[Tom Brooks]

Nate,
The choice of the Seagates was based on their presence on the compatibility list from Highpoint which is on their support site. I wanted to stick to drives that were certified to work by the controller manufacturer. So I searched for specific model numbers and looked for deals on ten drives. I got ten drives with all the same firmware version (also specified by Highpoint). It’s likely that drives and firmware not on the list would also work, but I went by the book on that. Enhance Technology, the enclosure maker, also listed compatible controller cards and my Highpoint was on that list along with an Areca and an Atto. The CalDigit was not available at that time (wish it had been). I’ve always had good luck with Seagate Barracudas in the past. Hitachis have also been perfectly reliable for me.

I’d definitely point people to a higher end controller. The Highpoint 3522 could be considered as well as the Areca, Atto and CalDigit. It’s unclear to me what the risk to my RAID is if the power was to go out during a write to disk. I think it could be disastrous. I have the RAID on a good UPS (uninterruptible power supply) to prevent this. The UPS should be considered an essential part of the system if you don’t already have one, so figure that into the cost.

I don’t have a feature film with hundreds of hours of material stored on this unit, but I do have corporate projects that have to be there when the deadline approaches. I needed more security than I had with just the RAID-0 FW800 drives I had before. Now I put all my material on the RAID-5 and back up stills and projects to the FW drives.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

Here’s the parts and price list I promised:
1 – Enhance E8ML-BLK Storage enclosure $441.82
Nowdirect.com
2 – Highpoint EXT-MS-1MSB SAS cable assy.
(SAS SFF-8088 to SATA 4x Infiniband) 60.70
Nowdirect.com
1 – Highpoint RocketRAID 2322 SATA-II
8-channel controller 240.99
eWiz.com
10- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS
750GB 7200RPM SATA-II OEM hard drive 1799.90
NewEgg.com
Plus tax and shipping of about $80.00
Total $ 2623.41

The box holds eight drives. Formatted capacity of 4.8TB. Two are spares on the shelf. I ruled out hot spares because I’m always going to be there to install a spare if necessary. Hot spares reduce the number of drives in the RAID and thus the speed of the array. I got two spares so that I’d have the exact same drives available if one or two goes down.

The system runs very quiet. Drives run at about 117F temp most of the time. It measures right around 500MB/S. I don’t have an accurate way to measure CPU drain due to the fact that the Highpoint card leaves the parity calculations to the computer, as opposed to a true hardware RAID card that contains an Intel or other I/O processor on board. It looks like about a 15% hit by way of the Mac perf monitor. Construction was very easy. The box is very high quality and well designed. Everything went together like nothing. The Highpoint manuals and online info are pretty minimal. I felt least confident about configuring and formatting the RAID-5. But it’s working without a hitch.

A couple other things…The Highpoint card is SATA only–not SAS compatible as far as I know. Most newer RAID cards will work with either. The card has SAS 8088 connectors while the box has the older Infiniband (aka multilane) connectors. The box was a steal at $441, so I went with it and got cables to match. In future, I can put SAS drives in the box if I want to reformat and the cables should work with other RAID controllers.

Starting today, I’d probably look at the CalDigit RAID card. It’s got the Intel IOP and more channels available and is not very expensive. With a few more bucks to spend I’d probably find one reliable reseller who is willing to sell me the parts and give advice instead of shopping all over the net for deals (I got some pretty good deals I think.). The Enhance US sales people are good and will help with info. I believe I talked to Mike(?) there.

I dunno, what do you think of the price vs what’s out there preassembled and warranted?

Final Cut Studio 2, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.

[Tom Brooks]

That’s one of the reasons I bought a MixPre from Sound Devices. Great mic preamplifier and hot headphone driver. I could not get enough headphone level straight out of the HVX200.

Final Cut Studio 2, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.

[Tom Brooks]

Once recorded in DV format, the video is already compressed about 5:1 and a certain amount of its color information is thrown away (4:1:1 color). But capturing through FireWire does not compress it more. In fact, it allows you to digitally capture that DV video exactly as it was recorded without any loss. You can’t get any better than that.

Whatever you do, don’t capture from composite or S-Video. Your result can only be much worse than a FireWire capture.

The reason to capture via SDI is that it allows you to capture directly into a codec other than DV–uncompressed 8 or 10-bit with 4:2:2 color, or ProRes 422, for example. The advantage of this is clearly that your effects, color correction, graphics, and titles–anything that requires rendering–will benefit from less compression and more color information. Generation loss is also minimized in this scenario, so anything that requires multiple passes of rendering will be improved.

So, if you don’t have an SDI output and a capture card to accept it, what do you do to get the benefits listed above? A typical method is to capture and edit your project in DV, but once it’s complete, duplicate your sequence and then change the video compressor in the sequence settings to uncompressed 8 or 10-bit or DVCPro50 or ProRes. All of your DV clips in the timeline will now have to be rendered, but, voila, your graphics and effects will look much better in the higher quality codec. There are many variations on this concept that are suited to different types of projects–depending on the type of footage that it includes, the amount of graphics and effects, the final output, etc., etc.

Look for more information by searching the Cow (and Google) for articles about generation loss, ProRes 422, SDI, “going native” and anything else you can think of to search on. I believe Ken Stone has the “When to Go Native” article.

[Tom Brooks]

Nate,
Yes, I researched, bought, and built it all myself. I’ll get back to you shortly with the parts list and prices you requested. Did I save or just learn a new skill? I learned a lot while doing it. I didn’t learn enough to be confident about the RAID. I know I didn’t become an expert at it. Maybe the community can help me judge whether I saved money or not. Soon after I made my purchases, various companies came out with cheaper RAID-5 systems and components that took a bite out of my savings margin. More later, OK?
-Tom

Final Cut Studio 2, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.

[Tom Brooks]

Arnie,
Yes, I’ve seen many of your comments about your experience with Highpoint. I certainly took that into account when I bought one because I respect your opinion. I’ve only had mine a few months and the RAID hasn’t really gotten a severe workout yet. Basically, I’ve been afraid to rely on it too heavily. But, it’s been fine so far. I don’t see a problem with the CPU hit. But, I’m still in a position to switch to a true hardware IOP card if I need to. I feel like I’m doing a lot of equivocating here. Let me put it this way…I bought the Highpoint in spite of my doubts (and yours) about it. It saved me a few hundred bucks. I’ve never felt good about it since. But…it’s been fine…so far. Thanks for your reports over the last few years.
-Tom

Final Cut Studio 2, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.

[Tom Brooks]

I don’t own one. I gave it a long look a while back and then got a cheaper Highpoint card (which has been fine so far). I could not find anything negative about the Areca, but it doesn’t appear to be real popular in video circles. I just couldn’t find much buzz about it other than AMUG.

There are indications that support for Areca controllers comes with the new Macs. Perhaps the Apple RAID card is Areca-made?? This could be a good sign.

The one that looks really good to me is the new CalDigit. For one thing, the company really wants your business and will actually support the product. Plus the Cal has 8 external and 4 internal channels and a hardware IOP (like the Areca, Atto, and Highpoint 3000 series). But…it’s new.

If you can work with a reseller that will actually support you with the Areca (or Atto, CalDigit, or Highpoint for that matter), that would be good. The integration of the card with a case, drives, cables, firmware and software is pretty critical, eh? I chose the DIY route and it’s risky–no substitute for a lot of real-world experience and it’s impossible for a DIY-er to get that compared to a seller who installs systems for many clients.

Good luck finding some actual users!

[Tom Brooks]

A couple of comments…One is that your best quality will be maintained if you do not try to standard-convert your clips for use in Powerpoint in Europe. It won’t help anything and it’s best to stay as close to your native format as possible in terms of scaling and frame rate.

Workflow options: 1-Export using Compressor (ties up FCP)
2-Export a Quicktime movie and bring that into Compressor.
It’s often quicker to work with a self-contained QT movie exported “with current settings.” This allows you some flexibility to do other things during the compression batch if you need to.

-Make your WMV file in a size that looks correct with square pixels – 640×480 is about as good as you can get from NTSC 4:3.

-You should deinterlace for computer playback. There are good and bad ways to do it. If your results are bad, come back for advice on getting better deinterlacing.

-If your video doesn’t have much movement in it, you can output your WMV at half the frame rate.

In PPT, you can “Insert Movie from File” or you can “Insert Object / Windows Media Player” (something close to that). There are advantages to each approach.

[Tom Brooks]

I’ve been using 5.1 with OS 10.4.11 for a while. No problems.

Final Cut Studio 2, FCP 6.0.2, Mac OS-X 10.4.11, Quicktime 7.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V5.1, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT 256MB, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800, 6TB RAID-5 (Enhance E8-ML, Highpoint 2322), Panasonic HVX-200P P2.

[Tom Brooks]

Very high numbers coming from a self-contained with no frame controls in Compressor. Your RAM is on the low side. See if Performance Monitor tells you anything about disk activity and RAM that gives a clue as to what’s going on.