said, storage is cheap and we’re only talking about the final export, not all the source media. For sources, i would just keep the original formats they were shot in, along with any files that were used in the timeline (basically, a media manage).
since film is going the way of the dodo, many production houses and networks require source footage and masters to be archived on LTO and not hard drives.
i hope that helps
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
Would Thursby Dave work?
Caveat: I’ve never used it
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
it looks like the Caldigit FASTA-6GU3 Pro needs a minimum of 10.7
not sure if all the cards will be like that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if USB3 has issues on an OS that old
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
I went with the CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 because it had both USB3 and eSATA on the same card. I have noticed that there are sleep/wake issues with the USB3 ports, but i havent been able to figure out if its the card or the drives I’m using. Other than that, it works great and I have quite a few clients using them too. I see there’s a new Pro version. I have the older one.
the top slop marked 4x/RAID is for Apple’s RAID card, if you have it (it’s a piece of junk). Otherwise both the top slots at 4x speed are the same. any PCIe cards you put in these slots will run at a max of 4x speed. the Caldigit card is 4x. the 2 bottom slots are 16x and run at a max speed of 16x, but can handle any card. these would be for high speed cards such as graphics, SAS/Fiber storage, Red Rocket, etc.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
No worries, glad to help.
Since the SSD only has the OS and apps and other small things, you can go smaller. My grading system uses a 120GB SSD. If i was getting a new one, i would go with 240GB so I could have more space for my 100GB Dropbox. Thats more than enough space for me and keeps my backups smaller.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
I put SSDs in every computer I work on because it makes a huge difference:
– boot times
– app launching
– email searching
– Spotlight searchingthat being said, when you’re actually in the NLE and editing, it will make very little difference since the software is loaded and your media is on other drives. So i buy SSDs not to speed up my editing, but to speed up everything else.
btw, switching from FW800 to eSATA or SAS for your media couldl make a huge difference depending on your drive setup and codecs.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv