Michael Brown
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Well now they read about the same: +/- 165 to 170 read & write. Earlier the USB3 drive read around 190-220 if I remember correctly. Strange. But slow, right?
Michael Brown
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Yes, Extended, but all formatting options are journaled. In this case Extended (Journaled) w/o other options such as encrypted and/or case-sensitive.
Michael Brown
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Hi Roger, thanks for your advice 😉
I have about 3 TB of ProRes footage to deal with (LT). Since I’m producing this thing myself, I also have economic aspects to watch out for 🙁
Thanks for the BM speed checker, works like a charm. Out of curiosity, I just compared my standard 4TB LaCie USB3 drive with the newly and unsatisfactorily purchased Lacie 4TB Thunderbolt drive (that gave me an impression of bogging faster) : the Thunderbolt is by about 30 to 40 Mb/s slower than the USB3!
Now since I’m in a kind of a hurry and my resources are limited here, I went for an ICY BOX 2-Bay Raid enclosure (not too expensive and years ago I was very satisfied with their FW400 cases), and I ordered 2 WD 2TB Raid internal disks rather cheap (80 € a piece new) that should be here in a couple of days.
I know that’s not Thunderbolt, but I prefer USB3 in this case since I want to save my 2 DV ports for my monitors (especially since I don’t know yet – haven’t experimented – if my iMac and fcp7 will read a 2nd external monitor via USB3.
Knowing I’ve invested about $300, do think I’m going to be sorry?
Best from Hamburg
Michael Brown
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David, thanks and that’s what I’m heading for now. My main goal is to get unhampered multiclip playback with 7 angles, preferably without having to stick to 1/2-frames (just a nuisance for fine editing).
Now here’s the dummy part: I have never worked with a raid, I know very little about it, I’ve been reading but the more I read, the more I get confused. So questions:
Q1: If I build a raid 0 from 2 conventional USB3 4TB HDs using the iMac’s internal Disk Utility, am I building a software raid or a hardware raid, and will this substantially increase my throughput speed?
Q2: Does the aforementioned set-up have anything to do with re-booting my iMac differently than usual, and will my Raid 0 config look like a unique mounted disk, just like any external HD that I can mount and unmount from my sidebar according to my needs? (I will only be using that for fcp 7).
Q3: If all this is ok and the way to go, do I need to copy / back-up any one of the disks I intend to raid, because they would be re-formatted when creating the Raid? My ProRes converted footage is on there, but the original footage is stored safely elsewhere. And of course: when building the Raid, does the OS software (disk utility) do the job of dividing up the media on the raided disks or do I do that manually?
Q4: last but not least, is it worth the extra money to purchase an external Raid drive (pre-configured, if I understand correctly, meaning 2 drives in one unit?)
Many many thanks in advance 😉
Michael Brown
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Hi Greg, I read Christopher’s reply and he’s doubtessly right, however I only had my HD migrated from my MBP to the iMac and I had no need to re-install anything at all. Just fyi 😉
Also good to know: I have now experimented with the LaCie Thunderbolt drive, found it not satisfactory, raised it with a LaCie USB3 to split up some of my media (2 & 2 angles to begin with), and it still didnb’t help. Now I’m back on one drive (the USB runs smoother!) and I’m going to send the Thunderbolt drive back to where it came from. Multicam runs fine on Yosemite (here on my system), but you must choose 1/2-frames and medium or low quality to prevent it from bogging. Once I get to the 7-angles issue I’ll likely raid again, but will preferably try to stick to a WD (my best experience and much quieter than the LaCies).
Michael Brown
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Well I’ll be damned, David! Just tried it on a small 4-angle section of my project and set playback to dynamic, and off they go like a herd o’ turtles!
I’ll try later on a 7-angle part and keep you guys posted, but thanks David, you may have made my day!
Michael Brown
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Hey Bobby,
I’m not the specialist around here, our hosts know much more about this stuff, but your config sounds very familiar to my previous one.
In my opinion you did well to go with Yosemite. I’ve been running FCP on it for 2 weeks now and it runs like a charm, except for the drive speed issues that I only suffer from in multicam, otherwise never have! I’ve read threads that both seriously warn against FCP on El Cap and some that claim ‘no problem’, but this way you can always upgrade (and perhaps even go back) if the need arises.
Now your new MBP sounds like it could well be tough enough to handle FCP 7, and if we follow Declan’s helpful advice by raiding externals to speed up disk drives, then you might be quite happy with FCP on your new MBP.
Having edited loads of projects on my old MBP for years, I can only suggest you make sure you have a real nice big ext. monitor to make your environment more comfortable, and considering the 15″ MBP, if you can hook up 2 externals with it, the better so. I couldn’t with my 2010 15″ MBP, but I don’t know about the new ones.
BTW: I’m very happy with my NEC Spectraview 23″, with it’s great advantage of having a matte screen. I’ve always missed my old aluminum MBP 😉
Glad to be of assistance 😉
Michael Brown
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David, long time no read. Many thanks. Just had a conversation with a nerd in California who confirmed that I’d be better off with a raid. I’ll have to give it a try. Can I raid more than 2x?
Will keep you posted,
Best from Hamburg
Michael Brown
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Hi Nick,
You may have nailed it. As I posted seperately:
[Nick Meyers] “but if you’ve hit the limit of the spinning disk that might not help”
It appears that the drive speed is an essential factor. Up to a few days ago I was using 4TB LaCie drives, one for the ProRes converted media, the other for render files and original media storage, and despite the much faster iMac, playback in multicam was bogging. My drives were connected via USB 3, previously on the MBP via FW800.
[Nick Meyers] ” i dont understand, did you spread your media over more than one drive, or just clear some space?”
In reply to this: I freed space and have been running only 1 drive for my media, but I made a note and if all else fails, I will try your idea of splitting my media onto 2 drives.
So I splurged 350 bucks on a LaCie 4TB Thunderbolt drive, sacrificed one port and hence one additional external monitor (that I could always try to connect with USB), hoping thunderbolt would make the difference.
IT DOES NOT! In fact, FCP multicam works better on the previous drive! The thunderbolt drive takes longer to restart playback once it’s bogged (sound keeps rolling and it eventually catches up) than hitting the pause button twice to get playback rolling again in sync. I am tempted to send the damn thing back. I cannot afford 350 bucks for lousy experiments anymore.
What does work in multicam is setting your RT playback to medium quality and half-frames when multicam playback is checked and unclicking auto render! The playback is of course stuttery, but for the 1st editing process it works, even on the 9-angle set-up. Once you uncollapse your multicam clip for decent preview, effects etc… then you can uncheck multicam playback and you see what you deserve. So that’s ‘satisfactory’.
Q1: Do I understand correctly that the thunderbolt drive being a typical 7200 rpm drive is not substantially sped up by the thunderbolt connection and that my investment was to little to no avail?
Q2: Does all this mean that for better playback conditions in multicam (9 angles) I have to move on to an SSD drive? The financial aspect is frightening.
Thanks for your invaluable support!
Michael Brown
Michael Brown
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Bobby, 1st off FCP 7 runs quite well up to now on my new iMac with Yosemite. From my personal experience a MBP will be a bit slow for FCP7, unless you’re not interested in multicam editing. Can you go over 8 Gb RAM on that, and what’s the processor and graphics card? That will make your difference. (Note that I ran fcp 7 on my 5-yrs old MBP for 5 years very successfully, but it spent nights converting and rendering which took up too much memory to do anything else simultaneously.
I recently switched to the affordable iMac precisely for that reason, hence boosting the latter, and of course it’s much more comfortable, but I specifically chose the previous (3-month old) model in order to get it with Yosemite and if needed, be bale to upgrade to El Capitan in case FCP didn’t operate well. The other way around doesn’t work – you can’t downgrade! – and then I wouldn’t have had that option.
However, and this in reply to my previous posts and questions, many of which were nicely answered:
It appears that the drive speed is an essential factor. Up to a few days ago I was using 4TB LaCie drives, one for the ProRes converted media, the other for render files and original media storage, and despite the much faster iMac, playback in multicam was bogging. My drives were connected via USB 3, previously on the MBP via FW800.
So I splurged 350 bucks on a LaCie 4TB Thunderbolt drive, sacrificed one port and hence one additional external monitor (that I could always try to connect with USB), hoping thunderbolt would make the difference.
IT DOES NOT! In fact, FCP multicam works better on the previous drive! The thunderbolt drive takes longer to restart playback once it’s bogged (sound keeps rolling and it eventually catches up) than hitting the pause button twice to get playback rolling again in sync. I am tempted to send the damn thing back. I cannot afford 350 bucks for lousy experiments anymore.
What does work in multicam is setting your RT playback to medium quality and half-frames when multicam playback is checked and unclicking auto render! The playback is of course stuttery, but for the 1st editing process it works, even on the 9-angle set-up. Once you uncollapse your multicam clip for decent preview, effects etc… then you can uncheck multicam playback and you see what you deserve. So that’s ‘satisfactory’.
Q1: Do I understand correctly that the thunderbolt drive being a typical 7200 rpm drive is not substantially sped up by the thunderbolt connection and that my investment was to little to no avail?
Q2: Does all this mean that for better playback conditions in multicam (9 angles) I have to move on to an SSD drive? The financial aspect is frightening.
Who can keep my going on this before I give up?
Thanks for your invaluable support!
Michael Brown