[Russ D’arensbourg]

to be technical, you want to do the opposite of that.
The highest bitrate, least compressed video is desirable.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

The trick is which Canon EOS cameras output clean HDMI. Correct me if I am wrong but I beleive only the 5D MKIII will give you clean HDMI with no menus or blinking red circle on your HDMI out.
Magic Lantern firmware fixes this I believe.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

It seems that there is some consensus around using Canon wide zooms for videography. The 15-35mm L and 17-40mm L are both popular. Though they are going to get pricey if you opt for the IS version, which most folks will want to do, as it helps eliminate camera shake.
Cheaper options would be the non-L series Ultrasonic lenses. Quite a few models come in IS versions. Such as the 35MM.
If you are shooting wildlife you almost certainly want IS, and likely a longer lens, which is money on top of money.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

The last TV station I worked at we used Canon DSLRs to shoot our in house promo spots, supplemented by cheapo Go Pro footage. However, since this was a pro sports focused company we had a mix of news, short and long form stuff. So there was about $10,000 of plugins on every workstation. Which really helps to fix the drawbacks of DSLR footage.
Prores is a good start. You do not need to have Final Cut Pro to access Prores codecs. There are a few tutorials which will help you to download the codecs from Apple (free and legal) and unpackage the codecs from their installer (grey area).
Prores 4:2:2 was in heavy use around our facility, and for clients and vendors.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

Which video compression option are you using?
There are ALL-I and IPB choices. I think maybe there is a “light” version as well that further compresses the video data.
Full HD ALL-I is approximately 91.33 Mbps.
Full HD IPB is about 31.33 Mbps.
So if the camera is throwing away 2/3rds of the video data it’s going to make a difference. I’m not sure of the exact details of the compression but I’m sticking to ALL-I with a Cinestyle ‘Style’ myself.
Storage is cheap.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

I tend to beat equipment to death when it comes to computer gear. Sound equipment (I used to run a sound reinforcement company) I’d flip every year.

I am just going to go ahead and get the ThunderBay.
It seems that nowwhere that I have looked on the internet is there anyone evaluating disk systems with an eye towards the specs that I am interested in.
For a lot of the consumer/SOHO NAS systems the reviews focus on VM usage, simultaneous IO ability (which is important in a group use scenario) and gee whiz features like mobile apps.

The reviews of DAS disk systems seem to focus solely on throughput figures. Which of course are important numbers to post-production users.

It still bothers me that nobody really looks at cpu utilization. While this may be an insignificant statistic if you are using a single array. If you end up using solutions from different manufacturers simultaneously, this has the potential to impact performance.

I suppose I’ve developed a bit of anal retentiveness when I was building DAWs in the 90’s and 2000’s. Back then you had to sweat every cpu stealing process and memory hog. Otherwise you might get audio dropouts in the midst of a multitrack session. Even with high performance, professional grade hardware.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

Whether or not to throw money at the problem is not the question. Doubtless I can get a decent solution for lets say $1200. Probably also for $2500.
Now whether to go for a smaller raid array which is computing parity in hardware at that putative price point or a larger array which relies on software is the question.

I’ve read elsewhere about some TB2 DAS/NAS Qnap products coming out soon. I’m also looking into TB to M.2 storage solutions with softraid as a possibility.

Either way I’m not going to ‘just buy any raid from the advertisers’. I’ve seen Dulce, Rorke and other so called pro storage products really take a dump. And I just dont spend my money rashly. I’m always trying to see the emperor without their clothes on so to speak, before I open my wallet.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

thanks, true my primary concern is that I do not want to drop coin on a high performance raid if that is going to impact my cpu’s ability to do other tasks. If however the impact is negligble I can overlook this.
I am basically wedded to the Mac Pro that I currently have and the rest of my budget that is not covering a storage solution will be going into other stuff.
Camera stuff mostly.
As far s price vs performance I can make room for a more expensive raid if there is damning evidence that the Thunderybay 4 will make AE or PP fuck up renders or take twice as long. So far I have only seen gushing reviews of the Thunderbay, but I have to wonder about it since it is basically a 3rd party product with OWC branding and licensed software from another company.

I have noticed in my research that Qnap has some interesting NAS/DAS products due to hit the streets soon. They are TB2 DAS with gigabit NAS as well as 10GB on the upmarket units. These are very interesting since they offer expansion chassis in addition to the NAS/DAS funcitons. Not too enthused about the HDMI?

Have to say, Mr.Zelin is not impressing me as someone I would ever reach out to in a professional regard. If his business is a VAR with specialization in DR, I wouldn’t want someone that grouchy around when our ISIS, Dulce or Rorke storage is giving us issues.

Yeah, at my day job I work in network sports broadcast.
So I know from storage.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

[Tangier Clarke] ”
Both of you feel that way even after reading the article at this link below?:

https://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/RAID5_versus_RAID10.txt“

That appears to be an article from ‘Battle Against Any Raid Five’ folks. Hardly impartial. I notice a couple interesting things here.
More than one reference to databases and such. No mention of heavy media storage usage.
Also the linked article, and several others linked from their homepage return 404 errors. Maybe they lost their storage?

At my old job at NBC we lost a raid 5 array while I was on vaction. After recovering the data from backup (remotely) we specced another larger raid 5 array. With a robotic tape backup.

[Russ D’arensbourg]

I primarily work in plain old HD. I only stray into 4k for some bits of animation. I can suffer through a performance hit for the 4k stuff because it does not stay 4k long.

I’m not trying to buy to buy the ‘cheapest possible’ array. I am trying to balance performance and capacity on the middle tier of products that support TB.

I’d just pick up one of those dual drive raid 0/1/jbod products if cost was the only concern.