Optimizing HDDs in Vegas (VMS Platinum 10): RAIDs and Scratch disks

[Fitz Townsend]

Hey guys,

I had a few questions about HDDs and Vegas (Studio 10). Specifically,
1. Where (in Vegas menus) I should make the drive assignments
2. How to distribute my RAIDs (3Gb/s vs 6Gb/s)
3. Whether RAID 0 on the O/S drive will improve Vegas performance



1. These are the two locations I know of (three file paths in total) where I can change these settings. Can you guys tell me if I'm missing anything else?

Options>Preferences>General Tab
Temporary files folder

Project>Properties>Folders Tab
Recorded files folder
Prerendered files folder



2. I also wanted to ask what the best way to distribute my RAIDs would be.
Should I direct all the temp files listed above to a 6Gb/s SATA RAID 0

and then

direct my rendered files to a 3Gb/s SATA RAID 0 ?




3. Will putting my OS (WinXP Home) on a RAID 0 improve vegas performance? Will it give me headaches in the future?



4. I didn't list this above, because it's a little off topic, but I'm trying to get my processor usage to peg at 100 for all my renders, so I'm trying to remove HDD bottlenecks. The more I read about this, the more it seems that different codecs result in varying proc usage in Vegas.... true? I'm working with AVCHD input to H264 MP4 outputs and WMV mostly.


THANKS for reading!!



My Gear:
Sony Vegas - Movie Studio Platinum HD 10.0, WinXP Home
i7-920 @ 3.2Ghz, 6GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4550

[Jeff Harper]

IMO the fastest drive should be your drive that contains your media if you doing HD.

Your post will likely bring out a dozen opinions on how to set up your drives, and everyone will have "the best" way of doing it.

If you are editing for a living and this is mission critical stuff for you, this is how I do it.

Drive 1 for OS...faster is always better, raid 0 not necessary but nice.

Drive 2 for scratch drive, where currently project under construction should be. RAID 0 is nice for this drive, but you should probably do three to see a noticable difference. I run RAID 0 with 2 Velocirpators for this and it about the same as a single drive. It shouldn't be, but I just don't see the difference.

Drive 3 is 1 TB for Storage of video files awaiting work.

Drove 4 is a copy of Drive 3

Drive 5 for 1 TB for Storage of video files waiting work

Drive 6 is a copy of Drive 5.

Drive 7 is 2TB for storage of finished projects, archives

Drive 8 is a copy of drive 7

Then the OS, scratch drives...

Each of my storage drives has an external hard drive copy in case something happens to my computer.

I download tapes (I still use tapes) immediately after a wedding or business shoot (I do bunches of weddings) to a storage drive and copy those files to the other drive for safety.

I save my veg files in two as I work..on separate drives, makes it hard to lose your work.

Hope that helps.

The way I work is weird, but it works for me.

Oh, yeah, you can render to the same drive, as your source footage, it is NOT a bit deal, and rendering to another drive will NOT affect anything, but you can if you want. I suppose it would be easier on the drive to render to another drive, but I don't bother.

[Gerald Webb]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Oh, yeah, you can render to the same drive, as your source footage, it is NOT a bit deal, and rendering to another drive will NOT affect anything, but you can if you want. I suppose it would be easier on the drive to render to another drive, but I don't bother.

Interesting, I have been doing a lot of this lately, and have felt extremely "naughty' about it, I mean, the first thing we read all over the net is to,
"Always render to another drive".
But, aren't hard drives now a days faster than what our CPU's are rendering anyway?
and , I know its more work on the drive, but its good to keep fit, "Your looking a little tubby there MR Seagate". :)
But seriously, I found the advantages in media management by having a big project all in one folder on one drive (until the final long render of course) far outweighs the notion of bouncing renders from drive to drive.

And Jeff, that has got to be the "safest" workflow I could ever imagine, you really can't lose your work no matter what, well, maybe an act of God, but that may take out the client too, so all is good. :)
How do you mirror all those drives? One eSata cable to a four drive box? Can you do it any other way?

I've got 2 Raptors in Raid 0, works well now with hardware raid, but before in software raid it was very ordinary.

cheers people :)

[Jeff Harper]

Gerald, for backups purposes I don't mirror the drives, I just copy things twice. After I download tapes to their folder, I simply copy that to it's sister drive.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Gerald Webb

But, aren't hard drives now a days faster than what our CPU's are rendering anyway?

No, they are not. On my (new) system, the i7 CPU scores 7.5, the memory 7.6, the primary hard disk (and the rest of the disks are the same) 5.9, which lowers my entire system to 5.9.

Since hard drives have to read from and write to a physical medium, they will always be slower than the CPU and memory, both of which just move some electrons around.

Now, if you are doing a lot of complicated color grading and other video effects, your rendering could conceivably get slower than your hard disk, but it is not the rule.

[Jeff Harper]

Adam, I'm surpised at the scores of your new system. My numbers are higher and my unit is 18 months old. Drive speed is the same though.

Gerald, for purposes of speed measurement comparing hard drives to cpus is like bicycles to cars.

With Vegas it's almost all to do with the processor.

Adam, I just re-ran the WEI and my numbers are now about the same as yours. What happened is Microsoft adjusted the scoring system to reflect current speeds of new hardware, so my WEI has gone down.

[Fitz Townsend]

Merry Christmas, all!


Jeff, thanks for the detailed info of your set up. You confirm what I feared all along - that every extra disc that I add to the system needs a doppleganger in order to be backed up. I don't think it's weird, it sounds like it's just absolutely redundant. (oh yeah, minus the offsite copies that we're all supposed to have! :)) Although - I'm surprised you don't back up your RAID 0 scratch disk - that's the hardest working one of the bunch...? Or do you use new units for each project?

If you're rendering to the same disc that your source material is on, it seems like it would make the heads jump around a lot more than they need to, as opposed to reading contiguous material and writing contiguous material. So drive wear would be greater, if not speed. But this could easily turn into a geekfest that probably belongs more on another site...


Anyway, further revealing my naivete, what scores are you guys talking about? Is there a standard bench test that you guys run to optimize things? Thanks!

[Jeff Harper]

There is no need to back up the scratch drive, because it only contains what ia already on the original location of the video files when I downloaded them.

You're right about rendering being tougher on the drive. Like Gerald said I place more emphasis on organization and keeping things together than doing things correctly from a hardware perspective.

And truth be told, I don't use my scratch drive much of the time. It's a waste of time, as I see it.

I don't edit HD much, and when I edit my normal projects (weddings) things work fine on the storage drives. So rather then spend 10-30 minutes moving files to a scratch drive, I edit the files where they are.

Before I download tapes, I create a folder eg. Smith. Then inside I have 3 or 4 folders. folder 1 is SmithProject, for saving Vegas to. Folder 2 is titled SmithVideo, for video files. Folder 3 is SmithDVD, which is where I save architect projects, and where I render everything to. I also keep DVD print information there. Folder 4 is Smith Photos if photos are involved.

After I download the tapes to the smithvideo folder I copy the whole deal to the backup drive. They sit on those drives until I'm ready to edit. I save my Vegas project twice each time I save my work as I edit (one on each drive) .

I use my scratch drive less than half the time. I used to use it a lot, but drives are all so fast anymore it's just not necessary MOSt of the time. For three cams or HD, etc I use my scratch drive for sure.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

What happened is Microsoft adjusted the scoring system to reflect current speeds of new hardware, so my WEI has gone down.

According to their web site, the scores can be between 1 and 7.9. They seem to think that 4 is enough for graphics intensive work. So, yes, our scores are quite good.

[Adam Stanislav]

Originally Posted by Fitz Townsend

Anyway, further revealing my naivete, what scores are you guys talking about? Is there a standard bench test that you guys run to optimize things? Thanks!

See Windows Experience Index - Windows 7 features - Microsoft Windows. If you have Windows 7, go to Control Panel and select Performance Information and Tools from all the options it shows.

[Jeff Harper]

My scores were quite good, they were 7.9 across the board except for my hard drive, but not since they recalibrated things.

[Dale Guthormsen]

merry christmas,


Jeff, thanks for sharing your work flow!!!!

I used to make a back up of my working hard drive!!!

I was backing up when the base hard drive died, this corrupted the back up as well!!

I no longer back up but I use to seperate drive just as you do and I also just copy to the drive. If I add any new media I also add it to the second drive.

I use a seperate drive to archive all my iso files once a project is finished. I have 7 drives hooked up to my computer but generally I am only running 4 at a time.

I have not gone to raid o on my computer as yet. I found that Edius 5.0 needed at least an e-sata drive for media to work properly. Vegas can run on the USB drives, but it never runs real time off of any drive. (I have yet to put 10 to the test).

I use almost an identical folder system as yourself as well!! Really important to keep all ones assets in one folder on one drive, then copy to the second!!!!!!!! Took me to many TKO's to learn that!!!

I have just ordered a 600 gb velociraptor to put in my desk top for my working video drive. I plan to slowly replace all my drives with them as dollars come available.

[Jeff Harper]

Dale, I only use esata externals also. Usb drives are too slow. I gave up on them years ago!

[Fitz Townsend]

Jeff,

Thanks again for the detailed file management workflow. Very helpful!


All best,

Fitz

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Jeff Harper

Dale, I only use esata externals also. Usb drives are too slow. I gave up on them years ago!

You may want to consider some of the newer USB 3.0 externals. I just got a 2TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk USB 3.0 external hard drive for under $100. My particular drive, connected to one of the two USB 3.0 ports on my Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard, delivered a maximum sequential read/write speed close to 140 MB/s. The average sequential speed of the GoFlex Desk is over 108 MB/s. That is faster than either of my two internal 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 drives (connected via SATA) in sequential performance (126 MB/s and 100 MB/s maximum and average, respectively). However, the GoFlex Desk's relatively slow access speed is a giveaway that its spindle speed is only 5900 RPM instead of 7200 RPM.

If that GoFlex is connected to only a USB 2.0 port, then all bets are off: You'll never get more than about 31.5 MB/s from such a port no matter what.