Lawrence Marshall
Forum Replies Created
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One follow-up to my previous post: you don’t need a “big and fast” array to work with M100 HD. Two SATA drives raided together makes for very comfortable, very easy SD editing. HD: yes, you’ll need to spring for more drives raided together.
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I don’t recall the original poster specifying whether or not he wanted to work in SD or HD. As a user of both M100 HD and FCP 4.5 on the same G5, I can attest that the M100 HD is a formidable tool. You are not limited to just 1080i… you can also work in 8-bit SD, 10-bit SD, lossless, and all other “flavors” of legacy M100 compression from 300kb on down, not to mention that you can mix all these codecs on the same timeline with no rendering needed.
I am currently working on a project with many green-screen talking heads shot in Panasonic 720 HD, but am editing the footage down-converted to 10-bit SD, and I’m using M100’s “lossless” compression setting for all footage not on green screen. I’ve done many A-B comparison tests between the M100’s 10-bit uncompressed and M100’s lossless codec, and I cannot tell any difference whatsoever between the two – but the hard drive savings are immense with the lossless codec.
I’ve cut numerous shows at 250kb on M100 HD using just a single Firewire 400 drive with no hiccups whatsoever. I am now experimenting with inexpensive SATA arrays which are holding up just fine with M100’s 10-bit codec…very fluid and comfortable. Also, I have no conflicts with FCP 4.5 on the same machine, although I’m using an AJA IO/LA and not a Kona or Decklink card.
FWIW, Larry Marshall
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Just thought I’d throw something in from the other side…
I have tested the Sonnet eSATA card and Firmtek card *very* extensively, with both Sonnet’s “Fusion” drive enclosure and Firmtek’s drive enclosures. I connected four SATA 1 cables to the internal connectors of the Sonnet eSATA card and routed them out the back of my G5, connecting them to two Firmtek enclosures (the Firmteks hold two drives each). At the same time, I connected four SATA 2 cables coming off the external ports of the same Sonnet eSATA card to the Sonnet Fusion enclosure (which holds four drives). Eight drives total connected, using SATA 1 and SATA 2 cables at the same time.
I’ve swapped drives back and forth between the arrays, powered one array down and the other up, and vice-versa. I’ve done every anal over-the-top-I-have-no-life test variation you can think of, using Hitachi 250-gig drives, Hitachi 500-gig drives, and Seagate 250-gig drives — first in one set of enclosures, then swapped out in the other enclosures, shutting down the computer, powering up, keeping the enclosures powered down, then powered up, hot-swapping drives while everything is powered up, etc.
Some observations:
1. The eSATA connectors, to me, are *wonderful* compared to the standard SATA 1 connectors. They attach easier, with a reassuring “click”, and I haven’t had to bother with them at all. The SATA 1 connectors, by contrast, are a PIA to connect.
2. I have had ZERO problems regarding drives not showing up, in any combination, in any enclosure. I can power up the Sonnet or Firmtek RAIDs while the G5 is on, and they show up immediately. I’ve not had a system hang, or drives mysteriously disappearing due to loose cables. Maybe I’m lucky, and I truly regret that Bob is having issues. But these SATA raids are sailing along extremely smoothly, no matter how hard I try to trip them up with all this cross-drive, cross-enclosure, cross-cabling testing. And I’ve tried hard to trip them up.
3. Pricing out SATA solutions comes to around $1,200.00 / terabyte, which includes drives, enclosure, and SATA card if you put the pieces together yourself. Right now that sounds a *lot* better than two or three times that much with a SCSI or Xserve RAID solution. Granted, I’m talking Raid 0 formatting, so you have to figure in a backup solution too. In my case, I’ve built two 1-terabyte RAIDs. I’ve cloned them, so should one go down I’m immediately up and running with the other. I do a lot of location editing, and the Firmtek enclosures are the same size as the G-Raids (nice and small, easy transportable), but add the advantage of removable drives. The Sonnet Fusion also has removable drives.
Knocking on wood, grateful things are stable at the moment, but also thought another perspective might be useful…
Larry M
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I’ve tested the Sonnet eSATA Tempo quite extensively against the Firmtek 4-port external card, using the Hitachi-250 gig drives, the Seagate 400-gig drives, and the new Hitachi 500-gig drives. Both cards performed about the same… the Firmtek was just a *tad* faster than the Sonnet on the reads and writes, but it was a minimal improvement. I went with the Sonnet because I wanted 8 SATA ports, and the Firmtek currently maxes out at four.
Be aware of something VERY important with the Sonnet eSATA Tempo cards: the card with 8 external SATA ports DOES NOT FIT IN SLOT 4 OF THE G5!! There is a part of the card near the back that interferes with a power connector on the Apple motherboard. Sonnet knows this, others have *painfully* discovered this for themselves. So if Slot 4 is your only open slot for a SATA card, do NOT buy Sonnet’s 8-port external card. The Sonnet eSATA 4×4 *will* fit in Slot 4, however.
I wanted 8 ports, so I bought the Sonnet eSATA 4×4 (four internal, four external). I had my neighbor cut out a little section of the mounting plate (looks completely professional, like it was supposed to be cut out!), and I’m running four cables from the internal connectors on the card out the back of the G5. Add four cables to the external ports, and I now have all 8 connectors from a card that lives in Slot 4.
Larry M
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I had a very similar problem… turned out to be a bad Keyspan. I returned it and got a new one… everything works fine now.
LM
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Thanks Franklin… I’m looking at several solutions, including the Firmtek SATA 4-port external card with the Firmtek two-bay case (with removable drives) One option would be to buy two of those, resulting in four drives in a Raid 0 configuration.
Larry M
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Arty, if you think you might like to go to an Xserve RAID, I have a 5.6 TB Xserve RAID, virtually unused, that I’ve been trying to sell. Contact me at marshallmediagroup@comcast.net if interested.
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Todd, if you are interested, I am trying to sell my virtually-brand-new Xserve RAID. It’s a 5.6TB unit (fourteen 400-gig drives), currently striped as RAID 50. It has the 512 cache, battery backup modules, rack mount rails, and Apple Fiber card. As a bonus, it also has the Three-Year AppleCare warranty (fully transferrable to a new owner). It has pretty much every option you can buy with an Xserve RAID (including the cables and the Apple Fiber card).
I bought the unit at the end of December 2004 from ProMax, and have used it unit only once (as a bit bucket to store files while I worked on another array.) There are still two and a half years left on the extended warranty, which includes onsite repair of the XRaid if needed, free replacement drive modules if needed, priority phone tech support at Apple, etc.
I’ve been trying to sell this almost since I got it, as I suddenly found myself doing more location editing and decided I needed to get something more portable.
Contact me at marshallmediagroup.com if interested…
Larry Marshall
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One other little “surprise” is that you’ll be investing in more than just a new boardset and breakout box for M100 HD. You’ll also have to invest in a analog-to-digital audio converter, since the breakout box does not take analog audio. Unless you have a digital mixer, you’ll need a A/D converter to get audio in – and a digital-to-analog converter to get the audio out.
Also, M100 HD no longer offers an internal proc amp… the digitizing window that allows you to adjust video levels on the way in as you digitize. If your deck does not have a proc amp built in (the Sony UVW decks, for example, do not), the signal goes in just as it exists on tape. You can still color-correct and level-correct *after* digitizing, but I really got used to correcting stuff as much as I could on the way in before digitizing.
Larry Marshall