Multiple Hard Drives in multi-camera editing at DVinfo.net

Sam Houchins II · December 3rd, 2007, 09:56 PM

Is there a benefit or detriment to putting the 2 different camera clips on 2 different external hard drives. If I'm multi-camera editing, will it help if both cameras' files aren't being simultaneously accessed from the same drive?
Thanks.

Don Bloom · December 3rd, 2007, 10:35 PM

Not really. With as many as 4 cameras being accessed the the Veg file loads up quite quickly for me and frankly other than having a safety backup I really don't see a need to seperate the RAW footage. For me it woould be more confusing as I would have project folders all over the place and would need to try to remember where everything is, plus when you open the Veg file (stored on 1 drive) it might not see the other footage on the other drive unless you point it out. Hey it can happen.
Keep it on one drive-no reason not to.
YMMV
Don

Sam Houchins II · December 4th, 2007, 03:00 PM

Thanks alot Don for being a frequent, helpful resource.

Mike Brennan · December 4th, 2007, 09:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Houchins II

Is there a benefit or detriment to putting the 2 different camera clips on 2 different external hard drives. If I'm multi-camera editing, will it help if both cameras' files aren't being simultaneously accessed from the same drive?
Thanks.

Hi Sam. Back in the old days, multi drives were required. They just weren't fast (or large) enough. But I just finished a multi camera music video edited in vegas with a soundtrack that I mixed down from pro tools as the master soundtrack. The original 2 track multi camera soundtracks ( fed to each camera from sound console matrix ) were also left in the project, but muted
after I used them to sync up the tracks. So I had lots of data in the project.

To top it off, I capture my video to an external firewire drive (which is not as fast as an internal drive) but I never missed a beat. (pun intended ;-)

I would say that to little ram may be a problem, but a single drive is fine.
For whatever it's worth, I also am forced to use Premier (for now) at my main job. It HATES to spool from multiple drives, and it even hates to spool from
my external G-Raid. (Of course Premier seems to hate to do anything....)

Hope this helps,
Mike B

Sam Houchins II · December 6th, 2007, 04:33 PM

thanks Mike :-)
-Sam

Jeff Harper · December 6th, 2007, 05:58 PM

I just have to chime in here Sam and say that was a darn good question. I have thought of every way I could to potentially speed up performance of my PC and Vegas before prior to running my current configuration of all Raid 0 drives (that includes storage and work drives too) but I had forgotten how before I was always looking for a better idea to speed things up until the day I could afford a faster configuration. I never thought of your idea, but I sure would've tried it if I had.

Just making conversation here, but if you tried it (without having to spend money to do so) you would be able to tell pretty easily if it helped or hindered your operation.

The technically correct answer to your question could actually be complicated. For example, if we assumed Vegas COULD benefit from the arrangement, then there would be the issue of the variables from PC to PC. For example if your footage resided on two hard drives and one was external and one was internal, likely you'd be slowed down. But if your separate hard drives were running off an integrated SATA controller, it might be possible there could be benefit. I don't know, but I say it would be fun to try if you didn't have to spend money to do it.

Sam Houchins II · December 6th, 2007, 07:19 PM

Thanks for chiming in Jeff.

I ended up with 2 takes on 1 external HD, and 2 takes on another and a pleasant editing experience. I can't offer a comparison, because it's my first multi cam edit with V8.

I've been having terrible snags capturing (even in my V4 captures). If I don't defrag after each capture, subsequent captures drop frames, experience sound pops, or just hang up all together. It seems that instead of making use of the rest of the open drive during the next capture, it tries to go back and fill in all the little nooks and crannies left over from the first capture. I don't know why with a continuous capture, it's not laid down on the drive in a semi-solid (defragged) file in the first place.

I'm down to the last 40 GB on the one HD, and the first capture was too big for the defrag utility to move around, so I moved half of it to a second HD, then defragged each. It was at that moment that I considered leaving the second half on the second HD mostly because I was too anxious to get started and didn't want to sit through another multi-gig transfer. Then a resurrected thought came to mind about how hard it must be for a HD to access and output multiple files simultaneously from different places on the same drive, so thought maybe it'd be better to leave the second file on the second external drive. No harm in trying, so I tried. I did appreciate others' opinions so I'd know what to look for / expect and wondering if I was on the right track, but thought I'd give it a whirl anyway. Unfortunately there's no agreement from experience that it's a good idea, and I see their points to the contrary. Still I agree with you that I thought it might have been an interesting thought. I'll have to try the same project sometime with all on a single HD and compare.
Thanks!

Allan Black · December 6th, 2007, 08:27 PM

I agree with Mike...too little ram...is definitely a problem. I've just upped to VMS 8 Platinum and struck the juddering preview for the first time. By raising the preview ram from 511MB to 720MB fixed it from a total available of 1024, so says VMS 8.

I have a huge amount of archival footage on a WD My Book 2TB Raid 1 ext. drive and the music on a WD 500GB and the FX etc. on another.

All running Firewire 400 without hassles, but I'm thinking of adding another 2GB Ram to total 4GB to cope with Hi Def files down this seemingly never ending track.

John Rofrano · December 7th, 2007, 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Houchins II

I'm down to the last 40 GB on the one HD, and the first capture was too big for the defrag utility to move around, so I moved half of it to a second HD, then defragged each.

It should be pointed out that hard drives get less efficient and run slower as they fill up. This has to do in part with the fact that it has to look longer for a place to put things and that the physical disc geometry causes the outter tracks to take longer to read/write from. With disc space so cheap, it would be wise to get more or larger discs. Never work with your hard drives near capacity. It will slow you down considerably.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Houchins II

I did appreciate others' opinions so I'd know what to look for / expect and wondering if I was on the right track, but thought I'd give it a whirl anyway. Unfortunately there's no agreement from experience that it's a good idea, and I see their points to the contrary.

Your idea was absolutely correct. This is exactly how RAID 0 works. It spreads the files across two or more discs so that it can read and write them faster. Having each file on a separate drive is absolutely faster but the easy way to accomplish this is to make a RAID of two or more discs and let the computer do the hard work of spreading your files for you.

As an aside, one of the only upgrades I made to my system this year was new hard drives. I replaced my 500GB RAID (250GB x 2) with two new 500GB drives giving me 1TB RAID. I also replaced my 500GB media drive with a 1TB drive.

With hard drives so cheap I would seriously consider getting bigger drives or adding more. Then use your existing drives as off-line backup. (just my 2 cents)

~jr

Sam Houchins II · December 7th, 2007, 02:52 PM

Thanks Allan. I'm maxed out @ 2 GB ram, and had increased the default preview ram amount as well. I thought that would only affect shift-B rendering though.

Thanks John. I had issues with capturing consecutively without mid defrags back when my 300GB external was new (progressively get worse as it got fuller though). The wife's already ok'd another HD, just trying to put it off as long as possible!
God bless, Merry Christmas.

Mike Brennan · December 11th, 2007, 09:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sam Houchins II

Thanks Allan. I'm maxed out @ 2 GB ram, and had increased the default preview ram amount as well. I thought that would only affect shift-B rendering though.

Thanks John. I had issues with capturing consecutively without mid defrags back when my 300GB external was new (progressively get worse as it got fuller though). The wife's already ok'd another HD, just trying to put it off as long as possible!
God bless, Merry Christmas.

It sounds like you might have a slow drive to me.

Make sure that you buy a high RPM drive with the highest sustainable data
transfer rate !

A hard drive for video must have a sustained date transfer rate of at least 3.5MB per second. Anything slower is not adequate.The burst transfer rate is the fastest speed the drive will reach when reading and writing data.

The Burst rate is just that: a high rate attained for a short period of time, but not maintained for any length of time. For video, completely ignore the burst transfer rate, and pay attention to the sustained transfer rate.

The next most important specification is the rotational speed of the hard drive's platters or spindles. Companies usually list this as revolutions per minute (rpm). For the most part, drives that spin at 5,400rpm are too slow for video (and have the slower sustained transfer rates to prove it). Drives that spin at 7,200rpm work fine for most editing needs, but professional-level systems require drives that spin at 10,000rpm or faster.

I'll generally ask around the forums for drive make and model (sometimes firmware) of drives that others are using successfully when I'm ready to buy. You can also go to the DVI retailers for recommendations.

Also, just to clarify, yes, if you run dual drives as a RAID array, you absolutely
will get better performance, but that's NOT the same as taking video from two separate drives. A RAID array writes the files across multiple identical drives and gives you a good bump up in performance. That's the way my 1 TB GRaid is set up, as well as two other Firewire drives that I have on one of the systems that I use.

Also note that there are different specs for RAIDS, and they do different things for different reasons. Some are for speed, some are for redundant backup, some offer both speed and backup. ( Those get Very expensive.... )

But like I said, my Premier machine can't stand to run a project across multiple
drives, even when one of those drives is the RAID. I've never tried that on my Vegas system, because one drive has always done what I need.

Now I'm going to have to drag one of those drives over and try it ......
( In my copious free time !)

Sorry for the info rant !
Mike

Allan Black · December 12th, 2007, 03:18 PM

And all external drives with 16MB cache and 8.9ms access is minimum.

As the single FW400 cable into my HP Compaq nw8440 workstation was running hot, it's next to the hot air exhaust as well, I added a Sunix CBF3100 PCMCIA Card Bus. This has 3 ports, 1xFW400 6pin, 1x FW400 4pin and 1xFW800.

My WD 2TB My Book has FW800 so I use this, even though it slows to 400 in the nw8440. The other WD 500GB My Books all run FW400 on the other 3100 ports with no access problems, each has its own cable.

One thing I had trouble with was getting the 2TB My Book up running on FW800, the installation CD wouldn't load the driver.

IMO if you buy ANY add on that comes with an installation CD...don't use it. Go to its website and download the latest software you're almost certain to find a newer version these days. Once I did that..voila!
Cheers.

December 3rd, 2007, 09:56 PM	#1
Sam Houchins II Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 282	Multiple Hard Drives in multi-camera editing Is there a benefit or detriment to putting the 2 different camera clips on 2 different external hard drives. If I'm multi-camera editing, will it help if both cameras' files aren't being simultaneously accessed from the same drive? Thanks.

December 3rd, 2007, 10:35 PM	#2
Don Bloom Inner Circle Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 6,609	Not really. With as many as 4 cameras being accessed the the Veg file loads up quite quickly for me and frankly other than having a safety backup I really don't see a need to seperate the RAW footage. For me it woould be more confusing as I would have project folders all over the place and would need to try to remember where everything is, plus when you open the Veg file (stored on 1 drive) it might not see the other footage on the other drive unless you point it out. Hey it can happen. Keep it on one drive-no reason not to. YMMV Don

December 4th, 2007, 03:00 PM	#3
Sam Houchins II Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 282	Thanks alot Don for being a frequent, helpful resource.

December 6th, 2007, 04:33 PM	#5
Sam Houchins II Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 282	thanks Mike :-) -Sam

December 6th, 2007, 05:58 PM	#6
Jeff Harper Inner Circle Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Cincinnati, OH Posts: 8,425	I just have to chime in here Sam and say that was a darn good question. I have thought of every way I could to potentially speed up performance of my PC and Vegas before prior to running my current configuration of all Raid 0 drives (that includes storage and work drives too) but I had forgotten how before I was always looking for a better idea to speed things up until the day I could afford a faster configuration. I never thought of your idea, but I sure would've tried it if I had. Just making conversation here, but if you tried it (without having to spend money to do so) you would be able to tell pretty easily if it helped or hindered your operation. The technically correct answer to your question could actually be complicated. For example, if we assumed Vegas COULD benefit from the arrangement, then there would be the issue of the variables from PC to PC. For example if your footage resided on two hard drives and one was external and one was internal, likely you'd be slowed down. But if your separate hard drives were running off an integrated SATA controller, it might be possible there could be benefit. I don't know, but I say it would be fun to try if you didn't have to spend money to do it.

December 6th, 2007, 07:19 PM	#7
Sam Houchins II Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 282	Thanks for chiming in Jeff. I ended up with 2 takes on 1 external HD, and 2 takes on another and a pleasant editing experience. I can't offer a comparison, because it's my first multi cam edit with V8. I've been having terrible snags capturing (even in my V4 captures). If I don't defrag after each capture, subsequent captures drop frames, experience sound pops, or just hang up all together. It seems that instead of making use of the rest of the open drive during the next capture, it tries to go back and fill in all the little nooks and crannies left over from the first capture. I don't know why with a continuous capture, it's not laid down on the drive in a semi-solid (defragged) file in the first place. I'm down to the last 40 GB on the one HD, and the first capture was too big for the defrag utility to move around, so I moved half of it to a second HD, then defragged each. It was at that moment that I considered leaving the second half on the second HD mostly because I was too anxious to get started and didn't want to sit through another multi-gig transfer. Then a resurrected thought came to mind about how hard it must be for a HD to access and output multiple files simultaneously from different places on the same drive, so thought maybe it'd be better to leave the second file on the second external drive. No harm in trying, so I tried. I did appreciate others' opinions so I'd know what to look for / expect and wondering if I was on the right track, but thought I'd give it a whirl anyway. Unfortunately there's no agreement from experience that it's a good idea, and I see their points to the contrary. Still I agree with you that I thought it might have been an interesting thought. I'll have to try the same project sometime with all on a single HD and compare. Thanks!

December 6th, 2007, 08:27 PM	#8
Allan Black Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Sydney. Posts: 2,937	I agree with Mike...too little ram...is definitely a problem. I've just upped to VMS 8 Platinum and struck the juddering preview for the first time. By raising the preview ram from 511MB to 720MB fixed it from a total available of 1024, so says VMS 8. I have a huge amount of archival footage on a WD My Book 2TB Raid 1 ext. drive and the music on a WD 500GB and the FX etc. on another. All running Firewire 400 without hassles, but I'm thinking of adding another 2GB Ram to total 4GB to cope with Hi Def files down this seemingly never ending track.

December 7th, 2007, 02:52 PM	#10
Sam Houchins II Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Fredericksburg, VA Posts: 282	Thanks Allan. I'm maxed out @ 2 GB ram, and had increased the default preview ram amount as well. I thought that would only affect shift-B rendering though. Thanks John. I had issues with capturing consecutively without mid defrags back when my 300GB external was new (progressively get worse as it got fuller though). The wife's already ok'd another HD, just trying to put it off as long as possible! God bless, Merry Christmas.

December 12th, 2007, 03:18 PM	#12
Allan Black Inner Circle Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: Sydney. Posts: 2,937	And all external drives with 16MB cache and 8.9ms access is minimum. As the single FW400 cable into my HP Compaq nw8440 workstation was running hot, it's next to the hot air exhaust as well, I added a Sunix CBF3100 PCMCIA Card Bus. This has 3 ports, 1xFW400 6pin, 1x FW400 4pin and 1xFW800. My WD 2TB My Book has FW800 so I use this, even though it slows to 400 in the nw8440. The other WD 500GB My Books all run FW400 on the other 3100 ports with no access problems, each has its own cable. One thing I had trouble with was getting the 2TB My Book up running on FW800, the installation CD wouldn't load the driver. IMO if you buy ANY add on that comes with an installation CD...don't use it. Go to its website and download the latest software you're almost certain to find a newer version these days. Once I did that..voila! Cheers.