Jason Myres
Forum Replies Created
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I read this article a few years ago, and it introduced me to the idea that RAID 5 and 6, while popular, aren’t the end-all, be-all for everyone:
https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/raid5-vs-raid-10-safety-performance.html
There seem to be two camps, bandwidth vs transactions, and they have almost completely opposite requirements. So, while an Xsan admin is looking for streams of ProRes, a MySQL DBA is chasing IOPS. As much as we use RAID5, in the DBA world it’s often seen as less desirable than some combination of mirrored/striped.
JM
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I’ve found that the 60D LCD holds up really well in direct sunlight. If you don’t need magnification, something like this might be helpful, while still allowing you a lot of adjustment:
https://www.lcd4video.com/products/Viewfinder-Sunhood-for-Canon-60D.html
JM
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I apologize, we were testing on a Unity MediaNet via fibre channel. So my comments apply to that, and not a ISIS 5000. That is also what some of our customers were using with regard to the file count limitation. Sorry about that.
https://www.avid.com/US/products/Unity-MediaNetwork/
JM
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5000 or 7000? We had an opportunity to test Final Cut with a 5000 for a short period, and without MC5 it basically becomes a volume-level locking SAN. There’s no project sharing like you have with Media Composer, and also a 50 MB/s quality of service limitation that seems to be in place to ensure minimum use-able bandwidth to each client.
After talking with some Avid techs, we had heard there may be a workaround, but we never made it that far. Another thing to be aware of is a maximum file-count limitation (10 million, I think), that may seem like a lot, but I know a lot of Avid admins that spend a fair amount of time culling files to stay under it. The file count does not go up if you add additional storage. Again though, this is just my brief experience with one.
If you’ve got a couple editors running MC5, a 5000 can be a great all-in-one solution to get them sharing, though. If using FCP, it may be good to look at an SNS Evo, Editshare, or Facilis.
If you are looking at connecting FCP users to a 7000, while I believe its do-able, it might be better to look at getting your FCP users on an Xsan and then using re-sharing or some sort intermediate NAS to pass files back and forth.
JM
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They just bought Isilon, which is making in-roads into post production so that might be a good start. Their really heavy iron is all about Oracle and DB2.
JM
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If this does end up being true, I’m going to miss Xsan. In digital media, its a formula one car in a sea of toyota camrys. If you can’t drive, it may not have been much fun for you. But, if you can, oh man.
An Xsan is the culmination of a bunch of different technologies: DNS, OD, RAID, ACLs, POSIX, AFP, SMB, Fibre, Ethernet, cluster file system, asymmetric metadata. And because of that, everything you learn building an Xsan translates to a ton of other areas. And, if you ever decide you no longer need an Xsan, nearly everything (servers, arrays, switches, cabling, infrastructure) can be repurposed for other uses.
That, and it can seamlessly share out data at 750 MB/s to over 60 clients, and scale to 2 Petabytes. But, if you’re content with a glorified file server, rock on.
JM
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I am very new to keying (green screen), but I have a 60D and have been researching this, too. While a great camera, lenses, and lighting are all important, what great keying really boils down to is the color sampling used in your recording format. Its the color sampling that will determine how accurately the software you’re using will be able to differentiate the green or blue screen background from your subject.
Good info on color sampling can be found here:
https://dvxuser.com/articles/colorspace/
and here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling
Ideally, the format you’d be working with would use 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 sampling. However, when shooting with any Canon DSLR, you’re going to be recording to H.264, which is a great looking, but heavily compressed delivery format that uses 4:2:0 sampling. So, essentially, while the 5D MKII is an amazing full frame camera, it has no real advantage over the 60D where it really counts, since they both record to 4:2:0-sampled H.264.
Transcoding H.264 to a 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 format like ProRes or uncompressed HD, won’t improve the situation, since the original is already heavily compressed. One way to get the best possible result would to be to record to an external 4:2:2 recorder like an AJA KiPro or NanoFlash using any camera with a “clean” HDMI output, which I believe includes the 5D MKII.
If buying/ borrowing/ renting an external recorder is out of the question, you can still possibly get a useable result out of your transcoded H.264, you just won’t have the control you’d have with a less compressed format.
But, again, this is all based only on what I’ve read so far 🙂
JM
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[Bob Cole] “anybody have experiences using the 60d for long takes?”
Is 8 hours (of 12min takes) long enough?
JM