Marco Solorio
Forum Replies Created
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FW800 RAIDs were great in the beginning (i.e., prior to SATA RAIDs), but at a relative 800 Mb/s, they do have their bottleneck… no matter how many drives you through into the RAID. It is relatively cheap, but quite limiting.
SATA on the other hand will get faster and faster as you stuff more drives into the SATA case, granted of course that you have the physical room and ports to do it. SATA costs just marginally more than FW800, well, at least building one. I’ve built both FW800 RAIDs and SATA RAIDs here for my facility and the SATA RAID did cost a little more, but is still extremely cheap in the whole scheme of things.
With a 4-disk SATA RAID, I can get about 200+ MB/s. Uncompressed HD? Not a problem. It jumps up even more with an 8-disk setup. I haven’t used SCSI since my first SATA setup and haven’t looked back since. No more finicky SCSI drives mounting and such. SCSI is totally dead IMO.
If you’re a competent builder of custom computer hardware, then you can save some serious cash by building your own SATA RAID. I like to build mine with a ton of fans in it; fans are cheap and lengthens the longevity of the drives. I think I have 22 fans on one 4-drive unit! Or you can buy a pre-built system from the likes of Promax and such.
IMO, an X RAID is only good if you need FC to keep your RAID far away from your CPU or if you fill up the entire unit with drives (and we all know how much THAT costs!). If an X RAID is only partially full, you’re not going to get the full potential of the system. With SATA, you start off cheap and instantly have killer throughput rates… even a 2-disk SATA RAID can give very respectable data rates and at a cost that’s laughable.
SATA, SATA, SATA… I can’t recommend it enough.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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Yeah, forget Firewire or even FW800… go with SATA. I can’t recommend SATA enough. It has nothing but pluses going for it.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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[Bob Zelin] “Some people have asked me not to do the “crazy bob” thing here.”
DAMN! I miss it so! The “crazy Bob” thing is becoming a distant memory! So sad!
[Bob Zelin] “Don’t worry, one day, there will be some guy that will ask how to use the Kona 2 card in a MAC 9500”
BTW, I’m trying to get my Kona 2 card to work in my Mac Classic, but it seems OS6 (I know, I know, I should bump up to System 7) and it’s 9-inch black *and* white screen isn’t working well with it. Got any tips? Surely it’s not the 68030 CPU… is it? Hmmmm, maybe it’s the lack of the optional floating point processor chip.
Amazing to think that my Palm Treo 650 cellphone is infinitely more powerful than that Mac Classic was…
[sigh]
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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[AJPME] “Anyone know how well a Tascam D1000 would work with a Kona2/FCP5? “
In what regard? Digital audio compatibility? Will work fine. We have a Tascam DM-24 in the main edit suite with our Kona2 and it’s an amazing unit (well, both of them!). Digital audio works seamlessly with it as well as analog audio integration. The D1000 would do the same.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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And if anyone is going to make the best algorithm for format conversion, it’ll be Graeme. His standards converter is proof enough of that. Look forward to seeing the release of this.
Graeme: hope you get well, buddy. I know all to well back pain can make your entire life stop flat face in front of you… literally. Sigh.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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[Ernie Santella] “And I do depend on the image on the computer screens being accurate while working, before I see the final result displayed on the NTSC monitor later.”
CRT or LCD, this is still an RGB preview rather than a true Y’CbCr preview with chrominance sub-sampling. If you want an accurate viewing of your NTSC/PAL material, then one must view it on an NTSC/PAL monitor. Aurora and DeckLink have the least expensive solutions for this need. Viewing accurate colors early on saves time in the end.
As anyone might know, I cannot recommend the Dell 2001FP monitors enough for computer use. I have over a dozen of these in my facility. I think they’re an even better buy than the newer 2005FP monitors. For video monitoring, the Sony PVM20L5/1 is my monitor of choice.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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You know, I could swear a specific plugin developer has been working on this exact request for FCP, but I can’t remember if public development info is under wraps, so I wont mention who it is for now (although I’ll send an email out and point them to this thread in case they want to chime in).
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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[fafounet] “What is the difference between 8 bit and 10 bit uncompressed ?”
This thread has taken a bit of a spin, so I’ll get back to the source of your question.
In most general scenarios, 8-bit uncompressed will be passable for what you’re doing, especially if your source is 8-bit with little to no graphics. However, if you implement a lot of motion graphics and rendering, then 10-bit may be your solution. The biggest reason is that all 8-bit codecs (but one) will cause banding or contouring in gradients (the one 8-bit codec that does not incur banding is the old but infamous Aurora 8-bit Igniter codec, which had a logic-dither algorithm without adding random noise which would otherwise reduce the image quality to 7-bit as opposed to 8-bit).
With 10-bit codecs however, the larger bit-depth yields more “steps” between colors so that banding does not occur. A logic-dither algorithm (mentioned above) is not needed with 10-bit, which is good because as good as a logic-dither algorithm is to the eye, it does create a slightly less accurate replication from the original source. But I digress.
If you have the drive speed for 10-bit and and the space to accommodate all the media files, then go for it. I pretty much use 10-bit about 90% of the time, I’d say. If you’re mostly cuts only, then it’s somewhat moot.
If you want a visual comparison to see how varying 8-bit and 10-bit codecs stand up, check out my codec resource site, which although is in need of updating and undergoing new testing and content, is still relevant to the questions you’re asking…
https://codecs.onerivermedia.com/
Good luck!
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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Sheer Video is undoubtedly higher quality than DV100 but you need to ask yourself a few questions. First, Apple hasn’t opened RT Extreme to non-native codecs like SV, so does the lack of RT play a role on your workflow? Next, realize that your source media is DV100, so even though it can be captured with SV, it will not improve the quality of your video. Will your Avid play back SV media without a transcode? If not, you still need to transcode anyway and thus the SV capture is not a big gain.
One gain however is if a lot of rendering (graphics, effects) came into the scenario. If this is the case, your final edit that goes to the Avid might look a little better.
In a nutshell, this is the same scenario and setup when discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of using a standard uncompressed codec in place of a DV-based codec when DV-based media is the source material format. SV however is a much more clever codec than standard uncompressed with some amazing features. The only catch of course is no RT with SV.
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media
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[JeremyG] “I assume you mean control the compression by adjusting the quality slider (oercentage), correct?”
Yes, this is correct!
Marco Solorio | OneRiver Media