OT: Raid for HDV Question

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/20/2007, 7:31 AM

I'm full of questions here but want to get this right for editing HDV footage.

Is a RAID setup recommended or even needed for working with HDV in Vegas Pro?

I currently have a 2x160GB RAID0 sitting on a separate RAID card but wanted to know whether it was truly necessary or not. If so, I'm thinking of replacing those drives with something like 2x320GB or 2x400GB Seagate drives.

Any thoughts?

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
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Comments

John_Cline wrote on 12/20/2007, 7:36 AM

The data rate of HDV footage is the same as SD DV footage. If you use Cineform intermediates, then the data rate is much higher that standard DV. Regardless, a single drive should be perfectly capable of handling HDV or Cineform HD footage.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/20/2007, 7:51 AM

Thanks John,

I was wanting to cut down on the potential for failure by moving to a single drive for video editing.

I'm using Gearshift for machines I edit with (Desktop and laptop)

So is SATA that much better compared to PATA for transfer speed if moving to a single drive for video editing? Was also thinking of putting my desktop edit drive in an external enclosure - any issues with using USB as the pipeline for editing HDV with external drives???

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
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rmack350 wrote on 12/20/2007, 8:10 AM

If you can use SATA you should. Not because they're faster but because they have better possibilities. The newer standard supports hot swapping if all the stars align right. This gives you the possibility of using a fast eSATA connection for an external drive. And while the drives aren't really much faster than PATA, the bus IS faster so you have the possibility of running a modest external RAID box off a single SATA cable.

If you get an external enclosure I'd look for something that requires SATA drives and has both USB and eSATA connections.

Single disks should be just fine for HDV. Most RAID, even on separate cards, adds some CPU load so there's at least a theoretical hit to your render times.

Rob Mack

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/20/2007, 8:30 AM

I have one of these Oxford 924 Chipset external enclosures which are said to be fully qualified to work with video and audio editing apps and was thinking of getting another one and putting a SATA drive in it.

What is the sweet spot for price -vs- capacity/performance for single drives currently??? What about brand reliability? In the past I have had great success with Seagate drives but reviews recently on NewEgg have stated a recent issue of DOA drives and want to avoid that if at all possible.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
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John_Cline wrote on 12/20/2007, 8:35 AM

Currently the "sweet spot" is 500gig drives for around $110. I have dozens of Seagate drives and have never had a problem with any of them. In fact, I just got another six Seagate 500gig drives from Newegg a couple of days ago and they're just fine.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/20/2007, 8:52 AM

John, which Seagate model did you go with??? I'm considering the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA drive.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
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John_Cline wrote on 12/20/2007, 9:01 AM

Yep, those are the ones. I had been getting the 7200.10 drives, but the last dozen or so have been the 7200.11 drives. They work great.

goshep wrote on 12/20/2007, 10:59 AM

Just to clarify:

While the data rate of SD and HD remains the same, the data TRANSFER rate of RAID0 is roughly double that of a single disk configuration. All things being equal, there is an increase in performance from a RAID0 configuration but many feel that increase isn't worth the risk of data loss. As processing speed and core numbers increase, the bottleneck between processing and storage becomes more apparent. Some day HDDs as we know them will be obsolete. In the meantime, processing technology continues to out pace storage technology. I run a 4 disk RAID0 and I've tested it with Vegas. Truthfully I've seen no appreciable difference between my RAID and my single disk configuration but I aint pullin' it apart now!

PS...

RAID arrays are no less reliable than single disk configurations. That is, having your disks in a RAID doesn't make them more prone to failure. Statistically speaking, the more drives, the greater chance of a failure but the configuration itself doesn't make the drives less reliable. The complete loss of data in the event of a drive failure is of course worthy of concern.

End of rant

rmack350 wrote on 12/20/2007, 3:14 PM

That covers all the bases for interfaces. I'd question the speed of the SATA because they may be using a SATA 1.0 standard that may not be as good for hot swapping.

I have an SATA enclosure in my computer at home (3 trays in 2 5.25" bays) and it supports hot swapping as long as I don't boot the system with the drives in place. I have to insert them after the system gets running for them to be swappable, otherwise the system treats them as fixed.

Rob Mack

dat5150 wrote on 12/21/2007, 3:36 AM

I came across this the other day which looks interesting:
http://www.drobo.com/products.aspx

Is one of PC magazines top products of the year.

John_Cline wrote on 12/21/2007, 9:04 AM

A friend of mine jumped on the Drobo and ended up sending it back. It was incredibly SLOW and had some other issues. It is a great idea, but just not ready for prime time. He also didn't care for the USB 2.0 only interface. If it had a Gigabit Ethernet port and could be used as an NAS device, that would make it much more attractive.

Cliff Etzel wrote on 12/21/2007, 9:49 AM

The reason for my raising this question is I feel like at times, the industry leads users into believing they need something out of sheer consumerism.

Having gotten my pair of HC7's yesterday, I'm amazed at how small they are for the quality of footage they create (The tool itself, bad content in HDV is still bad content)

I'm one of those non-conformist types and I'm looking at how I can bring a minimalist approach to the work I shoot - hence my recent questions on RAID, Gearshift, etc. I write occasionally for sites related to shooting Newspaper Video, video is something newspapers are coming to terms with with the drastic loss in readership for print - trying to retain their readership with quality news video online with embedded advertising to maintain ad revenues.

I just read that there are now 320GB laptop drives from Western Digital and Hitachi - of course, the idea of using an external drive like that in a small external housing for editing in the field has me intrigued. Since the consensus seems to be that editing HDV doesn't really require a RAID setup when editing with Vegas (For the kinds of work I and my colleagues do), I'm thinking about whether I can bring this to a customized portable editing setup that is both lightweight and functional at the same time. Of course my main concern is durability.

Solid State memory cameras are beginning to make an appearance now and this will probably be a moot point within 2-3 years with regards to traditional laptop drives.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
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