Shoot and archive advice, please

David Cherniack · February 8th, 2010, 09:06 AM

Hi Tim,

I'll be in one place for 8 weeks and travelling around for 6 weeks. I don't expect to be putting more than 2-3 hours a day in the can.

When I'm editing during the shoot it will be on a laptop. Hence the question about storage. I was thinking of taking my port multiplier enclosure with 3.5 drives. I'll start looking around for a port multiplier with 2.5 drives and see if it's worth saving the weight.

I'm delivering 1920 both 60i and 50i from a 24p master.

David

Andrew Stone · February 8th, 2010, 09:26 AM

Dave assuming you are using a Mac laptop with an express card slot. There is a Sonnet eSata 2 port express card device that (i'm pretty sure) has port multiplication built into it. You may also wish to consider a "dock" that allows you to plug in naked 3.5" or 2.5" drives into the base. They generally come with eSATA and USB 2.0 ports on them. Very light.

Being in Canada you may wish to try a place like Frontierpc. I looked up this gear last week and they had stock on both.

Tim Polster · February 8th, 2010, 04:57 PM

O.K.

3 hous of 100mbps log GOP with the Nano is about 140GB. So this is the raw footage amount per day. Looks like about 700GB to 1TB per week of raw footage if the shooting pace remains constant.

Going to 50mbps will cut these numbers in half (but not your image qaulity in half).

I agree that e-sata is your only hope.

I have a hot-swappable drive bay in my desktop which you could get in an external configuration. This lets me slide a drive in without re-booting, add my data and slide it back out without re-booting. Do you could use affordable sata drives and swap them in and out as needed. This might be easier to travel with and might be a good backup solution.

Do you see a lot of need to multiple layers of video playing at once and heavy effects or color correction? If not, you could probably get by without a RAID if you do not want to travel with a larger box. Or use a two drive RAID and backup to the hot-swap bay to keep the space open on the RAID. With this much footage, I would always want two drives with the same footage on them at the same time. You will be wiping your CF cards a lot and they will not be able to serve as a backup.

Bear in mind, these suggestions are based upon me using a PC with Edius as my NLE.

I have stated this before that I can edit Nano files from the CF card in the USB reader, so a non-raid sata hard drive is plenty of throughput for "normal" editing.

I am sure you know all of this stuff, just sharing my thoughts.

David Cherniack · February 8th, 2010, 08:40 PM

Andrew, I'm a PC But I'll look two drive solutions as I'm loath to lug a 10 pound 5 drive enclosure around the world. BTW I found a neat 4 x 2.5" disk port multiplier unit at

Quad 2.5" SATA II Hard Drive MINI RAID 4726 Silicon Image Chip

but buying 8 x 1TB 2.5" drives is no small expense. If I lug 3.5" drives around they'll eventually end up in my Raid 6 when the shoot is done..

David Cherniack · February 8th, 2010, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tim Polster

O.K.

Do you see a lot of need to multiple layers of video playing at once and heavy effects or color correction? If not, you could probably get by without a RAID if you do not want to travel with a larger box. Or use a two drive RAID and backup to the hot-swap bay to keep the space open on the RAID. With this much footage, I would always want two drives with the same footage on them at the same time. You will be wiping your CF cards a lot and they will not be able to serve as a backup.

Bear in mind, these suggestions are based upon me using a PC with Edius as my NLE.

I have stated this before that I can edit Nano files from the CF card in the USB reader, so a non-raid sata hard drive is plenty of throughput for "normal" editing.

Much appreciated, Tim.

The 3 hrs a day was a maximum figure. I'm guessing I'll shoot 60 or so hours which at 100mbps will nicely fit on 2 2GB drives. Double duping will mean 4 2GB drives. I'll edit off single drives...the Raid 1 idea was just for double duping.

John Mitchell · February 13th, 2010, 07:41 AM

Just to answer your original question raid 1 is a mirrored raid yes you can remove a drive and still access your data but I'm not sure why you would do this. It is the safest solution for hard drives as you can lose one drive completely and simply replace it and the new drive will be rebuilt in the background - this process uses a lot of resources (same with Raid 5 which uses a parity drive rther than copied data). Raid 1 has the disadvantage of being as slow as a single drive and it doubles the hard drive space needed.

I too recommend a Nexto for offloading. I'm like you - I like two copies of my data. So I copy all my media from my Nexto to an external hard drive. I then import it into my project so I have another copy on a different external media drive. Only when I have duplicate copies will I erase the original compact flash and clear off the Nexto.

Of course to be truly safe you would require some form of off-site backup - it is called digital paranoia.

John Mitchell · February 13th, 2010, 07:48 AM

duplicate post.

David Cherniack · February 13th, 2010, 06:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Mitchell

Just to answer your original question raid 1 is a mirrored raid yes you can remove a drive and still access your data but I'm not sure why you would do this. It is the safest solution for hard drives as you can lose one drive completely and simply replace it and the new drive will be rebuilt in the background - this process uses a lot of resources (same with Raid 5 which uses a parity drive rther than copied data). Raid 1 has the disadvantage of being as slow as a single drive and it doubles the hard drive space needed.

I too recommend a Nexto for offloading. I'm like you - I like two copies of my data. So I copy all my media from my Nexto to an external hard drive. I then import it into my project so I have another copy on a different external media drive. Only when I have duplicate copies will I erase the original compact flash and clear off the Nexto.

Of course to be truly safe you would require some form of off-site backup - it is called digital paranoia.

I've decided to go the route of the two drive docking station rather than raid 1. That will allow me to double off-load the compact flash cards. As I'm counting that I'll only need 2 x 2GB drives per copy I'll always be able to edit with all my material available.

Dan Keaton · February 13th, 2010, 07:30 PM

Dear David,

Does your 2-drive docking station have eSATA connection to your computer?

If so, great.

However, the one's that I have seen, and I have not researched all of the units on the market, have a USB 2.0 connection to the host computer. This is even though they have eSATA connections to the drives themselves.

USB 2.0 is a bottleneck, an eSATA connection is far faster.

David, please feel free to give me a call.

Andrew Stone · February 13th, 2010, 08:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by David Cherniack

BTW I found a neat 4 x 2.5" disk port multiplier unit at Quad 2.5" SATA II Hard Drive MINI RAID 4726 Silicon Image Chip

but buying 8 x 1TB 2.5" drives is no small expense. If I lug 3.5" drives around they'll eventually end up in my Raid 6 when the shoot is done..

Nice find David. Reasonably priced. Always curious about ambient and fan noise in multiple HD enclosure units. Price isn't too bad.

At this point in time, Feb 2010, I wouldn't consider 2.5" drives over 640GB as the value/price ratio widens greatly when you get larger than this.

Gotta say I think the Nexto is a great solution. I love the simplicity of the user interface. I laugh every time I fire it up. Too bad the SxS version is 2 grand versus $300 for the standard unit.

February 13th, 2010, 07:30 PM	#24
Dan Keaton Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Augusta Georgia Posts: 5,421	Dear David, Does your 2-drive docking station have eSATA connection to your computer? If so, great. However, the one's that I have seen, and I have not researched all of the units on the market, have a USB 2.0 connection to the host computer. This is even though they have eSATA connections to the drives themselves. USB 2.0 is a bottleneck, an eSATA connection is far faster. David, please feel free to give me a call. __________________ Dan Keaton Augusta Georgia

February 8th, 2010, 09:06 AM	#16
David Cherniack Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Toronto Posts: 186	Hi Tim, I'll be in one place for 8 weeks and travelling around for 6 weeks. I don't expect to be putting more than 2-3 hours a day in the can. When I'm editing during the shoot it will be on a laptop. Hence the question about storage. I was thinking of taking my port multiplier enclosure with 3.5 drives. I'll start looking around for a port multiplier with 2.5 drives and see if it's worth saving the weight. I'm delivering 1920 both 60i and 50i from a 24p master. David

February 8th, 2010, 09:26 AM	#17
Andrew Stone Major Player Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Vancouver, Canada Posts: 975	Dave assuming you are using a Mac laptop with an express card slot. There is a Sonnet eSata 2 port express card device that (i'm pretty sure) has port multiplication built into it. You may also wish to consider a "dock" that allows you to plug in naked 3.5" or 2.5" drives into the base. They generally come with eSATA and USB 2.0 ports on them. Very light. Being in Canada you may wish to try a place like Frontierpc. I looked up this gear last week and they had stock on both.

February 8th, 2010, 04:57 PM	#18
Tim Polster Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Arlington, TX Posts: 2,231	O.K. 3 hous of 100mbps log GOP with the Nano is about 140GB. So this is the raw footage amount per day. Looks like about 700GB to 1TB per week of raw footage if the shooting pace remains constant. Going to 50mbps will cut these numbers in half (but not your image qaulity in half). I agree that e-sata is your only hope. I have a hot-swappable drive bay in my desktop which you could get in an external configuration. This lets me slide a drive in without re-booting, add my data and slide it back out without re-booting. Do you could use affordable sata drives and swap them in and out as needed. This might be easier to travel with and might be a good backup solution. Do you see a lot of need to multiple layers of video playing at once and heavy effects or color correction? If not, you could probably get by without a RAID if you do not want to travel with a larger box. Or use a two drive RAID and backup to the hot-swap bay to keep the space open on the RAID. With this much footage, I would always want two drives with the same footage on them at the same time. You will be wiping your CF cards a lot and they will not be able to serve as a backup. Bear in mind, these suggestions are based upon me using a PC with Edius as my NLE. I have stated this before that I can edit Nano files from the CF card in the USB reader, so a non-raid sata hard drive is plenty of throughput for "normal" editing. I am sure you know all of this stuff, just sharing my thoughts.

February 8th, 2010, 08:40 PM	#19
David Cherniack Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Toronto Posts: 186	Andrew, I'm a PC But I'll look two drive solutions as I'm loath to lug a 10 pound 5 drive enclosure around the world. BTW I found a neat 4 x 2.5" disk port multiplier unit at Quad 2.5" SATA II Hard Drive MINI RAID 4726 Silicon Image Chip but buying 8 x 1TB 2.5" drives is no small expense. If I lug 3.5" drives around they'll eventually end up in my Raid 6 when the shoot is done..

February 13th, 2010, 07:41 AM	#21
John Mitchell Contributor Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Sydney Australia Posts: 873	Just to answer your original question raid 1 is a mirrored raid yes you can remove a drive and still access your data but I'm not sure why you would do this. It is the safest solution for hard drives as you can lose one drive completely and simply replace it and the new drive will be rebuilt in the background - this process uses a lot of resources (same with Raid 5 which uses a parity drive rther than copied data). Raid 1 has the disadvantage of being as slow as a single drive and it doubles the hard drive space needed. I too recommend a Nexto for offloading. I'm like you - I like two copies of my data. So I copy all my media from my Nexto to an external hard drive. I then import it into my project so I have another copy on a different external media drive. Only when I have duplicate copies will I erase the original compact flash and clear off the Nexto. Of course to be truly safe you would require some form of off-site backup - it is called digital paranoia.

February 13th, 2010, 07:48 AM	#22
John Mitchell Contributor Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Sydney Australia Posts: 873	duplicate post.