FCP HD system specs question

I'm getting ready to buy a system to edit a doc I'm directing. I shot DVCPRO HD 1080i60, about 4 hours. I'll have approx. another 5-10 hours of archival footage (digibeta probably), plus photos, motion graphics, etc.

I want to mirror the footage in case of any file corruption, and of course storage and speed are concerns. I wasn't sure whether the external RAID (see below) was overkill, as I plan to do an internal RAID. I'd like to avoid buying a AJA or Blackmagic card, as I plan to use the FCP HD codec for offlining.

I'm new to HD, so I'm curious what the forum folks think of these specs to edit the project (I plan to do my online and mix out of house, so this is really more of an offline system).
Any tips as to what to keep or leave out are greatly appreciated.

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Mac PRO:

* Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
* 8GB (4 x 2GB)
* Mac Pro RAID Card
4 internal drives (internal RAID):
* 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* 750GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)
* Apple Cinema Display (20" flat panel)
* Two 16x SuperDrives
* AppleCare Protection Plan for Mac Pro (w/or w/o
Display) - Auto-enroll

- Plus additional lower-end Blackmagic card of some kind (to
hook up to my LCD HDMI TV as 'client' monitor) if needed.

Then for the external mirrored RAID :

Guardian MAXimus - FireWire® 800/400+USB 2.0 Hardware
RAID-1 (Mirrored) Data Redundant Solution with up to
1.0TB + 1.0TB storage capacity

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Once again, many thanks in advance for your help.

Looks pretty alright. It's a pretty mean Mac. The capture card is mainly used as a link to decks/monitor but since you're doing that out of house, you could skip it. 8 gigs of RAM may be a bit too much for FCP if you're mainly using FCP, though.

You'll need something to check the field order of your edit eventually.. Shane mentioned that the Matrox MXO does that on an Apple Cinema Display HD.... It also sends out broadcast monitor quality out of those LCDs.



www.strypesinpost.com

Get the CalDigit Raid card instead of the Apple one. For a few reasons:

1) You can install it yourself...and REMOVE IT yourself. The Apple Raid card can only be installed by Apple or an authorized Apple repair center, and they need to remove it too.

2) The Caldigit one is half the price.

3) You can do all the same things the Apple one does...Raid 0, 1, 5, 6, JBOD.

Note...you must use one of those drives for the OS and applications, so you should not raid all 4 drives. Unless you want to move the system drive to the empty optical bay (like I have) and connect it to one of the two SATA connections on the logic board. This means buying 5.25 mounting brackets for the 3.5" drive, and yanking out the fans to get access to the SATA connections, and using a Y-splitter to split power from the optical.

LINKY: [www.geekymac.com]


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Shane, that's an interesting strategy. So that would give the possibility of a 4TB internal RAID strictly for media!

Damn!

Does he really need an external SATA? If i have this right, according to my Videospace widget, he's described only about 1TB for footage. I budgeted for 20 hours DVCProHD/60, adding 5 hours overhead for full rez exports. Double that and he's only half full-- on the internal RAID 4 X 1TB, right?

I love CalDigit boxes -- but in this case why is one necessary?

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Cycle bin views with Shift - H !

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

A Caldigit box isn't, but the Raid card is. And yes, that is a sweet setup. I have my system drive in the second optical bay.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Thanks for the info, so given my proposed setup and storage needs, would that be enough space to mirror the footage with some overhead? Is there any need for an external RAID/SATA?

given what Shane said about the system drive not being RAIDed, so I'm thinking I'd do the system drive at 500gb and the other 3 drives at 1 terrabyte to compensate.

BTW is there a version of the Videospace widget (or similar program) for windows, for footage storage calculation?

Yep. From the guys at Digital Heaven...

[www.digital-heaven.co.uk]



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks all, one more question (well for the moment).

With the setup described above, if I do not have an AJA/BM capture card, (but use what's in the MacPRO and digitize at ProRes 422), would there be any issue in terms of playing the footage? I.E. would the footage skip after a few minutes, etc.? Or would playback be smooth?

I ask because I checked out the CalDigit site, and they mentioned possible issues with this, (unless I bought their stuff, ha).

>I checked out the CalDigit site, and they mentioned possible issues with this

What possible issues?

Hmm... Loren, 4 x 750 gigs with one drive dedicated to recording parity (or distributed parity), would mean around 2.25 TBs on the internal. Strange, I calculated he would have probably just enough, if he was working Uncompressed for the Digital Beta footage... Then again, he also has motion graphics (which, if it was Animation in HD, it would be quite big), so how much graphics files are we talking about?

>With the setup described above, if I do not have an AJA/BM capture card, (but use
>what's in the MacPRO and digitize at ProRes 422), would there be any issue in terms of
>playing the footage?

Capture Cards are usually use to hook up the machine to an external monitor for color accuracy as well as a bridge to decks. They also perform on-the-fly down/up conversion.

Capturing ProRes from a Digital Beta deck would require a card. In fact, capturing ProRes from HDV would require a card (unless you're capturing via firewire, then you cannot do a batch capture due to the lag).

The Mac performs RT effects and rendering. So you shouldn't have an issue with playback, since there is enough throughput on the drives.



www.strypesinpost.com

Hi There,

Just to answer your questions...

The 'issue' raised on the CalDigital site was a general one of playback speed, delay, that kind of thing. Shane mentioned that the system drive can't be RAIDed, so I'm thinking of leaving that at 500gb, and doing 3 other drives at 1tb each.

The After Effects motion graphics files would be rendered in Animation HD (I think). I see what you mean about the necessity for a card for digibeta, I should have thought of this before, as I used to work at a place where we had a G5 w/ Aja card and digitized off a digibeta deck (though we couldn't output back to the deck for some reason).

Hey Guys.

What we recommend on our RAID CARD is the same as what Apple recommends on their RAID card. With 4 drives internally you don't RAID the 4th drive, that will house your OS & applications, you'd only RAID 3 drives. (MacPro)

If you really want to have the 4 drives RAID'ed internally, you'd want to get a kit to convert your I/O slot to fit a 3.5" hdd, & that would house your OS & applications, allowing you to RAID the other 4 drives internally.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info, Jon!



www.strypesinpost.com

No prob, this is why I stick my nose in here from time to time, either that or Shane puts up the Batsignal for me.

Jon