Ramona Howard
Forum Replies Created
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Clarification:
Much of what you see on TV, that is the high-end stuff…..
Many shows have been shooting HD for sometime now and are making the push to the “SR” format and or making the push from film to SR. It will nice to see as they make this push others will be forced to do at least HD, making the tele a bit nicer to watch. This SD to HD uprez crap is making me ill……
Ramona
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Bob,
George is not the only one doing 4:4:4, it’s pretty much the standard everyone is pushing towards and has been used on many projects both feature and Indie and even much of what you will be seeing on TV will originate with 4:4:4. There is tons of hardware out there that can handle the thruput and at various prices and on every platform. The workflow on the otherhand is what will be the trick for newbies as you have already stated some apps don’t handle it but then there is always the option to conform :).
For those just starting in HD, 4:4:4 is probably not for them but we have certainly seen our share of studios make the jump straight from SD to 4:4:4 and do it cost effectively.
So although George started this push, he certainly isn’t the only one out there doing it.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Andy,
We are using 3Ware and these give us a variety of options for configuration, depending on the customers needs.
We are doing everything from a single card in either RAID0 or RAID5 to multiple (up to 3) cards in a system either running separate arrays or arrays striped in RAID0 or RAID5.
A software RAID will get the job done, given you have enough drives (depending on format) but the ideal solution is to let the hardware do the job.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Bob,
We have been shipping using 3Ware controllers for close to 2 years now and they offer RAID5 mode and just like Medea, Huge and others RAID all works the same :). Not familiar with XServe and why there is an issue but SATA and RAID is pretty straight forward, given you know what your doing.
(After initial testing of a slew of controllers we went with 3Ware because of their roadmap for development and customer support)
Cheers,
Ramona -
Jeremy,
You are correct in saying that working in any situation, SATA or otherwise is unwise unless you have a backup in place. SATA controllers do work in various RAID modes, the difference will be the need for more drives when doing this. Don’t be afraid of SATA just be smart!
One of the biggest features we implemented this year (finally the controllers were fast enough) was to split up our 24 drive units into 2 12 drive arrays, the renders can be dumped onto the RAID protected array, while I/O with plenty of thruput is happening on the other (simultaneously), all using SATA.
Again, it’s important to work with someone who knows what they are doing.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Walter,
We have used both Hitachi and WD and both are great. We are shipping with WD RAID Edition at the moment but are not tied to drives with what we do. Abuse is a daily thing around here…..our customers are hitting drives very hard, in fact one studio is throwing an entire render farm at the box and getting sustained thruput (this is in 4:4:4 RGB) and SATA has held up as expected (and it keeps getting better).
SATA may give the illusion of “hey I can do this myself”, and if you consider yourself a systems expert you possibly can but if your looking for reliable thruput 24/7 follow Bobs lead on the MAC side. As with anything in these workflows what works for one thing may not work for another so it’s important to find someone you can trust that can look at your overall workflow not just that you need a particular thruput.
Medea products have always held up well for us and the new Ciprico stuff rocks (we are announcing support shortly for their products).
Walter, feel free to email me off the forum if you need any further details as I’m always happy to share with a friend.
Cheers,
Ramona -
Walter,
SATA is more than stable for doing HD uncompressed. We have been offering this for the past couple of years in our products and many post-houses are running 24/7 on it 🙂
If you are in the need for lots of storage, SATA is great for both cost and stability and I’m sure Bob will point you in the right direction for the MAC side. I do recommend that you do look at higher-end drives, don’t cheap out just because SATA is less expensive. Pay attention to spindle speeds as this will help as drives fill up and fragmentation sets in…
Best of luck in your quest.
Cheers,
Ramona -
The software was originally written by a company out of LA, RFX. Rayz was bought up about the same time Apple bought up Shake and Rayz was killed off as to not compete or rather not make it’s way out to the open source community….very sad because it was a great piece of software.
Just a bit of Linux history.
Ramona
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Dave,
That would be a question I would pose directly to AJA. I do think this depends on the software app, rather than just solely the hardware.
For example, we utilize the AJA boards on Linux and have written our own driver and app that use virtually none of the CPU to perform functions, however we are not doing any rendering or currently supporting transitions so we really can’t talk apples to apples.
The point is for all of the functions supported in the board, i.e up/down convert, etc…they are all board intensive, whereas other features may be app related.
Best of luck,
Ramona -
Ditto….
It’s nice to have friends that are cool and that can handle a great pair of sticks. Maybe now you can enjoy a bit of free time and lay down some tracks. Would love to use a cool drum solo in our next RaveHD demo :).
Anything to help out a fellow Genesis/Yes/Tubes fan…..
See you soon,
Ramona