[Jake Mannion]

I know this is a fairly ancient post, but I wanted to say thanks, Eric. Very helpful stuff, especially for chroma key! Thanks for taking the time to write it up.

[Jake Mannion]

yeah thanks Bob. I ended up converting all the clips to P2 format and now it runs like a champ.

what firmware update is coming for the mark II? I hope they put one out for the T1+2i as that’s what we primarily use here.

also, good tip on the auto-save. thanks

[Jake Mannion]

what were you using before, Joe?

I’m converting all my H.264 .mov stuff over to P2 DVCPROHD now. Looks like filesize is going up by a factor of 4. I can live with that!

I also did a test 1080p clip and brought it into Premiere. Smooooooth as butter! Thanks everyone for all the help.

[Jake Mannion]

you’re right. dammit! I thought h.264 would be be fine, for some reason. I should have guessed it was the encoding. Thanks

[Jake Mannion]

That sounds like an awesome setup, don’t get me wrong. But when I built this machine I was looking at it from an “advanced hobbyist” sort of perspective. I didn’t want the space nor the power consumption of RAID setups.

Plus my budget is now shot, so hopefully I can figure out a way to make the most of what I have.

Basically what I can’t understand is, let’s say I have a 30 second clip (1080p, H.264 .mov) on the timeline. I press play.

Premiere then starts to draw:

• 7-15 Mb/s off of the SSD#1 where the media is stored
• 1-2 Mb/s overhead where the application is stored, SSD#1
• 1-2 Mb/s off the scratch disk area, SSD#2

After about 12-15 seconds, the first line item (media data) drops off completely, as the file is completely in memory. But it still plays terribly, like, not even 1 or 2 frames per second at times. The SSDs can read/write sustained over 200 Mb/s. Even once the media finishes loading it chugs through the playback. I simply don’t get it!!

[Jake Mannion]

I think the MLC lifespan worries are myth. Maybe it was a concern back in the 1990s when the technology was still being refined, but not these days.

And it’s not like they’re in a web server or something thats going to get hammered with data 24/7. The biggest offender for constant writing will be virtual memory usage, if I had to guess. As long as I get 3-4 years out of them I’ll be plenty happy, and I think they’ll be up to the task.

Now as far as performance, I specifically got these over RAID. I didn’t have a lot of room for the build, and could not foresee myself putting a half dozen SATA drives into the machine.

And that’s where I hope I didn’t make an expensive mistake. But on paper (and in the rest of my applications) the SSD are a dream, even stacked up against RAID configurations. I’ve seen them hit close to 350 Mb/s write and read, and the seek times are virtually non-existent.

[Jake Mannion]

Good catch, thanks. The footage is all H.264 encoded .mov files off of Canon SLR cameras. No capturing or capture board.

I agree, the footage “shouldn’t” be on the application drive, but I thought it was a better choice to put it on the SSD (200+ Mb/s, instant seek) than keeping it all on the SATAII storage drive (100 Mb/s, 9ms seek). I will try putting all the project media on the storage drive and see if that improves things.

[Jake Mannion]

Thanks, I will examine that down the road. As for now, the SSD’s are only eight days old.

I’ve seen them hit 280 Mb/s read and write on large file copies with a sustained effort around 180 Mb/s, but the most I’ve seen Premiere Pro CS4 be able to muster out of them is around 10 Mb/s.