[Jimmy Brunger]

Hi Anita,

Processor speed doesn’t help as much as the number of cores and LOTS of RAM in AE. Obviously a fast core will render that particular frame faster and more AE more responsive, but from what I’ve experienced there isn’t that much difference in a 2.66 vs 3.2GHz machine. I haven’t played with the New Nehalem Macs though, which it sounds like what Darby runs..so may make more difference with them?

As for the 10x faster thing…this totally depends on the complexity of the project and certain effects will whip through much faster and others (such as time-based effects: Timewarp, Twixtor, ReelSmart, etc) need to read the frames either side of it to build a render for that frame, so may be just as slow as with 1 x proc. You will DEFINITELY notice a speed increase using more procs though, just not across the board.

One thing I will say though – since using CS4 I have noticed previews, etc much faster than AE7, but the multi-proc option in AE totally hogs your system if you want to do anything else while you’re rendering..even if you leave a proc and some RAM free. Nucleo on the other hand seemed to manage this much better.

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

That’s great Dan, cheers. So simple…if you know what you’re doing!

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

We have SCSI>SATA dual band ATTO HBAs I think. Running from a United Digital 3112RM to an XServe and then 1GigE out to 4 macs through a managed switch.

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

United Digital sell the whole box – case, processor, controller, drives, software, etc. I don’t know how well it suits video, but it’s what they had installed when I started working there. I guess we need to try work with what we’ve got before shelling out on new kit.

Why not a 24 drive array?

Florida – would love to..

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Hi Bob,

Thanks again for your reply. Well if that’s the case then looks like a RAID 5 would certainly be good enough (we backup nightly to tape anyway) Sorted!

Though, we still have this option to use the additional RAID box we have sat doing nothing at the moment, so what are your thoughts?

We can either: –

– keep the 12 x 500GB box in RAID 5, not use second empty box
– populate the second box in the same way/capacity to have 2 x 6TB volumes
– or populate both boxes and stripe them together to make one giant 12TB/24 drive RAID 5 volume

Still not sure if it’s better having a separate box for capture/footage and one for everything else, or if one big volume is faster. As mentioned before we all share/exchange projects quite frequently so there is no real sense having a separate volume for each workstation in that sense.

Also – as the RAID controller(s) are onboard each RAID box (they are both United Digital RM3112) I didn’t know if you could combine or only use one of the card to control both boxes as one in the 13TB/24 drive config?

Lastly – do you want a transatlantic job as our engineer!!? 😉

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

We have a maximum of 4 macs feeding off it at once, via 1GigE – I know that the pipeline ideally needs to be wider, but if we can maximise speed at the server/RAID end then we can look at upgrading to 10GigE/Fiber at a later date I guess.

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks for your reply Bob – I was hoping you’d wade in!

Yes, I always thought RAID 5 was the best option for video (some RAIDs run natively in RAID 6 aswell!?)
but after doing some reading I found conflicting info. I’m not saying they’re right and your wrong, but thought you might be interested and as none of these articles talk about video specifically I was interested to hear your take on them:-

https://miracleas.com/BAARF/RAID5_versus_RAID10.txt

https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/raid5-vs-raid-10-safety-performance.html

https://weblogs.sqlteam.com/billg/archive/2007/06/18/RAID-10-vs.-RAID-5-Performance.aspx

As for the one big volume vs 2 separate – we all tend to work on shared projects, mainly big after effects projects split up into sections, so we all really need to share the same media and we swap whose working on what dependant on workflow/expertise.

My main query with the 1 vs 2 thing was whether having captured video on one raid and other assets/projects/renders on another would speed up data flow or not? Also – would it make sense/be viable to populate BOTH raid boxes with 12 x 500GB drive each and then stripe them together to make one 24 drive 12TB volume in RAID 5 or whatever? I imagine 24 drives is faster than 12 1TB drives…but can you link 2 separate boxes with each one having it’s own controller? Sorry for all the questions!

Our IT company – yes well, they seem ok at general computer/mac/server stuff but they don’t really seem to know much about working with video – which is our area!! They were already in place here before I started, but maybe we need to start looking for someone a bit more specialised!

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Our RAID is serving 4-5 people at once though – more reads and writes simultaneously and more to lose if a drive or two goes down at once. I wonder if this ‘more processor intensive’ thing I’ve been hearing about RAID 5 only really applies if you are using a software RAID, rather than a dedicated hardware RAID controller?..

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

Oh, no we would always keep up the daily backup and UPS stops spike or power failures messing things up. I guess in that respect the redundancy is only there to protect that particular day’s updated work (1 day x 5 ppl’s worth work could still be an expense loss!) and it also enables us to keep working even if 1 or 2 drives fail.

So, I guess if we’ve got enough drives to do it then RAID 10 is a no brainer? RAID 5 has slower read/write speeds and is less redundant – 10 is our only option then?

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0

[Jimmy Brunger]

What do you mean by ‘hardware failure’ Vince? Do you mean the RAID box itself, or server or the individual macs connected to it?

We have UPS on all the server stuff and a nightly tape backup. Or do you mean something else?

Thanks,
Jim.

Production Premium CS4 – Mocha v1.2.3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
———————————
Production Premium CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Dell Precision T3400 Q6600 / 4GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0