My introduction and a hardware discussion.

Question

Hello Adobe forums.
Its nice to meet you all. This is going to be a heavy first post, hopefully it will bloom into a great discussion.
I have been reading and learning and just wracking my brain around all the great info here for building a NLE system.
For starters let me introduce my self, I am Erik, and I have been a long ago user of Premier. In fact I was in undergrad when i made my first cut and ripple delete. that was 1999 and I think there wasnt even premier pro, my memory recalls premier 7 or something, then a year into college it changed to PP. I might have that all mixed up too.
So anywho, cut on adobe all thru undergrad and then went to grad school and learned the Avid system. I have no hang ups about either system, in my experience a cut is a cut and a dissolve is a dissolve no matter what system makes it.
I am now released from grad school and am out on my own again, in my life I will never be able to afford an avid system like our school had, with a nitrous, composers in the big lab and a huge audio booth with avid something for multi track mastering. I want to touch back to my roots there for I have chosen to return to adobe, in the flavor of production premium.
I am excited to see what's different and also about being able to work with out rendering, I remember the days when in order to see anything i had to first render, make a tiny change then render again, you all know this cycle too well i am sure.
I am a simple one thing at a time guy, independent, I dont unless specifically asked edit for clients. I write my shorts and full lengths, shoot them, edit them and play on the festival circuit.
So that is my intention for my NLE system.
I will say I am exceedingly happy with a lot of the info on this forum. In school sadly we are only taught the artisan side of editing and those areas, the digital science end is left to our own exploration. since starting my research I went from the basic concept of data rate of the camera and how big a memory card I need, to the more important how fast the memory card can write. Also applying this knowledge to the concepts in the computer for the NLE, so a big thanks to the guys I see adding valuable info such as, Harm, ADK boys, Videoguys and other members with great input. Thank to you all.
After all that lets talk about the prospected build.
CPU: 3960, socket 2011.  I was satisfied with a lga 1155 but you all convinced me i can have a longer living machine with room for improvements over the next few years.
MBO: ASUS X79 sabertooth.
Ram: Gskill ripjaws Z 1600  64gig pack.
GPU: asus gtx 680 4gb ddr5
ASUS dvd bruner/ drive sata
Cooler Master 1200w silent pro gold
Case: Cooler Master haf 932 advanced
Cooling: Cooler Master Seidon Liquid cooler.  I wanted air cooling but in order to allow room for the ram this was the best solution.
SSD1: OS and programs, Intel 335 series 240gb, I know many will say thats larger than i need, but it works for me.
SSD2: Render and export, Intel 335 series 240gb
Hdd1: Projects, 1tb wd black caviar 7200rpm sata 3.0 32mb cache
hdd2:  Cache "same as above"
hdd3:  Media"ditto"
Now as I explore the MB more and more I have learned that there is an extra 2 sata 6 on the MB. AS learned from Harm in another post those 2 extra satas are on the maverick which shares with the gpu, however this MB does not suffer a performance loss of the gpu if i was to use those two slots for later drive expansion. Again for later when money allows.
Now lets discuss my personal work flow.
I shoot nikon d800, with a Pix 220 external recorder. I use DNxHD codec at 220Mbs @8 bitdepth.
My editing style is one thing at a time. I am a simple man, when i cut, i cut. I don't have the multitasking ability to cut one project while doing effects in AE and render in the background. Just too much for me to do at once.
I am a patient man, and like i said above I dont have clients so when I render/export I usually just walk away or go eat/sleep whatever. My time is my own so my deadlines are for festival entries. Of course I want as quick as possible, who would turn down speed?
Going back to one thing at a time, this is where i became strange from my fellow students, when I am finished with a project I am done. I dont go back and tweak like many of my former colleagues. When I make the export, bar any major problems, the video file is placed on a back up external hdd and a disc, then the work computer is formatted and ready for the next project.
Me thinks that covers all aspects of my workflow, if there is anything more specific you need to know please ask.
My questions for discussion.
first and foremost, look over the parts and please point out any things you see as funky, missing or things that will have issues that you learned from your experience.
I know you will all suggest a raid0 some where. For this point in time I would like to stick to single drives with single tasks to keep them from reading and writing at the same time or at least to a minimum. I like to have stability of my data, but I also understand that perhaps there is a speed requirement for my codec to play back smoothly. So if I must, I am open to raid0 in the future when i can afford a stable backup of all the stuff.
Leading to my next question. Of a few posts out there in adobe forums, the general idea is a hdd can playback pretty heavy duty video if the hdd is purposed for video only. I am using 220Mbs would the WD CB be able to handle that if dedicated?
please look at the intended use for my drives, I am only copying what i have seen as advice on the forums, but would like some input as to the how and why you would make one drive as the cache, media and projects drives. any other suggestions for what would be a better use of single drives?
i need your help to educate me in some things i couldn't find on my own. Several times i see members talk about streams, is a stream meaning playing the timeline in multiple monitors? or is it also refering to multiple video tracks. video 1,2,3,4, playing at once?
Are filters considered streams? since i shoot dslr i have to automatically use 3 filters off the bat, rolling shutter remove, color, and a touch of sharpness. sorry for the basic info like i said i was taught the artisan side of editing first.
I am very used to taking my footage from the camera storing it, then importing and transcoding in the Avid to a low low bit rate to make the editing smooooth. A bit rate of 36Mb or so, then after picture lock, connecting with my orginal media for the color correction post effects and export.
since it has been sooo long and I have learned so much, I would assume that PP allows for this type of online off line editing style, does it?
Personally I would rather not have to transcode and edit natively, which as I can see, is what adobe is selling since cs5
I think thats a great place to stop. You guys dont need to write me a text book for an answer, like i did above, please point to links and I will read. If you fingers really want to type away and I will read it too.
Thank You all for your time and input.
ESR

Answer 1

Well, I don't like to make a thread and then just leave it unfinished.
The beast is built, runs cool, looks cool and in my experience is blazing fast even at stock speeds.
I have not begun to overclock yet as I dont fully understand how and I am researching the how tos and theory behind it. I dont want to go changing voltages and cook everything. Ill get there though, one day.
No major build issues, in factthis is the first machine I have built in 13 years, and back then usb 2.0 just came out and the standard device connect was IDE ribbon, plus a 200gb hard drive was THEE monster, for the public that is.
For those of you out there looking at this forum and nervous about assembling your first PC, I say to you, do you research, take you time and make sure all parts will work in balance with your intended use and then assemble.
Other than childbirth, the simultaneous feelings of terror and excitement are something you must experience, its the ultimate high.
I have waded thru some issues and a learning curve in the UEFI bios these days. Like I said above, last time i built a computer  there was no bios, I used to have to put the jumpers in the right place. I kinda miss that, but dont get me wrong, on screen bios, woof, i love it.
I would like to discuss some things with you guys as there are some oddities I want to root out.
First, I noticed that running asus utilities, such as, gpu tweak, ai suite ii, conflicts with adobe software.
How? it slows it down a bit here and there, and it seems to cause some crash, force quit not bsod, when closing adobe programs. what happens and how i know a crash is coming is when closing PR, the second monitor will stay full screen on the last image and not move. If i dont hit the windows button or alt tab to another program it will sit there for hours, after the tab or windows key then windows says it stopped responding and to force it to close.
any one else having similar issues? or any recommendations as to some setting in windows/bios/adobe that i may have over looked.
This only happens to me when i have ai suite and gpu tweak open. all other times with out those programs running adobe is smooth as glass.
the other weird thing I have noticed on several forums is the Asus utilities programs are buggy. I was experiencing incredibly loooong lag after boot up when having the ai suite ii on the active services list. it was strange, boot into windows was fine but it seems like the suite either has in incredible amount of files to open or it just conflicts with windows.
here is the exact scenario, windows welcomes you with the sound, you wait a second to react, no hour glass, open the win tab and select either computer, or resource manager, when your me and trying to see what is making the system work so hard and long, the tab sits there for 1min doing nothing, then drops a bit leaving the graphic glitches and sits there longer. finally your window pops up and then everything is hunkey dorey till your next restart.
after disabling anything asus in the services tab i have not had this issue for a week now.
do you guys with asus MBO use their software? or do you guys just skip it all together? and have you experienced these bugs?
one thing about this long lag issue that looms in the back of my mind (even with it hopefully solved) is i never had this type of lag while on the OS ssd. After I plugged in the other 6 drives the next boot was absolutely awful. It took me 30mins to format each one, due to i couldn't control the mouse for more than second and then it would register my movement and shoot me across the screen so i had to baby step it back to the drive format window.
After getting all the hdds formatted it made the lag intermittent like stated above.
all drivers are current, ssds are on latest firmware. I had a fight with the marvell though, it would always register my two drives on it as unpluggable devices and i could actually click safely remove them and the would disappear. but after reading and researching i got it all setup right. I mention this because it bothers me in the back of my mind even though the issue appears to be solved from the drive end and the asus software end.
share with me if any of you have had this type of experience on your build and what you did to overcome it incase i missed a step in bios or in windows setup.
to clarify further:
I run ahci mode on intel and marvell. not a raid man.
the ports are filled as such.
intel sata 6 has my os/programs ssd and the render/export ssd.
the asus dvd burner is on a intel sata 3
the other 3 intels are just wd black hdd
the marvel has 2 additional wd hdd.
like i said the massive lag cam after i plugged all that in, formatting made it intermittent and removing asus software seems to have solved it. just looking for experiences and any missed steps.
second wierd thing is, and perhaps this is why you guys call it QUIRKtime. I can not export dnxhd quiktime format to my render/export drive. It is a intel 335 ssd with latest firmware, (sorry Harm, the specs were great and the price was too) i have all permissions on the drive, but every time i try to export to it in that format i get the export faild can not create source file. All other formats work with out a hitch, just dnxhd quicktime at any resolution.
and lastly, i must be an idiot but i cant seem to get PR to render my audio effects, or that there just not big enough to place them on the drive. its odd, PR is set to have audio previews on its own HDD, and PR creates the folder for renders/previews but never puts anything into them.
Also when i click render audio, its instant playback, faster than i can hit home and l. I have tried to make the files complex with many many filters and effects on audio but no dice.
exported time lines, and sending projects to SG, AE, audition everything works just fine, but its like i will fill up my audio previews HDD with nothing but empty folders. anyone had this issue before? I have settings set to render audio at the same time as video.
those are the only bugs as of now to report. this sytem like i said at stock speed is blindingly fast for me and my work flow, I see a loooong life for this computer.
thank you for reading and thank you all for your input on my little issues, it will save my hair.
Erik.