[Neil Sadwelkar]

On a single drive, or even a 2-drive RAID0, USB3 or Thunderbolt doesn’t make a difference in speed. It’s only from 4-drive RAIDs and more, that the USB3 vs Thunderbolt vs eSATA difference becomes apparent.

Having a second backup is more important. Like LTO-6 tape, or a second drive at least.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Alex,

Chances are, your MBP might actually work out a bit faster than an older MacPro, unless you get the very last version. And add a SSD and a GPU like the Quadro 4000 or similar to that.

About RAIDs, I’ve used the modest cost ones – Sonnet 4-bay, Sans 4-bay and 5-bay, Caldigit 4-bay, LaCie 5big, and Stardom, even Drobo. Of these, so far, I’ve found Stardom to work the best.

In general they work fine depending on what drives you put inside them. Some of these manufacturers have a list of qualified drives which they have found work fine. If you stick to that list you’re good. If there’s no such list, then Hitachi enterprise or WD Red work fine.

However, depending on what the pricing is like in your part of the world, the savings on going this route might be large or small depending on what the case and drives cost compared to a ready to use RAID like G-Tech, Maxx etc.

If you do go the self made modest cost route, be sure to add a couple of drives as a backup for your RAID. Using a RAID for speed, and keeping those files on a separate drive for safety is a better course.

As a bizarre alternative, take a look at a 10-port USB 3 hub. Connect 8 Seagate slim 2 TB drives to it. Using disk utility, stripe 4 of these as RAID 0. And keep the other 4 as discrete drives. Keep working media on the RAID 0, and use the other 4 drives to backup what’s on the RAID.
The additional two USB 3 ports can be used to plug in card readers, or additional external drives.

Like I said, this is bizarre. But cheap.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

While tape had the ability of being able to insert or replace a shot or title, it could not delete without one having to lay back everything after that deletion.

When I make masters as QT files, I bring back the master QT into FCP 7 and place the master file and leaders in an FCP 7 timeline. Anything that’s not real time video, I render out and bring back in and place on the timeline. So the FCP 7 timeline is a string of ‘elements’, all visible at the finder level.
I ensure that the master QT and all these ‘elements’ live in one folder.

Then I simply export non self-contained (reference movie) files which can be used to encode other variants for upload. I can then many versions without the penalty of time for reexport. Any deletion in the timeline can be re-exported as another ref movie. Ref movies export very fast since only references to the original movie ‘elements’ are saved. So, one can have a stereo version and 5.1 version exported separately really fast. Or different versions with different leaders.

Once its all final, then I open the last good ref movie file in QT7 Pro and do a ‘save as’ a self-contained file.

Converting ref movies to self-contained movies used to take a long time with internal drives in a Mac Pro, with 8-bay Thunderbolt RAIDs these happen really fast since its a function of drive speed not so much processor speed.

Avid MC, PrPro, and FCP X don’t have quite the ref movie workflow that FCP 7 had.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

‘Hardly used’. Since 2005.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I haven’t understood Oracle StorageTek. Its not compatible with LTO, its a whole new standard, only slightly more dense than LTO-6.
Why?

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I came across this storage box from QNAP at a show a couple of weeks ago
“The QNAP TVS-871T is the world’s first Thunderbolt DAS/NAS/iSCSI SAN triple solution. “

Its an 8-bay box with Thunderbolt 2 and USB3 for DAS functionality, as well as 2x 10 GigE, and 4x GigE ports for simultaneous NAS functionality. The specs on the site says two machines can connect to this simultaneously over Thunderbolt too.

There’s also a HDMI port to playback up to 4k video, and a built in app to transcode video, though I could not see this feature in action in the demo I saw.

The box is available without drives too.

I have no experience with QNAP products so I’m not sure this will work in all situations. But it looks like an interesting feature set.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

BRU-PE with Tandberg LTO-5 and LTO-6 SAS tape drives
connected with Atto H680 SAS HBAs
inside Sonnet Thunderbolt-PCIe adapters
connected via Thunderbolt to
15″ MacBook Pros, Mac Minis, cylinder MacPros, even MacBook Airs

have worked flawlessly for me for a about 2 years, and a couple of Petabytes of data backed up.

One LTO-6 head replacement under warranty. Rest all fine.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

My real world numbers for Bru-PE

LTO-7:
Native Capacity = up to 6TB p. tape or approx 5 TB with file sequences (e.g. DPX/ArriRaw)
Native Throughput = 300MB/sec or speed of source drive whichever slower. Assume 150 MB/sec for USB 3.0/eSATA non-RAID drives.

LTO-6:
Native Capacity = 2.5TB p. tape or approx 2.2 TB with file sequences (e.g. DPX/ArriRaw)
Native Throughput = 160MB/sec or speed of source drive whichever slower. Assume 150 MB/sec for USB 3.0/eSATA non-RAID drives.

LTO-5:
Native Capacity = 1.5TB p. tape or approx 1.2 TB with file sequences (e.g. DPX/ArriRaw)
Native Throughput = 140MB/sec

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

This affects anyone with a SAS RAID, SAS LTO drive, or SAS device like the older Codex transfer station.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I agree with not upgrading if FCP 7 is your primary editing (and bread-winning) application. It works fine for many folks who have established workflows with it.
For me, for instance, the need to take ProRes exports and line them up with Dolby 5.1 discrete audio tracks and export QT with 6-8 tracks of audio is something that works just fine with FCP 7 so I have a system which has 7 and I’m not upgrading anytime soon.

But another angle to this question is for those who have a running FCP 7 installation on, say, an older iMac or MacPro. Today if they were to buy a new system it would come pre-installed with El Capitan with no way to downgrade. In that case, the question “Does FCP 7 work with El Capitan?” is valid. And from what I’ve read, FCP 7 seems to work fine with El Capitan.

But taking a brand new system and attempting to install FCP 7 on it from scratch. That’s also a question they need a firm answer because else they’ll be putting down 2-3k $ and finding out that it doesn’t work.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India