[Eric Hansen]

i wouldn’t do any color critical work with a consumer-grade monitor. people ask me all the time what brand or model monitor to buy, and i don’t know. there’s too much variance. the problem with consumer models is usually things like inconsistent build quality and setup, and quick drift.

go over to the Apple Color forum and look over there. there’s a few LCDs from Panasonic and others that the colorists seem to like for client monitors (although, they’re not color correcting with them, just matching them as close as possible to their broadcast monitors). for color correction i like the monitors from FSI and i’ve heard good things about using the HP Dreamcolor. these should both be cheaper than LCD broadcast monitors from Sony, Cinetal and the like.

if you want to keep using that Sony monitor you can. you can have an HD monitor see things “on the big screen” but keep a smaller broadcast monitor for color critical work. this is pretty common. i would suggest sending it out for maintenance if you haven’t in awhile. when i used to have a Sony 20L5, i would send it to Sony every 12-18 months for regular maintenance.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

have you tried the Elgato Turbo.264 HD? using it to make 640×360 H.264 at 1500kbps from Final Cut at ProResHQ runs at about 100fps.

i don’t use CatDV, but i think it should work. it installs as a Quicktime Component and uses the USB dongle to hardware accelerate the encode. my 2009 Mac Pro 8 core will use about 400-500% processor when the Turbo.264 is encoding.

i have a Matrox MXO2 with MAX and i never use it for encoding any more. just the Elgato. it’s not the prettiest encode in the world, but for offline files, it works great!

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

hey Kevin

i’ve been around the block, so to speak, with data tape for video archive. i started with the Quantum SDLT 600a, which is what Cache-A’s current products are based on. having a network device was great, but it was slow and making second copies wasn’t that easy. it used FTP as its interface and all the editors in my office understood how it worked. so it was easy and i hear that the new Cache-A stuff is even easier. i don’t like the idea of only having one though, as i explain below.

currently, i’m using BRU PE with 2 HP LTO4 decks. i went with 2 decks because my previous experience is that the tape drive will always go down at the worst time. i’ve had these HP decks running almost every day for 6 months and haven’t had a problem. but i’m glad i have 2 just in case. i run them in doubler-mode, so 2 tapes are written at once (one for in-house, one for out-of-house). including writing and verifying, it takes 6 hours per tape. so on a typical work day i can get 2 tape sets written.

i’m now wishing i bought an autoloader. since i’m getting 2 tape sets done per day, a single drive 8 tape autoloader wouldn’t go “faster” (writing and verifying 4 tapes would take 24 hours, the same as i’m doing now), but it would be cool to be able to set it to go over a weekend. or at least set it and forget it for a few days.

in the future, i would like to get an autoloader running on the SAN server (uses the same R380 card as the RAIDs in our SAN), and then have another LTO4 drive on another computer specifically for offloading. our current problem is i’ll be writing a tape, an editor will ask for some stock footage shots that are on another LTO4 tape, but i can’t get to them because theres a few hours left in the current write. a separate system with its own drive would be nice in this instance. with BRU, all their software runs for free in read-only mode, all the way back to their first version (if you wrote a tape with BRU 1.0 in the late 80s, the current version of BRU PE can still read it, and for free! this is why i’m not really worried about BRU’s proprietary format) one alternative to this that we’re considering, is having a bare hard drive copy of all of our LTO4 tapes, and putting SATA drive adapters (toasters) on every edit system for immediate previewing and offloading. the previewing is key. you can’t preview footage on a tape like you can a hard drive. our archive is now at 120 tapes, which is roughly 84TB. thats a lot of hard drives!

like others, i would also suggest going with LTO5, but keep buying LTO4 tapes. they are currently way cheaper per GB than LTO5 (all LTO equipment writes back 1 generation and reads back 2).

another thing you need to consider is a database to track all your tape’s contents. i’m not sure how Cache-A does this. BRU’s is really primitive, so i don’t rely on it. i think Cat DV will do this. i use a really simple app that makes aliases. so i save the structure of the tape as aliases on our server, which is then searchable with Spotlight. not the most ideal thing when dealing with video (it would be great to have previews), but it works great mostly because it’s so simple. i’m always looking for better options though.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

hey jim

the only reason your system is working is because your bandwidth requirements are so low, using ProRes Proxy. we use Proxy over here and 1920×1080 at 23.98 is only a little over 4MB/s. your single gigabit non-jumbo connection will support a few of these. but it’s not reliable, as the guys above have written.

i have tried the “use an edit system as a server” before and also been yelled at by Bob. my biggest problem is i don’t learn from other peoples mistakes, i have to make them myself. using an edit system as the server will work. your CalDigit has a lot of spare bandwidth. but reliability is the problem. if Final Cut starts to act funky and you need to restart your computer, that means you have to restart the server (same computer), which stops everyone else from working. even worse is a total system crash or kernel panic. yes they do happen and they’ve happened to me. have this happen a few times and you’ll wonder if you’re saving any money going this route (you’re not).

you really do want nothing else running on your server computer. the question isn’t spare capacity, of which the Mac Pro has a lot of, it’s reliability. you don’t want to go to every editor and say, i got to shut down the server for a few minutes. they will hate you for it. in the end you just have to accept that this server will only do one thing: serve files. you said you’re thinking about getting another tower. well, get a used first Gen Mac Pro, make that your server, and keep FCP running on the tower you have now. the general rule from Small Tree, if i remember correctly, is 1GB of RAM and 1GHz of processor for every connected client.

also, you don’t need link aggregation if you only have a few clients. get an ethernet card from Small Tree that has enough ports for everyone and use that. you don’t need a switch, just connect them all directly to the multi-port card.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

hey jeff

this is probably the most appropriate forum for your post. we’re the guys that deal with MASSIVE storage and this box fits right in.

so the number of lanes don’t matter so much as the total bandwidth of the source? does this mean that a 8x slot does 20Gbps? would a 16x slot do 40Gbps? sorry for all the questions. i don’t really understand the PCIe structure of the Mac Pro, and now i’m dealing with things like ProTools HD3 and specing out a DaVinci Resolve system and i’m running out of slots so i’m looking at these devices.

btw, the Kona LHe card is 4x, if you ever need to move slots.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

i’m a bit confused by PCIe expansion. the way i understand it, the Mac Pros have 40 PCIe lanes (slots 1 and 2 are 16x and 3 and 4 are 4x). this particular unit comes with an 8 lane card, which goes into the Mac’s 16 lane slot. it then offers 2 8x slots or 4 4x slots in expansion, while also driving hard drives? but it says its host card is only 8x. where do the extra lanes come from?

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

it seems like the problem has been sorted, but i just want to clarify as both an ethernet SAN user/builder, and MXO/MXO2 user.

encoding ProRes HD using the Matrox requires a quad core (according to Matrox Support). since Apple laptops max out at 2 cores, there’s just not enough processing power. this has nothing to do with shoving the files down ethernet at the same time. there’s just not enough power for the single encoding operation. if your laptop is fast enough, it will do DVCPRO HD and various forms of uncompressed, since they don’t require as much processing power. the only ProRes processing a laptop can do is SD.

RED Scarlet?? i’m not jumping into that pond. give me an Alexa. it EXISTS and it works great!

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

Craig wrote: I am starting to wonder if the 2 TB drives have gotten acceptably reliable

i haven’t heard anything about 2TB drives being any more or less reliable than 1TB drives (or drives of any size). my advice is to operate under the assumption that all drives fail (it’s not a matter of “if” but “when”, backup backup backup) and go with a company that has a nice warranty and exchange policy. Enterprise class drives are meant to run 24/7 for years, and carry a longer warranty (usually 5-7 years) vs. consumer level drives (1-3 years). i currently buy Hitachi because they have the best replacement service i’ve used. yes, i buy from a company whose drives have failed on me – i’ve had drives from every major manufacturer fail on me. hard drives just do that. but Hitachi’s exchange process is the easiest in my experience.

btw, i buy about 200-300 hard drives per year on behalf of clients and myself, both as bare units and pre-made enclosures.

to the OP, in the case of the Mac Pro, Apple-branded drives are no different than an off-the-shelf drive, as long as the specs are similar. obviously if you buy a 5400 RPM or “Green” drive, it will run slower than the Apple drive that came with your computer.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

if you’re editing video, don’t replace your boot drive with a bigger one. you don’t want to put video that you’re editing on your boot drive for performance reasons. put the new drive in another bay and put your video files on it.

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Eric Hansen]

you should be able to seamlessly switch between ethernet and WiFi if you Airport preferences are set correctly. the gear on the bottom left of the Airport preferences window will bring up the “service order”. if you place Ethernet on top and Airport second, then your computer will use ethernet when it’s connected, then Airport when the ethernet is disconnected. your router simply sees 2 different IP addresses – one for ethernet, one for airport, and your computer decides which one to use based on your preferences.

ethernet can make a difference if you’re far away from your router or if you’re sharing your WiFi with a lot of computers. WiFi only has so much bandwidth that can be shared. yes WiFi is many factors faster than your internet connection, but if you have too many devices, your performance will degrade. at my office, we have the preferences set in the above order and ask the employees to plug their laptops in when they can to reduce the bandwidth load on the wireless. especially when they’re transferring files

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Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv