Is Firewire 800 raid ok for HDV and DVCPro editing

This may have been cover before I checked in the search but really did not find the answer I was looking for. I have a G5 now and added a Firewire 800 card to it were I can add three other devices. I use a gtech 250g drive for my scratch disc not raid. I will be purchase HD camcorder in few months, and at end of 2008 or early 2009 I going to purchase a new MAC Pro. My question is if I purchase a new Firewire 800 raid will this be find for now and for the future for editing HD content? If so any opinions on Gtech vs Caldigit.

According to this site, Uncompressed High Def will run about 700 Mbps, if I'm reading it right. So Firewire 800 should have you covered... but barely. (Is this actually the way to figure this out?)

Also depends on what kind of RAID you'll use, I'm guessing.

Um...no. Don't know how you figured that james, but FW800 maxes out at approximately 80 Mbps read / 70 Mbps write and is absolutely NOT recommended for Uncompressed HD - won't run it at all:

Uncompressed SD = yes (1 to 2 streams - depending on 8 or 10 bit)
DVCPRO-HD = yes (3 streams)
HDV = yes (4 streams)
DV = yes (7 streams)

You should go to the source, tell them what you want to do and ask them what they recommend:

[www.g-technology.com]

...and this is most important = Barefeats test results:

[www.barefeats.com]

...also:

[www.caldigit.com]

...and the Barefeats results:

[www.barefeats.com]

My 2¢...though I do not own one, the CalDigit units are equipped with a major Data Security feature that the trusty G-RAID does not have (ability to use a RAID "1" configuration so if you lose one of the drives, you don't lose your data. Though the G-RAID is solid and highly recommended as well (they are all over our studio and I use them everyday - even one at home), it is RAID "0" only and if you lose a drive, you lose ALL THE DATA on the unit).

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

firewire800 is FINE for the formats youve mentioned. and will continue to be fine for [id imagine] at least the next 3 to 5 years.

and as joey says, caldigit and gtech are both great - i use them both and they have served me well with no problems.

This same conversation came up when Joey e-mailed us today. Honestly, in RAID 1 with our FireWireVR you're too slow to do uncompressed HD, since the FW800 speed is 1/2'd in RAID 1, you'd 1/2 63-72MB/s where as with our S2VRDuo & our ExpressCard in RAID 1, you'd get 50MB/s performance, fast enough to do what you need to do, uncompressed 10 bit with protection.

The best part is that you'd also free up your FireWire port & bandwidth to use with other things, like a camera.......

Thanks what I have added to my computer was a Firewire card which gave me two more Firewire 800 ports and one 400 port. I would love purchase S2VRDuo but the problem is I see the writing on the wall form my G5 I would have to purchase PCIX card now and then in about year or two years from now when I purchase a new MAC Pro I would have to purchase another PCIe card to work with S2VRDuo. That's over $400 in cards. But that is technology for you.

kmaultsby

Good point & I was under the mistaken assumption that you were on a MBP, not a G5, sorry about that. If you were on a laptop which was the case with Joe's e-mail, then you'd needn't worry about the internal PCI-X PCI-e card cannundrum. Your best performance is going to be with eSATA though but not FireWire800, at least not in RAID 1 on a Tower machine.

Jon

i hate to sound snotty here, but if you cant justify $400 for a new PCI(XYZ) card at LEAST every year or two - you probably dont really NEED this level of performance in the first place...

No it is not that. It is like General Patton quote; I do not want fight over the same ground twice.

OH I am using it for raid 0 only.

Then our FireWireVR is a good product for what you're doing & unlike the G-RAID 2 you can daisy chain on another FireWireVR without performance loss.

G-RAID2's drop the chain to 16MB/s, ours don't.

Jon

One last question. Which kind of confuse me dose the S2VRDuo come with a card or not. I when to a couple of sites and in the description the said it comes with a card if so I would get one because I would only have to pay for the one time.

kmaultsby,

Our products have always been sold as "complete systems" with Single Vendor Support from day 1. We include the controller card with the product, but you would have the option of buying without, say if for instance, you already had one card & didn't need a second and you would also get a price break. If you needed a ExpressCard rather than a internal card, we are willing to work with you there also, as will any of our dealers.

The dealers that have the product "without card" or "add a card" are just trying to help keep the confusion to a minimum, although sometimes it causes more confusion than it solves.

Anything else? Anyone knows they can count on us for quick replies to our e-mails, mine, jons@caldigit.com or everyone at sales@caldigit.com.

Thanks for the interest.

Nice job, Jon...thanks for jumpin' in

Happy New Year!!!

Joey

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

"G-RAID2's drop the chain to 16MB/s, ours don't"


What makes a G-RAID2 go only 16 MB a second? Really?

Christopher,

The short answer is in the technology we use on our hardware RAID FireWireVR. When daisy chaining our products you will not lose performance.

Jon

Jon you have sold me I be purchasing one soon. Thanks for all the feedback.

Glad to help.

Anything else? Feel free to e-mail us directly if needed.

Jon

If I'm in the wrong pew in this church, tell me to leave...

I have a 1TB G-RAID on my iMac FW800 port and then have a 500GB G-RAID daisy-chained to the 1TB drive. I use the 500GB strictly as the scratch disk for FCP and the 1TB as location for stored clips. I am using a Sony HD-SR1 to capture HD footage which I log and transfer via FCP from the camera to ProRes422 1920x1080 30p 48 kHz. My projects are never much more than 15 minutes with final output to either DVD or QuickTime, intended for use in my office for training purposes.

Thus far, I have not had any problems with the G-RAID hard disks nor have I noticed any "slowing down" of access speed. I just hope I haven't set myself up for problems in the future with this arrangement for editing in FCP. I am extremely pleased with the performance of the G-RAID units. The only "problem" I've encountered is remembering to turn off the iMac "Time Machine" when I'm editing so that it doesn't start doing a backup in the middle of rendering.....

Regards, Cyrus
iMac 27" Intel i7 Quad-Core; 16GB RAM; 2TB HD
Final Cut Studio, FCP X, Photoshop CS5, After Effects, etc.

Can you with external video FCP have 3 firewire connections from added PCI card in back of PM G5
record onto standalone pioneer (firewire) burners at the same time thru DV input?
Thanks, Nick

Nick - it might be best to ask your question in a new thread, since lots of people might not see this question when it scrolls off the front page.

Also, can you clarify it a bit? Are you wanting to capture via firewire in FCP and export to a DVD burner at the same time? So, basically a pass through? As far as I know this isn't possible with FCP, but I did notice that iDVD has the ability to do this. I didn't look very closely at what the particular limitations are, but have a look at 'One Step DVD' in iDVD