Keith, question: what kind of HD video do you work with?

I use Cineform Prospect HD (http://cineform.com) at High, and I'm able to edit up to 4-5 streams off of my RAID1 system.

Alex, I edit with HDV, Prores 422 or XDCAM ex. Much lower bandwidth requirements than your Cineform I believe (25, 35, 145 mbit/second). I usually work online with my RAID 0 inside my Mac Pro. I keep other stuff on a variety of RAID 0 drives on a Gigabit ethernet NAS. The NAS can get me 70 MB/sec transfer rates. So I'm a Mac and you're a PC I assume?

I wouldn't use the Drobo for online video editing unless in a pinch, if that's what you're asking. I've clocked about 20- 30MB second, which theoretically would work but would result in some random delays, I think. Haven't actually done much real editing like that though.

No, actually I was just wondering why do you need RAID0 for online edits at all.

Last time I needed RAID0 was when I was capturing *uncompressed* HD 1920x1080 live.

With Cineform, there's simply no need for RAID0 from speed viewpoint.

So my production system (yes, a PC - will you make me into a stereotype now? ;) has internal RAID10 (essentially RAID1 x 2, for double the capacity) and works fine.

I think controller card is extremely important, so I had to shell out for Areca (after not so good experience with others), and am very happy with it so far.

Of course all my PCs are powered via UPSs (uninterruptible power supplies), so power loss/brownouts/blackouts/spikes so not affect my data.

No, actually I was just wondering why do you need RAID0 for online edits at all.

Last time I needed RAID0 was when I was capturing *uncompressed* HD 1920x1080 live.

With Cineform, there's simply no need for RAID0 from speed viewpoint.

So my production system (yes, a PC - will you make me into a stereotype now? ;) has internal RAID10 (essentially RAID1 x 2, for double the capacity) and works fine.

I think controller card is extremely important, so I had to shell out for Areca (after not so good experience with others), and am very happy with it so far.

Of course all my PCs are powered via UPSs (uninterruptible power supplies), so power loss/brownouts/blackouts/spikes so not affect my data.

I use RAID 0 not because I need it necessarily but because it's fast. I guess I like to have the fastest available system for online editing. I do a lot of disk intensive work, effects, filters and such, and the RAID 0 seems to make a difference. Although SATA is theoretically fast, the disk is the bottleneck. RAID 0 makes throughput faster. Maybe that's unwise.

Sounds like you have a great reliable system, even though it's a PC :)

I think this thread has gotten off track.

Thanks, Keith, for your reasoning.

No, actually I was just wondering why do you need RAID0 for online edits at all.

Alex, editing in FCP with XDCam footage the speed difference is not insignificant. I did a comparison with a raid 0 (two drives in one enclosure) and non-raid drive and was getting about a 30% increase in speed. Transferring a 13.5 minute clip via XDCAM transfer (that's the program's default for keeping files under 4gb) took 4 mins with the non-raid and 2.75 with it.

Don't think the thread's gotten off-track, Jay, as it's very hard to separate out one's online system with one's archiving system, since in many cases they overlap.

it's very hard to separate out one's online system with one's archiving system, since in many cases they overlap.

In my case they're the same :) *

As for the speed, yes, I actually use RAID10 which is two RAID1's coupled into RAID0. Makes it faster than just RAID1.

I agree that of course file transfers are much faster on RAID0-based systems.

------------------------
* Well, almost. I have two 2TB RAID10 arrays... one production, which I use for current projects. Another to dump the *finished* project on for archiving. This way archiving system does not get taxed as much as production one by constant HDD use, and I feel this is safer for storage.