[Peter Dunphy]

Hi,

I’ve since received this info from the Apple reseller I’m interested in buying my MacPro from – how does it look?

I suppose my two concerns are:

1. Whether I can make the item they suggest a ‘Raid 5’

2. Whether I can expand my ‘Raid’ setup to include more hard drives should I need to expand in a years time to edit my independent feature

Any suggestions would be really appreciated. I could just take the Apple resellers word for it and say “yeah cool I’ll buy it” but just wanted to check with you Creative Cow guys first to see what you think.

“Just keep the one disk in the mac pro ( or maybe 2, so you can have a backup of your system)

Forget the raid card and internal disks

Use one of these instead – https://www.jigsaw24.com/default.aspx?ITEM=JIGSX183ARA

Its external, so if your mac breaks then you can still get to your storage. You can also transfer it to use on a different machine. Its fast enough to cope with 3 streams of video at prores format. Costs about the same as the mac pro with internal raid and disks”

[Peter Dunphy]

HI David

Thanks for your advice! I’ll get in touch with Jon. Much appreciated!

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Walter

Thanks for your feedback – I really appreciate it. Raid seems expensive but absolutely essential now!

Okay after a little research I can refine my question –

I will be buying my MacPro from an Apple reseller as opposed to Apple directly, as it’s a little less expensive.

There are three 1TB drives being fitted in my Mac Pro bays, called: “Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATAII 32MB Cache Dual Processor Internal Hard Drive OEM”

In addition, there is another 1TB hard drive, although I’m not sure if it’s Apple or not. The quote states: MAC PRO 8 CORE 2.66GHZ 6GB 1TB RADEON HD 4870 512MB

My concern is that the system I order from the Apple reseller won’t be configured the way Apple would do it, such as on the Apple website:

“Your Mac Pro system ships with each hard drive individually configured in the Enhanced JBOD level with Mac OS X installed on the drive in bay 1. Using Apple’s RAID Utility software, you can migrate the drives into a RAID set without reinstalling Mac OS X or reformatting the drives, or you can customize your RAID volumes to meet your exact requirements.”

Should I perhaps request that the Apple reseller I’m ordering from ensures that “each hard drive is individually configured in the Enhanced JBOD level with Mac OS X installed on the drive in bay 1”?

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Richard

Thanks for your prompt, valuable feedback – looks like a RAID card is a necessity then!

3 last questions:

1. Below are the details of the four 1TB ‘internal hard drives’ I’ve been quoted with my MacPro – do you think it would be possible to combine these four drives into a Raid 5 setup?

MAC PRO 8 CORE 2.66GHZ 6GB 1TB RADEON HD 4870 512MB

WD CAVIAR GREEN 1TB SATAII 3.5″ 32MB CACHE INTERNAL HARD DRIVE (3 of these to fill remaining 3 bays)

2. Or, do you think my Raid 5 would be better with the 3 “WD CAVIAR GREEN 1TB SATAII 3.5″ 32MB CACHE INTERNAL HARD DRIVE” in addition to my 1TB external MyBook?

3. Last question I promise! Once I’ve established a Raid 5 – do I choose this one ‘virtual’ disk as my scratch disk in FCP?

Okay end of questions, I promise to go away now and do some research on Raid setups!

Warm regards, and thanks again for your advice and any further tips you can afford me!

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Unfortunately using the frame controls whacked up to their ‘best’ levels results in a 300+ hour compression time :o/

Any suggestions to help me out would be really appreciated – I thought I was close to ‘cracking it’ but am determined to get on top of it now.

[Peter Dunphy]

I tried the sequence with shift field -1 on the dv clips with no frame controls in Compressor – the resultant DVD looked very good quality but was speeded up :o/

Now i’m going to try to burn a DVD using the following frame controls in Compressor, in an effort to ‘lock’ the speed to an acceptable frame rate:

RESIZE BEST

OUTPUT TOP FIRST
DEINTERLACE MOTION COMPENSATED

RATE CONVERSION BEST
duration so source frames play at 25fps

Will post my findings shortly :o)

[Peter Dunphy]

Update: Again when applying the Shift Field filter as -1 when I click on the item properties of the clip I’ve applied and rendered the filter on, Field Dominance is again ‘None’. Is this normal?

[Peter Dunphy]

Just saw this mentioned in the forum history to a chap with a similar issue as me:

“drop a de-interlace filter on the whole lot… ”

I’m not sure if this is the way to go, or if it might cause me to lose quality :o/

[Peter Dunphy]

This is the bit I actually meant to quote: ” If the clip you are making the adjustements for has an upper field dominance and your sequence is set to lower, set the direction control parameter to +1. If the clip is lower and the sequence is upper, set the control to -1.”

[Peter Dunphy]

Just noticed this “The Shift Fields Filter is located under the Effects tab in the Browser Window inside of the Video Folder. To determine if your sequence setting is set to lower or higher field dominance, look under Sequence > Settings. The default is Lower (Even).”

I’ll try again as before, except this time with the Shift Fields filter on the clips set to -1…