[Ricardo Ellstein]

What I’m curious about is using a dual OS machine with a RAID array. First of all there’s the issue of compatibility with the RAID card… but it seems that wouldn’t be a problem since people have had few problems getting various PCI cards to work well in these computers (like BM).

The problem I see is that mac drives are formatted differently than windows drives. If you formatted your array in windows it probably wouldn’t work well when you switched to OSX and viceversa… so that makes the idea of having a BM card in these systems irrelevant for us.

There are solutions like MacDrive, but I don’t know how well that would work… and if it did it would most likely make your array lag since there are more processes required.

For editing uncompressed content in a semi-economic fashion Apple still wins out (especially now with the horrendous CS4 “update” to Premiere).

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Hey guys.

Well, I confirmed that the comp is in 23.976 . What I ended up doing was using a tool called Frames, which got rid of the fields, then tracked again. The problem got slightly better, but when the camera does extreme zooms, I’m going to have to do it by hand.

If I find a better solution I’ll report back to the COW. If I’m not completely insane by the time the job is over, that is.

Thanks to everybody who has helped. If somebody else has experience with these types of shots, and can offer a solution I’d appreciate it VERY much.

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Hi Dave. Thanks for the help.

I did remove the pulldown before the track. I had AE guess the 3:2 pulldown, but now you’ve made me doubt if this has been done correctly. So, one question:

If the pulldown was removed correctly, should I still see interlaced frames on my monitor, or should I be seeing clear pictures.

I’m seeing the interlaced frames, so I’m guessing that maybe the pulldown wasn’t done correctly.

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Hi everybody.

Just reporting back to the COW on the results of the array. I built it just as I proposed in my first post with 4 1TB seagate SATA300 disks. Here are the results as measured by the BlackMagic Decklink speed test:

Data Read Rate: 404.1 MB/s
Data Write rate: 370.6 MB/s

It’s working like a dream with SD video. We’re testing it on HD next week, but it says it can read up to 76 frames per second on 10 bit YUV 4:2:2 1080, so I guess we’re more than OK.

The test doesn’t include parameters for 2K but according to my numbers the array should be able to handle it to.

The Array ended up costing about $1150. For a 4TB array that might even handle 2K, I think it’s pretty good.

Thanks to everybody who jumped in. The advice was very valuable.

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Hello everybody,

Well, I ended up buying the configuration I listed in my first post. I was actually going to go for the Caldigit RAID card, based on the comments from this thread, but found out it wasn’t an option in “build it yourself” arrays… it only works with CalDigit equipment, which looks very good, but is at least two times as expensive as what I ended up getting.

Their equipment looks great, and would definitely acquire an array from them for a larger project, but the solution I’m building should work fine for our current needs.

As to what you wrote in your delicate style, Bob, I’ll let you know where I’m coming from. The truth is we don’t all live in the US or Europe (which is where I imagine you’re writing from). Right now I’m in Mexico City, where the rules are slightly different. Here a good sized feature film with mexican A-listers and all the bells and whistles included costs around 1-2M. Budgets are very different this side of the river, Bob.

We get requests for trailers to do trailers and such all the time, but the clients don’t even want to pay for HD… they’d rather work in SD and blow it up to film, which turns my stomach. And yes, some of these people want trailers, and ads for the cinema at $5000, believe it or not. Of course, not all clients are like this, but the amount we charge for a job is drastically different than what you guys get in the US or other countries.

Also, and this is more of a business philosophy… I try to never spend more than I have to on anything I buy. With this configuration I can build myself an 8TB RAID 0 array running at 450 mb a sec for under $2000. It might not be as shiny or pretty, but plug-and-play arrays are retailing for three times as much, so I think it’s a good deal.

Thanks to everybody who wrote. I’ll do some tests when I get all the stuff hooked up next week and post a report on how things are working.

Cheers.

RE

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Hi Bob,

Thanks a lot for writing. I’ve double checked the RocketRAID 2322 cards specs, and they’ve published tests using this card running at over 450 mb/s with an 8 disk RAID 0 array. I imagine that a 4 disk array should run at half, or 225 mb/s which should be enough. I also have a RocketRAID card right now (lower end than the one I’ll be buying) and it’s performed very well for a couple of years with SD content.

To be honest, and in part due to your response, I’m going to play it safe buy the cables and enclosures for 8 disks. If the drive underperforms with 4 disks, I’ll just add more until we’re up to speed!

One more thing… you mention that for 2K you need 500 mb/s . I realize there might be something I’m not considering, but from what I gather (considering a similar color space) a 2K frame is 54% larger than a full HD frame. So my guess is that if it takes 210 mb/s for sustained full HD, it would take about 315 mb/s for 2k, and I’d be covered with a 6-7 disk array.

Let me know if I’ve got the math right on this.

Cheers.

Ricardo

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Thanks a lot for advice. I’m definitely setting it up, and I’ll let you know how it works out with my particular configuration.

Thanks for the help.

Ricardo

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Thanks for all the help guys.

I’ve taken a look at both PF Tracker and Monet, which is a bit better suited than Mocha AE for what we’re doing. The problem with Monet is that it’s basically a 2D app, and when somebody picks up a glass and drinks from it, the distortion is too great. Aslo, I’ve found that Monet is a “planar tracking” program, and the logos we’re replacing are on cylindrical glasses. We need a 3D solution.

I’ve also had a look at PFTracker, but the documentation wasn’t much help, and they have amazing total of 1 video illustrating how their program works on their site. Spending 3000 pounds on something that MIGHT work isn’t going to fly (we’d gladly drop the cash if we knew it would solve all our woes).

I’ll let you know if I find something other than hard work, and tracking by hand.

Thanks again,

RE

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Thanks for all the help guys.

I’ve taken a look at both PF Tracker and Monet, which is a bit better suited than Mocha AE for what we’re doing. The problem with Monet is that it’s basically a 2D app, and when somebody picks up a glass and drinks from it, the distortion is too great. Aslo, I’ve found that Monet is a “planar tracking” program, and the logos we’re replacing are on cylindrical glasses. We need a 3D solution.

I’ve also had a look at PFTracker, but the documentation wasn’t much help, and they have amazing total of 1 video illustrating how their program works on their site. Spending 3000 pounds on something that MIGHT work isn’t going to fly (we’d gladly drop the cash if we knew it would solve all our woes).

I’ll let you know if I find something other than hard work, and tracking by hand.

Thanks again,

RE

[Ricardo Ellstein]

Hi everybody,

Thanks for answering my post. There’s a lot of great info there. I’m going to try and find out if the array will be slower using Macdrive, and if I get any solid info, I’ll put it up for all to read.

Also, is it true that if you run Windows on a Mac it only uses 2GB of RAM? This would seriously affect my decision, since I’m thinking of getting an 8 procesor Mac, and they recommend at leat 1 GB of RAM per processor to use with AE.

The reason I want this setup is beacause I already own a lot of PC software that I’d like to continue to use it with the new machine. I think switching everything to Mac would be a bit of a hassle… I don’t think that transfer bewtween OS’s, even using the same programs is effortless, and we have to keep up our response times.

Thanks again, and I’ll keep you posted.

Ricardo