My HDV Nightmare

Chris Barcellos · August 17th, 2006, 08:55 PM

Okay. So are you telling us your hard drive are not formatted NTFS, and are in FAT32-- hence the 4 gig max? Are you doing that on purpose for a technical reason ?

See this: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

I had a crazy problem wiht called Cinemantique, which I bought about 4 months ago. Even though all my drives are NTFS, I kept getting a file size crash at about 2 gigs.

Ben Winter · August 17th, 2006, 11:08 PM

No, my disks are formatted NTFS, the 4 gig max is a limit of DVFilm Maker. And never mind about fixing it, it's still crashing even when processing 10 minute sections.

Ben Winter · August 31st, 2006, 08:48 AM

I'm still having these problems. Can anyone assist?

Ben Winter · September 19th, 2006, 08:09 AM

I fixed it!

I wanted to post my solution here so any poor soul who has this problem knows what to do.

RAID 5 didn't like my computer. I reformatted it to RAID stripe and now not only do I have more disk space, everything's running free and clear.

Dan Keaton · September 23rd, 2006, 03:30 PM

With Raid 5, there is a "Write Penalty". This means that the Raid 5 setup has to perform more steps, which takes more time, each time the Raid 5 setup has to write a block of data to the disks. Thus writing to a Raid 5 Setup takes more time than reading from a Raid 5 setup.

Personally, for this reason, I would recommend against using Raid 5.

However, you stated that the problem occurs after a render process.

During a render, your software (NLE) should only attempt to write to the disks as fast as the Raid 5 setup can accept the data. So, in theory, the Raid 5 setup should not cause problems. However, you were having problems so there may be a sofware problem, or a problem with your Raid 5 setup.

Now, I assume that your source files were on the Raid 5 setup also. So you were reading from all of your disks, and then writing to all of your disk (which also involves reading data from your disks (this is the "Write Penalty" part). While this sounds like a lot of work, and it is, a good Raid 5 system, along with properly written software should handle it properly. By this I mean that the software should wait until the previous block of data has been successfully written to disk before attempting to write the next block of data.

While rendering should work fine, in theory, using a Raid 5 setup, capturing may be a serious problem. With rendering, the software has the luxury of taking as long as necessary to complete the writes to disk. When capturing, the software must keep up with the incoming data from your deck or camera. If it does not, then you have dropped frames. So I would not recommend Raid 5 for capturing.

I applaud your decision to remove Raid 5. It must have been quite a job to backup all of your data, then change to a different setup, then reload all of your data.

Ben Winter · September 24th, 2006, 02:01 AM

Your insight sounds accurate. Regrettably, I would've had a Raid stripe setup to begin with but my computer wouldn't set up the disks for Raid Mirror so while flipping through the other options in the menu I figured "ehh, what the heck? Raid 5 sounds good..." Not knowing what it was in the first place anyway.

In any case I'm just glad changing disk setups solved my problem. I went to experts exchange to see if anyone could help me, and they just bobbled around capturing incorrectly, using the right codecs, etc. It was obvious they didn't know what they were talking about and had never been exposed to the video editing world. It's been such a bother to me, I've literally lost sleep over it. Now that everything is running smoothly I couldn't be happier.

Mark Goldberg · October 11th, 2006, 06:36 PM

I cannot directly address the problems you are having with PP2 because a few months ago, I decided to migrate away from Premiere in favor of Vegas.

Vegas has been HD friendly for years, and I have no regrets about the move. I was having numerous problems, bugs, and lockups even with Prem 6.5 and decided not to upgrade it to an HDV version.

Vegas 7 will handle the HDV m2t stream directly. Version 6 coughs with m2t and needs a proxy application or intermediate codec.

What is truly amazing is that I have made HD output in WMV format using Vegas 6, and have released it to my customers with great results.

You can download a trial of Vegas from Sony Media.

August 17th, 2006, 08:55 PM	#16
Chris Barcellos Inner Circle Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Elk Grove CA Posts: 6,838	Okay. So are you telling us your hard drive are not formatted NTFS, and are in FAT32-- hence the 4 gig max? Are you doing that on purpose for a technical reason ? See this: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm I had a crazy problem wiht called Cinemantique, which I bought about 4 months ago. Even though all my drives are NTFS, I kept getting a file size crash at about 2 gigs. __________________ Chris J. Barcellos

August 17th, 2006, 11:08 PM	#17
Ben Winter Trustee Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hollywood, CA Posts: 1,675 Images: 1	No, my disks are formatted NTFS, the 4 gig max is a limit of DVFilm Maker. And never mind about fixing it, it's still crashing even when processing 10 minute sections. __________________ BenWinter.com Last edited by Ben Winter; August 18th, 2006 at 10:44 AM.

August 31st, 2006, 08:48 AM	#18
Ben Winter Trustee Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hollywood, CA Posts: 1,675 Images: 1	I'm still having these problems. Can anyone assist? __________________ BenWinter.com

September 19th, 2006, 08:09 AM	#19
Ben Winter Trustee Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hollywood, CA Posts: 1,675 Images: 1	I fixed it! I wanted to post my solution here so any poor soul who has this problem knows what to do. RAID 5 didn't like my computer. I reformatted it to RAID stripe and now not only do I have more disk space, everything's running free and clear. __________________ BenWinter.com

September 23rd, 2006, 03:30 PM	#20
Dan Keaton Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Augusta Georgia Posts: 5,421	With Raid 5, there is a "Write Penalty". This means that the Raid 5 setup has to perform more steps, which takes more time, each time the Raid 5 setup has to write a block of data to the disks. Thus writing to a Raid 5 Setup takes more time than reading from a Raid 5 setup. Personally, for this reason, I would recommend against using Raid 5. However, you stated that the problem occurs after a render process. During a render, your software (NLE) should only attempt to write to the disks as fast as the Raid 5 setup can accept the data. So, in theory, the Raid 5 setup should not cause problems. However, you were having problems so there may be a sofware problem, or a problem with your Raid 5 setup. Now, I assume that your source files were on the Raid 5 setup also. So you were reading from all of your disks, and then writing to all of your disk (which also involves reading data from your disks (this is the "Write Penalty" part). While this sounds like a lot of work, and it is, a good Raid 5 system, along with properly written software should handle it properly. By this I mean that the software should wait until the previous block of data has been successfully written to disk before attempting to write the next block of data. While rendering should work fine, in theory, using a Raid 5 setup, capturing may be a serious problem. With rendering, the software has the luxury of taking as long as necessary to complete the writes to disk. When capturing, the software must keep up with the incoming data from your deck or camera. If it does not, then you have dropped frames. So I would not recommend Raid 5 for capturing. I applaud your decision to remove Raid 5. It must have been quite a job to backup all of your data, then change to a different setup, then reload all of your data. __________________ Dan Keaton Augusta Georgia

September 24th, 2006, 02:01 AM	#21
Ben Winter Trustee Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Hollywood, CA Posts: 1,675 Images: 1	Your insight sounds accurate. Regrettably, I would've had a Raid stripe setup to begin with but my computer wouldn't set up the disks for Raid Mirror so while flipping through the other options in the menu I figured "ehh, what the heck? Raid 5 sounds good..." Not knowing what it was in the first place anyway. In any case I'm just glad changing disk setups solved my problem. I went to experts exchange to see if anyone could help me, and they just bobbled around capturing incorrectly, using the right codecs, etc. It was obvious they didn't know what they were talking about and had never been exposed to the video editing world. It's been such a bother to me, I've literally lost sleep over it. Now that everything is running smoothly I couldn't be happier. __________________ BenWinter.com

October 11th, 2006, 06:36 PM	#22
Mark Goldberg Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Annapolis, Maryland Posts: 101	I cannot directly address the problems you are having with PP2 because a few months ago, I decided to migrate away from Premiere in favor of Vegas. Vegas has been HD friendly for years, and I have no regrets about the move. I was having numerous problems, bugs, and lockups even with Prem 6.5 and decided not to upgrade it to an HDV version. Vegas 7 will handle the HDV m2t stream directly. Version 6 coughs with m2t and needs a proxy application or intermediate codec. What is truly amazing is that I have made HD output in WMV format using Vegas 6, and have released it to my customers with great results. You can download a trial of Vegas from Sony Media.