[Eric Hansen]

i looked at the Matrox forum post that was linked, and there was talk of Level 4.0 vs. Level 4.2 and the last post by the Matrox Tech was that Level 4.2 won’t work. what is the difference? is there a downside to using 4.0? what Level does Compressor or Adobe Media encode?

i can’t believe they said that Encore doesnt work, so you should use Toast to author your BD discs. they really don’t get it.

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

thanks. i wonder if Encore thought that the H.264 files weren’t legal for some reason. i have CS3, btw. maybe the authors of the How-To’s were on older versions.

i’m going to rent the Pirates sequels to see for myself, but i read somewhere that when you turn on the Display on a Sony Blu-Ray player and it lists the current codec and bitrate, that at times the movie was going over 40.

thanks

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

hey bob

i notice that the R380 has 2 external SAS ports. the thing i really like about the CalDigit RAID card is that you can connect directly to the 4 internal drives in a MacPro, connecting the RAID card’s internal port to the Infiniband cable in the Mac. ATTO has the R348 with internal and external ports. are the R380 and R348 the same card? and if so, can it connect the same way as the CalDigit?

CalDigit has a slightly different setup if you’re running Boot Camp. i’m not running Boot Camp, but i need to run WinXP in Parallels to access AE7 (i have an old Red Giant plug-in and running it in Windows is the only way to get multi-core speed on an Intel. the Mac version of the plug-in is PPC only). have you heard of any issues with the ATTO cards and Parallels?

thanks

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

sorry steve, it wont work

you need 3 things in a video media server – 1. Ethernet ports for your connected systems, 2. enough processor power to move media around, and 3. fast storage. the only answer here is a Mac Pro or Xserve. nothing else has enough slots to do what you need to do. i dont think your current storage is fast enough. even though you’re using smallish files (XDCAM SD, which i have no experience with), you still need to handle lots of I/Os. a dedicated card-based RAID using SAS, Fibre Channel, etc is the only way to go. Firewire and even eSATA will probably choke (you could try eSATA, but i really have my doubts – a lot depends on the eSATA card you’re using). you COULD use a PCIe port expander on a MacBook Pro. but they cost as much as a new computer, and the MacBook Pro’s bus probably isnt fast enough anyway.

you can certainly edit with MacBooks and MacBook Pros. i think even if you have to get a Mac Pro as your server, your entire rig will still be pretty small.

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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

i definitely agree with Matt here. before i used a G5 as a server, i tested a Dual 2.7 G5 with similar specs to yours with a direct attached Fibre Channel RAID. it was able to capture DVCPRO HD while 2 attached laptops were editing DVCPRO HD and i was amazed it worked in the first place. leaving Activity Monitor open, the processor was pinned the whole time. yes it did work, but it was running at 160-190% all the time. we decided this was not a good idea (and they wanted to attach more computers). the chances of a crash, or just burning out the computer were too high. and your computer is a Dual 2.0, so it probably wont be able to do what my computer was able to do. the fact that it was PCI-X was the nail in the coffin. so we used a G5 Quad 2.5, which has plenty of processor headroom for multiple connected systems, and it’s PCIe.

so if you have a G5 Quad sitting around, go for it. but otherwise follow Bob’s advice – $3000 is nothing where reliability is concerned. go for a new Mac Pro.

on a side note, the facility where i installed both the G5 server and a Mac Pro server is quickly running out of space. their Mac Pro is only one HDElement away from being maxed out. if i was installing it again, i would go with a card similar to the RocketRAID 4322 and a RAID enclosure with a built-in SAS expander. so if you think you’ll ever need more space than 15TB, skip the CalDigit card. otherwise, its a great card and has been trouble free for me.

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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

i will add that Bob’s comments about FREE are funnier the more i think about it. once i go through the rigamarole of convincing the client they need to do this, that it’s actually OK to spend money (in many cases more than they thought) and it will save them money in the not so long run, i then tell them my installation fee and they look at me like i just kicked their dog. i guess that part of the experience will never change. but it always surprises me that people are shocked, SHOCKED that i want to charge them for my services. and for some, the thoughts of “hey he just told me everything he’s going to do, i can do this myself” start going through their heads. i’ve dealt with a few of those, as i’m sure you all have. hell, they post things like “do i have to get a license for every computer?” questions on here everyday. it really does make me appreciate the long-term clients i have that understand what things cost. in all cases, these are the ones that have been in production since the tape-to-tape days and have owned quite a few pieces of $50k+ equipment. chasing the possible new clients that want things for free gets very tiring very fast.

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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

i guess it totally depends on your client, but i’ve had a few different experiences. if your client is used to the fact that an HDCAM deck costs $65k and they paid $5k for their Sony broadcast monitor without blinking, then the costs might not scare them. but i’ve noticed that the idea of what’s expensive has drastically changed over the years. just like the reference to the $100,000 edit system, if you accept this cost, then you will generally accept higher costs. that’s just what things cost to do business. but now you can run the $1200 Final Cut suite on your $1000 MacBook. so how dare you try to sell me on a $30k shared storage system! and can’t you get me Final Cut for free?

the 3 most successful methods i’ve employed are: 1. show them the savings from reduced down-time and general inefficiencies, 2. get a big project to help pay for it, and 3. try to reuse equipment they already own.

the first Xsan system i did was over 3 years ago. at that point we had 2 G4-based systems with direct attached SCSI and FW800 drives. we worked on one movie and one TV series a year, so this worked. but we looked at bidding on a HUGE TV project that would need 6 editors working concurrently, all needing access to the same footage. Xsan was the obvious answer, but it was expensive. it would also necessitate the move to all HD. but we looked beyond that hellish short term project to what our office would be like afterword, and we liked what we saw – 4 HD edit systems all accessing the same footage. Sony HDCAM equipment. access to the SAN available to anyone in the office via ethernet. no more isolation, no more moving footage from here to there on external drives. not having to wait for an editor to get off “your” system. it took a huge project to pay for the equipment, but it was sooo worth it in the end. if we didnt get that huge project to foot the equipment bill, we probably wouldnt have made the jump. but seeing how efficient everything would be helped in the final decision. labor costs would go DOWN!

with the latest ethernet-based SAN i did, the tipping point for the client seemed to be the fact that we were reusing a G5 they already owned. so the $2800 up front cost that Bob mentioned went away. they liked the fact that even if they bought all new Mac Pros for their edit suites, they’re existing G5s could live on as servers.

the truth is, if they are already buying a crap load of firewire external drives, replacing these with a shared storage system is only marginally more expensive. if you take the difference between these 2 costs and present it to the client as “it will cost this much money to allow people to share” and then show them the cost savings from sharing, it just becomes obvious. at that point it almost looks like its free and any good production house owner will then see that it makes money. a lot of money. the reaction i then get is, “why the hell didnt we do this before?”

i agree with everything you guys have already said, but i thought i would add my 2 cents

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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

interesting. the only time that latency has been talked about on the SAN forum, in regards to ethernet-based systems, is the latency of the ethernet networks themselves, or AFP specifically. not the latency of a RAID system. are you saying that using a Mac Pro server with direct-attached SAS storage in conjunction with a 6 port ethernet card will have more latency than Small Tree’s own NAS?

i have only done 2 ethernet-based SAN installations, both using components from Small Tree, and i have not had an issue with latency. i’ve had no complaints from the editors whatsoever (they’re over the moon to be done with firewire drives). it almost sounds more like you’re referring to tuning the systems to the specific file sizes for ProRes (block size, stripe breadth, etc), which i do on my Xsan systems and i also did for these systems.

could you be more specific and perhaps point to the systems you’ve tested and your numbers? i do agree that the highest total throughput doesnt mean anything when you’re trying to serve multiple editors multiple streams, which increases the random reads and writes. i’m actually looking at using OCZ’s new Vertex SSDs as boot drives for some upcoming systems. but video is still way more sequential than not, so the total throughput number still has a lot of importance. but please let me know if you think i’m going in the total wrong direction with my thinking.

thanks

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

hey bob, thanks for the quick and detailed reply. also, thanks for the reference to the AMUG review. very glowing. it looks like a lot of the performance is thanks to the Intel chip. so it looks like this chip, coupled with a SAS-expander chassis is a great bang-for-the-buck solution. also, the 8-bay ProAVIO does not have a SAS-expander from what i can tell. but for only $650, i could definitely see using it as an 8-bay solution until more drives are needed, then pulling the drives out and putting them into an SAS-expander chassis such as the Enhance UltraStor referenced by the AMUG review.

in my original post, i did mean Expando when i wrote Evo2. my apologies. and i definitely agree about support, thats why i’m hesitant about HighPoint. i have used Atto for years for SCSI, so i think i will look at their cards that use this same chip.

thanks

e

Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com

[Eric Hansen]

i’m surprised by the write of only 40. i don’t know how much the CalDigit weighs on that. originally we tested with a Dual 2.7 G5 with a Fibre Channel RAID and got similar speeds to what the Mac Pro is getting. of course, i didnt write them down so i dont know EXACTLY what we were getting. we also set both systems to Jumbo Frames and have Flow Control enabled.

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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com