External Drive Recommendation

Hi:

I'm looking for a recommendation for an external hard drive for storage/editing. I'm working on an hour-long documentary project, shot in HD. I currently have a 3 TB external drive where I'm storing the captured files (Firewire 800), with additional backup drives (Firewire 400). I've found when doing small editing projects for the doc, such as a trailer, I'm getting dropped frames on playback. I'm working with a MacBook Pro and am up to my maximum internal memory. I'm running FCP 6.0.6.

This is the first time I've worked on an HD project. When editing in FCP in standard def, I've found daisy chains of firewire drives work fine (minimal dropped frames). Any suggestions for this project?

Thanks!
Kathleen Ryan

You need to provide more details- eg. how much rushes do you have, what format is it shot in, what level RAID is your external drive, how much free space do you have on it, what version of the Macbook Pro, and also, when you talk about "standard def", what format is it?



www.strypesinpost.com

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what format is it shot in

That's the most important question, I think, though all would be helpful. If you're working in uncompressed, you won't get real-time playback off a Firewire drive no matter what; it's just not going to be fast enough. ProRes probably, DVCPRO HD certainly.

The video for this project was shot 1080i, uncompressed, using Panasonic P2 cards. Obviously, the files are huge and I know that to edit it will make sense to use Media Manager to make a lo-res editing version of the project. But my worry is that when I go to reconnect, I may not be able to watch the final film in real time.

The Macbook Pro is 2.6 GHz, Intel core 2 duo, 4GB 667 Mhz. I have the model with has the inputs with both Firewire 800 and 400. This isn't a problem with the drives being full (I've got about 1TB left on the 3 TB drive which I've been using for editing).

Any ideas -- other than do a lo-res edit first and then moved everything to a tower when I get to the final output point?

Kathleen

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The video for this project was shot 1080i, uncompressed, using Panasonic P2 cards.

Are you quite sure of that? You can't record uncompressed to a P2 card, to my knowledge. Is it possible that the original DVCPRO HD media was converted to uncompressed somewhere down the line? If so, you'll have good luck by going back to the original P2 media.

Yea. A 32 gigabyte P2 card would hold amazingly little amounts of uncompressed footage, all spanned clips, if it could write fast enough.



www.strypesinpost.com

> Any ideas -- other than do a lo-res edit first

If you're shooting to P2 cards, tapeless, that approach will cost you an enormous amount of time and effort. I also suspect, as Jeff does, that you didn't mean "Uncompressed HD" literally. Uncompressed HD will be about 1GB every eight seconds, and that's completely unrealistic for a feature-length project at the offline stage, let alone a documentary.

If you're recording DVCPro HD, the file sizes should be manageable. I think you're better off buying a better storage solution (eg. Promax or CalDigit's 16-32TB arrays, RAIDed. FireWire 800 drives at 1-2TB will be bulky, not very secure, and chaining more than two together will be a precarious thing. On The Jacksons, we used a 28TB XSAN that didn't even come to 50 per cent usage, and that's for six one-hour shows.


www.derekmok.com

Sorry -- I recorded in Pansonic 1080/60i, recorded to P2/DVCPROHD. Multi-tasking poorly here. What I meant was that I then hadn't further compressed the files.

And thanks, Derek -- I'll look into the Promax or CalDigit. If anyone has any other ideas, I'm all ears.

Kathleen

Generally speaking, you should not be dropping frames for disk bandwidth reasons when working with DVCPRO HD material on a Firewire 800 drive. It's possible that you are (particularly if you've got other devices on the same Firewire bus), but it's not usually a problem with DVCPRO HD.

Do you have any unrendered clips on your timeline?

On my home system I am using the same system you have (laptop) and am running CalDigit VR through their expansion slot card and e-SATA

I have had great success with DVCPRO HD in both 720p or 1080i flavors.

I was using the firewire 800 route and was frustrated with all the dropped frames.

Rendered or unrendered doesn't seem to matter. And I'm not daisy chaining -- just working with the one firewire 800 and frames drop like crazy. REALLY frustrating. But it's good to hear that e-SATA has been a success on a system like mine.

Thanks for the help. Now I get to go shopping!

Are you sure your timeline is set correctly? Check Sequence Settings (APPLE-0). Also check to see where your render files are going.


www.derekmok.com

Not surprising to hear. I would not use FireWire *anything* for HD flavors-- move to eSATA drives for anything but offline storage, for which FW is great. As many here know, I love th e inexpensive LaCie D2 Quadra models for this purpose, plus I use them for *live* editing of DV flavors. But they go on the shelf for HD edits.

When you get into layering titles, effects, and such over your DVCProHD footage you really want faster access, and the affordable choice for laptop users is eSATA, like CalDigit, etc.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Invoke Big Timecode window with Control-T!

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

>I would not use FireWire *anything* for HD flavors

Nono. Something is wrong here. Dvcpro HD is very very light. I'm working on DvcproHD 720p25 and since the Firewire chip short circuited a couple of weeks ago, and I haven't had time to swap the array, I've been going to tape off a USB RAID 5 array, and I haven't dropped a single frame yet. I won't bet my money that it won't drop frames anytime soon, but I'm just saying that it's a very light codec. Something is wrong with the set up.

How full are your drives?



www.strypesinpost.com

Yeah, DVCPro HD can be played back on a G4 laptop over FW400 so something else is causing the dropped frames.


-Andrew

And how many STREAMS of 720P are we talking here? Two? I count titles and renders as additional streams. I have not had good luck with FW drives for these.

- Loren

Today's FCP 7 keytip:
Cycle your timeline track size with Shift-T !

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

Depends. You won't be able to cut a multi cam on anything less than FW800, but playing back rendered footage is fine.



www.strypesinpost.com