[Jim Wiseman]

You will need the SoftRaid software from OWC or direct download from https://www.softraid.com . It does cost $179 direct, but is well worth it. Mark at SoftRaid is very responsive via email support. A very trustworthy product. Disk Utility doesn’t do RAID 5, I believe only 0 and 1. OWC may have a deal, they bundle it with the Thunderbay. If safety is more important than speed, you can investigate a mirror setup where the data is duplicated on two or more drives at once, as well.

I’ve been using SoftRaid for about two years now.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

BTW, you’re a poet, Aindreas…

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

Yes, that is how it works. It will maintain your information through one drive failure. You can even get info off of the remaining drives until you replace the dead one, although it is highly recommended to replace it as soon as possible. Always good to have a backup of the same size on hand.

Had a feeling you were waiting for those drives to spin up causing your delays.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

Aindreas,
My wife does botanical work in the Pacific Islands (world expert on breadfruit, Mutiny on the Bounty, etc. Big potential as future food source) so I have been able to travel with her doing video and photo documentation since the mid ’90s. Video synthesizers since 1970 at CalArts, Chicago Art Institute, PBS Chicago and independently in SF. David and I have many friends in common, especially in San Francisco where he still lives and most of my production and a lot of the video art work was done. Just met him in person in SF recently. Lots of fun stories!

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

Herb, ~$480 gets you two slots. OWC Helios 2. Works for my AJA LHi and many others, if needed, and at the moment two Accelsior PCIe 960GB SSDs which also have two eSATA ports each. More detail in my other post.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

Hate to say it, but I really like the new Mac Pro. And FCPX. I am a one person producer/shooter/editor and they fit my needs quite well. A powerful computer with a small form factor, with software I pay for once that does everything I need. I also have the ability to run more than one NLE when necessary. There is a change in thinking required for FCPX, so I sometimes fall back to legacy software.

Unlike many here I no longer work at a large facility or with big budgets (though I certainly have, PBS Chicago, NBC/KRON and One Pass Video in San Francisco) but am at a point where I have the luxury (finally) of doing my own work. Have shot two decades of cultural footage in the Pacific Islands and video art pieces that date back to the mid ’70’s. Doesn’t pay much, but is work that needs to be done. Have one nice contract that pays the bills and a wife that actually directly benefits from that work.

There are people here who have a large focus on compositing and effects, and for that a tower is certainly going to be potentially more powerful. But they get very expensive as well. I don’t have that need. I have enough documentaries to put together to keep me busy, and they don’t need multiple GPU’s to render dissolves and titles. I have an OWC Helios Thunderbolt 2 chassis for the times I need PCIe cards. Two 1TB SSD cards in there now. Blackmagic rack mount I/O and Teranex for format conversion, all Thunderbolt. Three OWC Thunderbay 4’s for fast RAID 5 storage.

Also hedged with a 2012 Mac Pro tower with AJA I/O and NVidia GPU. Can boot into everything from 10.6.8 to latest Yosemite. My insurance system with the yearly OS software updates, my only big gripe with Apple. But I have had much bigger gripes with Microsoft (OS) and lately Adobe (rental). I can’t be in servitude to rental to revisit and re-edit my projects. I object to it strongly for practical, budgetary, and philosophical reasons. Hence FCPX meets that requirement, Resolve on the horizon, and yes, Media 100 in the short term.

I have a feeling there are a lot of one man bands like myself that have similar requirements. YMMV. One size does not fit all. There are more than enough of us who like our Mac Pros and the software they run.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

RAID 5 is a lot safer. I have three of the Thunderbays connected to a 2013 Mac Pro. Two with 4×5 TB equals 15 TB available storage each and one with 4×3 TB with 9 TB. One extra drive space needed for parity information to allow restoring.

Fast reads and writes, Mid 400’s to 500 plus MB/sec. when on the outer 30% of the drives. Not that full yet. As you know, with RAID 5 one drive can die and you can rebuild. I’m using the latest SoftRaid 5 software. Highly recommended. Will work with equal sized drives without the necessity of matching firmware often required with hardware controllers, like the QX, also by OWC.

Have gotten so used to SSD’s it can seem as if it takes a while for the HDs to spin up, but when spun up access is very quick.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

EDIT: Sorry David, thought you were referring to Apple and FCPX re business models. Adobe certainly blew up my plans when they went rental only. Was getting into Premiere CS6, and then that. Kablooey! No need to reiterate how that affected things. Refuse to hand over my projects to a pay or no play. the Adobe workflow was still there, I just couldn’t be. Forcing me toward FCPX, and so far, I’m liking it. YMMV. Even using Media 100 again, as you may have noticed. Tracks and all. Unlike most here I also have no need for AE, so that certainly colors my opinion.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

I do think Simon, who has actually developed plug-ins, seemed to agree plug-in incompatibilities could be a real problem with constant new releases. I don’t think I was “predicting” it would happen, I just thought it could be an actual risk, and I think there was some agreement on that point.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD

[Jim Wiseman]

I’ve used the HD 1080psf 23.98 fps 48Khz timeline for EX1 Sony (psf) and true 23.98 progressive and it has worked for me. I haven’t worked with files from your setup. but I believe that should work. I typically convert everything to ProRes 422 or 422HQ.

Jim Wiseman
Sony PMW-EX1, Pana AJ-D810 DVCPro, DVX-100, Nikon D7000, Final Cut Pro X 10.2.1, Final Cut Studio 2 and 3, Media 100 Suite 2.1.6, Premiere Pro CS 5.5 and 6.0, AJA ioHD, AJA Kona LHi, Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4K, Blackmagic Teranex, Avid MC, 2013 Mac Pro Hexacore, 1TB SSD, 64GB RAM, 2-D500, Helios 2 w 2-960GB SSDs: 2012 Hexacore MacPro 3.33 Ghz, 24Gb RAM, GTX-680, 960GB SSD: Macbook Pro 17″ 2011 2.2 Ghz Quadcore i7 16GB RAM 250GB SSD