[Neil Sadwelkar]

I have the same issue.

LaCie 6Big 48TB (40TB in RAID5). On a Intel MBP I get decent 800+ MB/sec R/W

On an Apple M1 MBP, its 300+ MB/sec read and 50 MB/sec write.

I’ve connected the LaCie 6Big to an Intel Mac Mini. Connected a TB3- 10GigE adapter to the Intel Mac mini. Then connected another TB3-10GigE adapter to my Apple M1 and, of course connected a GAT6 between both 10GigE adapters. And then shared the LaCie 6Big over 10GigE with the M1 MBP. Now I’m seeing slightly better speeds like 300 MB/sec R/W.

I read a discussion on this on the Apple dev forum and there one person posted that he installed SoftRAID 6 on the M1 system and used SoftRAID to create a RAID on the LaCie 6Big and now he’s seeing 1000+ MB/sec R/W.

The discussion is here…

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/669095?page=2

In case you plan on doing this, bear in mind that you may be formatting the LaCie 6Big and all data on it would be lost.

Neil Sadwelkar

[Neil Sadwelkar]

For a complete beginner in video shooting, but someone who has experience in editing/post so is aware of ‘film grammar’. My recommendation is to go in for a camera with a smaller sensor and a fixed lens with a wide zoom range. These are called ‘superzoom’ cameras.

Sites like DP Review or Cameralabs frequently have ’roundups’ to review the current crop of superzooms.

Look for features like movable LCD, external mike support, HDMI out, depending on which you need.

The problem with larger sensor cameras is that they are notoriously hard to keep subjects in focus and the viewfinder is not very helpful in focussing.

The problem with interchangeable lens cameras is that they make the kit larger, and often you’re changing lenses when you should be shooting, particularly if you haven’t shot video with your own hands before.

Hence smaller sensor, and fixed lens cameras for beginners.

I own two such. Sony RX10m4 and RX100m3. These are my ‘carry-around’ cameras for shooting while travelling. As my mobile got better, I use my camera less. And you’ll find the same too.

After a couple of months of shooting with a small superzoom, you’ll find what’s missing and then you can get a ‘better’ camera with those features. Or, you may (like me) find that a superzoom is ‘all the camera’ you want/need and not wish to invest in anything bigger/better.

Neil

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Chris,

The Dropbox Advanced plan you refer to, is $20 per user per month for unlimited space. That much I got from their plans page.

But there’s no indication on how much they would charge to download all that data. So, its a good safety storage for the house burning down or burglary eventuality, but when that eventuality happens, what are the options for downloading 40TB? Their page says 100GB transfer free each month, meaning would they charge if you downloaded more than 100 GB in a month? How much?

Google, Amazon, Azure, all have these ‘egress’ fees which are exorbitant when one wants those Terabytes back. I have not come across any cloud facility that charges for upload, and storage, but is free for download.

With 3.5″ hard drives available in 16TB, 18TB, even 20TB sizes, and 50TB and even 100TB drives on the horizon, it might make sense to offload those terabytes on to bare enterprise drives, maybe even make 2 sets, and store them in different places. 5 years down the road, these drives would need to be ‘migrated’ to the highest capacity available then.

$1000 gets you 5 years of Dropbox unlimited, and the same $1000 also gets you 48TB of bare hard drives (3x16TB, or 3x18TB) which are accessible any time with just a USB/TB to SATA adapter or enclosure. These drives can read and write at nearly 200 MB/sec, which is faster than the Internet that’s available anywhere.

LTO is also touted as a long term backup, but with backward compatibility with older generations getting narrower, it makes less and less sense since one would also need to keep a working LTO drive for all those years.

Neil

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Adom,

Your post here as well as in another thread has a strange, spammy, and irrelevant link at the bottom. Are you seeing it?

Neil

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Your post here as well as in another thread has a strange, spammy, and irrelevant link at the bottom. Are you seeing it?

[Neil Sadwelkar]

When you say, about 30TB of video, I’m assuming you mean raw shooting files and audio recorded while shooting. There may also be some final edited content in this 30TB?

Anyway, about the shooting files themselves, it may not be desirable to actually make these available online in their raw form. The files will likely be too large to download and play. And they may be in a format that may not even play online.

So, it might make sense to first transcode them into a web-friendly proxy format. That may even reduce the 30Tb to a smaller number.

These proxies could have burn-ins with some metadata. Speaking of which, if there is some metadata that would be useful to a viewer, then that can be inserted into the file and made available in a burn-in in the video itself. And maybe even added to the file/folder name.

After that, you could host these in a video platform like Vimeo, or frame io or some such. Or, if you’d like it to be local and if your organisation can manage the IT resources needed, you could host it yourselves using something like Kollaborate Server.

And then, backup. I’m guessing these drives are of various ages, so it may make sense to make another backup to newer drives, and possibly LTO tape if your budget allows.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Out of the box, the TVS-H1288X doesn’t seem to have TB3 ports, so it looks like yours has a TB3 card installed.

I haven’t used this one, the 1288x. But I have a smaller one QNAP TS-453BT3. It has one 10GigE port, 4x GigE ports and 2 TB3 ports.

I routinely use it with my iMac Pro and a MacBook Pro both connected to the TB3 ports. Its pretty fast, as fast as a 4-bay RAID can be. If one system writes while the other is reading, they both slow down. Same if both are reading large files. But if both my systems are editing ProResLT or DNxHD36, the system happily ‘serves’ them both simultaneously.

So, your 1288x will work much faster since it has 8 drives.

But you will see more reliable performance with systems connected to the 1288x over 10GigE or 2.4 GigE than you will see over TB3.

The 4x 2.5GigE ports, let out connect 4 systems with 2.5GigE adapters on each, and you could expect to be able to do 150 MB/sec on each simultaneously.

The TB3 ports can be used to connect to systems that are place physically close to the unit.

Also, you have 4x 2.5″ bays where you could place 4x SSDs and make them available as cache files or sources/targets for large files like DPX or OpenEXR.

Neil

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I provide DIT services for features and episodics. And rent out editing gear for the same.

As far as laptops go, I have 9. All MBP from 2015 onwards. I have no problem connecting them to a variety of drives and RAIDs, and interfaces – G-Technology, Areca, Promise, LaCie, over Thunderbolt 2, 3, USB 3.0, 3.1 Gen 2 and earlier eSATA, Firewire.

Where laptop graphics power is insufficient, we use eGPUs, but mostly, with SSDs and RAIDs render/export speed is sufficient for us to manage the daily workload of transcoding. Where the workload is larger, instead of getting larger and beefier systems, we work with multiple systems. One can also use NAS boxes like QNAP, Jellyfish, Codex Media Vault and many others.

I think a MacBook Pro is a fairly versatile and rugged solution. Sure, they aren’t as rugged as they used to be, but they’re pretty solid.

I have only one M1 based MBP and even that’s a 13″ with 16GB RAM and 1 TB SSD. And it works in the field alongside my 16″ Intel MBP and while the 16″ Intel is faster at some tasks, the 13″ M1 is a very capable machine.

Neil

[Neil Sadwelkar]

‘handle 4k’ is a variable. Sony A7s3 shoots 4k, Red Epic shoots 4k, even Arri Alexa LF and Sony F65/55 shoot 4k.

But the system requirement to ‘handle’ files from each of these is different. In some cases, like Alexa LF even a modest CPU can ‘handle’ it. What matters more is that you need a hard disk that can read out data at the speed needed to play even 24 frames of Arri raw, in a sec.

On the other hand, Sony A7s3 files can play out even at 60 frames/sec out of a USB or even an old Firewire drive, but they need a powerful CPU to decode at even 24 frames in a sec.

I have a MBP M1 w 16 GB RAM. And it decodes Arriraw, Sony Venice, and A7s3 files as rapidly as a 16″ MBP. It even comperes will with a iMac Pro.

An MBP with TB3/USB-C can be connected to an older Cinema Display using a USB-mini display port adapter.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’ve seen this happen back when we used Bru as our LTO backup solution. We still do, but infrequently now.

Anyway, here are the reasons I have found this to happen.

Tape drive loses connection to computer. For eg, while backup was on, if someone suddenly decided to tidy up the desk, and shook the SAS cable enough, the backup would stop and Bru would ask for another tape. Solution, start over.

Data source drive has errors, or loses connection to computer while backup is on. <font face=”inherit”>Does this happen with a </font>specific<font face=”inherit”> </font>drive<font face=”inherit”> or set of data? Solution, check source drive with disk utility. If this is a network source, try backup from a local direct-attached source. </font>

Tape head needs cleaning. This one is least likely as if the head needs cleaning, the light would come on. But run the head cleaner tape once anyway.

There used to be some versions of Bru which this happened more frequently. Can’t remember what that was, but the version that we ran last was BRU PE 3.2.6.80 and I don’t recall seeing this with that last version. Its still available for download at the tolisgroup site.

Neil