RAID + FCP

Hi Everyone,
I'm looking to buy some new FireWire storage for my PowerBook FCP setup, but I'm wondering: are there any distinct advantages to using a RAID? And, what is RAID to begin with, even?! Thanks!

Moly,
since you asked (but you may want to file this under 'more that I wanted to know ... lol)
What is Raid?
Defined as a Redundant Array of Inexpensive (or independent) Devices, raid systems are a collection of two or more drives that are configured to interact with each other in a variety of ways. The way they are configured is called the RAID LEVEL.
Below is a quick list of the three relevant levels for video editing. There are many many more, but those only make sense in large corporate server applications.
Raid 0 - the writing of files is split between the drives. if you have 2 160gb drives, you have a 320gb array. This is by far the most common application in video use.
Pro. Very fast since each write head is only doing a percentage of the work.
Con - If either disk fails, all data is lost.
Raid 1 - the writing of the files is mirrored (duplicated) on each drive. if you have 2 160gb drives, you have a 160gb array.
Pro - data is secure, if either drive dies, you have lost nothing. Simple to implement.
Con - slower writes- data must be written twice, but reads happen at normal speed.
Raid 5 - the writing of data to the disks is spread over all disks as is the parity checking. If an individual disk fails, the system should be able to rebuild it from the information on the other disks. If you have 2 160gb drives, you have a 320gb array. Very common is corporate servers because if its good balance of speed and data integrity.
Pro- relatively fast writes, but not as fast as Raid 0
Con - somewhat wasteful of space as the parity information takes up space.
Generally, since most video information comes in from tapes (at least for a while longer) and you can recapture from the tapes should a disk fail, data integrity is not of paramount importance. For example, a simple back up will take care of project, photoshop files, etc.
Because of this, most common implementation is Raid 0. It gives the fastest read/writes and the most usable space on the disks. From the cost/performance standpoint, it is the best deal.
Why do you want/need RAID disk arrays?
If you are working in formats that have a much higher data rate than DV, the demands of supplying multiple streams will overtax they ability of a single disk to provide them.
However, there are other issues as well. The speed of the connection between the computer and the disks once you reach a certain need is as important as the disk speed. If you get to the point where you NEED a raid 0 set up, you should also be sure to be running either a FW800 connection on its own bus or a SATA array.
If you are working with DV sourced material, a second FW400 external drive (non-raid) will be fast enough. The raid 0 on a FW800 bus just allows you more simultaneous streams of video to be played in real time. (This ability is also tempered by the processor speed in your computer.)
Questions? The quiz will be on Tuesday ...lol.
cheers,
x

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RAID & FCP Questions

I have been having trouble with multicam editing of AVCHD material and have been advised that the reason for the problems is the speed of my drives and RAID is recommended. For more information on this discussion see:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10545204#10545204
So, I am considering putting three 1.5TB Seagate Baracuda 7200rpm drives in slots 2, 3, 4 and create a RAID of the three drives to overcome the drive R/W speed issue and hopefully be able to label this drive as "H:" for the reasons stated below. However, some serious considerations:
1. I have nearly 800GB of FCP project data (media) on the drive that is currently in slot 2 - AMEDIA_1.
2. I would like to remove that drive AMEDIA_1 then mount it in an external drive USB case and copy it (AMEDIA_1) to the newly configured RAID drive bank (hopefully labeled as "H:" drive) to resolve the slow R/W drive access problems.
So, my questions are:
A. Will the media being read from AMEDIA_1 from an external case be stripped via the RAID 0 utility so that the data is spread across the three drives to circumvent the problem I'm currently having?
B. Any problems RAID'ing 1.5TB drives or should I limit it to 1.0TB?
C. Any problems with my idea here?
D. Will my FCP's recognize the path to the respective files and media assuming I am able to label the RAID bank as Drive H: ?
E. If a drive fails in the RAID bank is the entire bank dead and all data lost?
F. Is there any question I should be asking that I am not since I'm not that up to speed on Mac nor RAID yet?
Thanks in advance to those who take the time to read and respond to this lost sheep and feel free to ask any questions for clarification.
SYSTEM: MacPro 2.8GHz Xeon Quad Core x 2, Nvidia 8800 GT 512MB, 4GB Ram, 1667 FSB, Snow Leopard 10.6.1?, Final Cut Suite 3, 7200rpm 320GB OS HDD.
Additional Info & Question: If possible, I will want to remove the Windows XP Pro partition if that is possible at the same time.

This should work. Just make sure to keep the copy of the Amedia_1 just in case you have a problem with the Raid.
"So, I am considering putting three 1.5TB Seagate Baracuda 7200rpm drives in slots 2, 3, 4 and create a RAID of the three drives to overcome the drive R/W speed issue and hopefully be able to label this drive as "H:" for the reasons stated below. However, some serious considerations:"
Seagate baracuda are pretty sound. They come with a 5 year warranty. I have only had to send one back in 10 that I have bought. Keep in mind until they come up with something else hard drives can always fail for various reasons. So always back up. With a O raid with no redundancy, you are spreading the liability across three drives. You will get the speed you need but as long as you back up the work you will be fine. One of the things I do with raids is I only put media on them so I can replace it easier if necessary from my backup or original tape if you have it. Project, graphics, and anything else not media I put in a project folder on a what I like to call a work drive in a single slot. I also back that up if I do not have redundancy.
So, to sum up. Mount the Amedia drive in an external case.
Build a raid volume with the Baraccudas.
Copy (not move) the files to the raid "Volume"
Unmount the AMedia drive and set aside for safe keeping
Launch your project and reconnect the media in final cut when it prompts you to from the new raid volume.
Your speed problems should be solved.
(keep in mind that multicam editing need alot of speed the more cams you add)
Make sure you delete all window anything from your Mac. Window is a waste. The more you use Mac and FCP studio the more you will see what I mean. Boot camp and all that partition your Mac so you can run windows too is for indecisive suckers.
I will get off my soap box now.
Best of luck.
B Miller
Archetype HD Editorial LLC

URGENT: XSERVE RAID, FCP 5.04, and IT KEEPS FREEZING

Let me lay it out:
I have Xserve Raid and I am attempting to work with Final Cut Pro 5.04, whenever I run the programs w/o the XSR on it runs smoothly, but as soon as the XSR is turned on, I run into a slew of issues I can't figure out how to resolve. First, when it is just on, and I try to get into the Raid via the Finder, it usually freezes. Second, if I run FCP it will eventually freeze when I want to do anything. Third, if I don't really do anything but run programs with the XSR on it will give me the SPinning Wheel of Death, WHat am I to do???? PLEASE HELP, I have a big project coming up next week.
Thanks

See my reply in the fcp forum.

FCP video freezes - RAID upgrade problem?

Last week, the 4 drives in my RAID were replaced with 750GB drives, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), RAID 5. Initialization took about 36-40 hours, as expected. Previously, my 4 drives were 250 GB, Mac OS Extended (Journaled), RAID 0.
With this upgrade/change, my captures through FCP now have freezing video. I can see the video freeze in the FCP capture window, when I play the clip in FCP and when I play the clip in QT 7.4. By freezing video, I mean the video plays appropriately for a few seconds, then freezes for a couple of seconds, then plays appropriately for 10-15 seconds, then repeats. The audio is fine. Re-capturing yields the same problem, although with freezes in different places.
Could this be a result of the RAID upgrade? QT 7.4? For what it's worth, I have another Mac running on the other side of the RAID (FCP 5.0.4, QT 7.3, RAID 0) that is having no problem at all.
Any thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.
I am posting this on the RAID discussion board as well.
Thank you!

QT 7.4 still has issues...added new ones as a matter of fact...
http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/01/thanks-again-apple.html
Shane

Mirrored RAID 1 becomes degraded?

I have (2) G-Tech 2TB drives set up as RAID 1 (mirrored). On the mirrored drive, I have numerous folders with assets for my edit, including a set of folders for FCP which includes a Capture Scratch folder. Initially P2 media was "log and transfered" into this folder within FCP. No problems.
But when I targeted this folder (G-Tech RAID>FCP>Capture Scratch) to capture additional video into, or even capture on another drive and then drag and drop into this same folder, the RAID set, in each occasion, became "degraded" (as indicated in Disk Utility) and is, for the second time. in the process of "rebuilding RAID slice", which takes 22 hours!
Any ideas as to why this is happening?
I am thinking that I should create a new folder outside my FCP Capture scratch and copy new assets into this folder instead?
I am using FCP6.02 QT7.4.5 DU10.5.6 MacOS10.4.11
Thanks in advance for your reply

Yes. Verification with the GUI tool is the first step. But... hmm, if you are dropping communications with the card, that is not a good sign. Make sure you have a backup and then try a PMU reset on the system. Maybe there is something wacky in the power manager. Then try any/all of these from Terminal to get more information:
raidutil list status
raidutil list eventinfo
raidutil list raidsetinfo
This should provide feedback. If these commands fail, then I fear that the card is not responding. Do you have AppleCare? It might be time to call for a replacement card.
Hope this helps

FCP playback problem

Help!!
FCP won't playback properly... When you hit play to watch your edit, it works for a few seconds, freezes, then plays a few seconds, then freezes, and won't let you stop the playback. After a few minutes it sorts its self out... Any ideas?
G5 quad,
Kona LHe
HugeSytems RAID
FCP 5.0.4

It would be helpful to get more info, but my initial suggestion is to run the OSX maintance routines. Download the free utility Mainmenu from versiontracker.com and open preferences, click all the checkboxes for the batch process, then run the batch. It will do a bunch of stuff related to your harddrive and OSX config.
When that's done if the problem is still there, clear the system and user cache and reboot between each (also using mainmenu)
One should do this regularly to avoid problems. I don't know if it will solve your problems, but it is a great starting point.

Scrubbing no longer works after updating to Yosemite

After updating to Yosemite yesterday and restarting this morning, I've noticed several problems. The biggest is that scrubbing in the timeline is very buggy, unresponsive, and sometimes doesn't work at all. I've tried turning it off and on, restarting FCP and my mac to no avail.
Also switching between tools via keyboard shortcuts and the playhead moving between edits have been sluggish as well. Library is stored on a thunderbolt connected RAID
FCP v 10.1.3 Yosemite v10.10 Mac Pro Processor: 3.5GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5 Ram: 16GB GPU: AMD FirePro D500

Permissions issues from the new account?
My impression, from my own experience and paying attention to other users' issues, is that 10.1.3 running on 10.10 is generally the fastest, most stable combination since the application was first introduced. This weekend I did a full days work on a couple of unfamiliar systems, new iMacs with shared storage, over two dozen projects, and I encountered no glitches whatsoever.
So that's why I was interested in your media drive and whether there might be something in your user account that the OS or FCP was struggling with.
Here is a kind of check list that Richard Taylor compiled. Why not go through it to see whether you discover a remedy.
Russ

Stuttering NTSC .m2v encode from PAL DV

Hi, I've captured a PAL Mini-DV cassette into FCP via Firewire - which correctly sees it as Lower Field First. I needed to produce an NTSC DVD of the footage. So in Compressor I went for 'Best Quality - 90 mins 4:3' and changed the video standard to NTSC. I encoded and went on to burn NTSC DVD in DVD Studio. The final disc plays fine and my monitor regognises it is receiving a 480i 60Hz signal. HOWEVER... the conversion in frame rates (25fps > 29.97fps) has been very evident, there aren't any field issues (no tearing on fast movements) but the feel of the video is of a distinct stutter as though some of the frames are being doubled up. I guess this is in fact what Compressor has had to do but is there any way of smoothing this change in frame rates?
Thanks,
Tom
Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7Ghz Mac OS X (10.4.2) 4GB RAM, 2TB RAID, FCP 5 Studio, Blackmagic Decklink HD+Multibridge.

Since you didn't mention it, I have to ask: did you adjust the relevant controls (Retiming, Resizing) to at least Better while setting Frame Controls to Custom in Compressor?

Unwanted sounds in video clip

I just recorded a outside interview and there are sounds that I DO NOT want in my clip,(someone had a baby crying in the background, and then a loud truck went by).
If anyone knows how I can remove this and just have the vocal part of my interviewee it would be greatly appreciated.
thank you!

Hmmm...I have 720p DVCPRO HD footage and I am doing what you are and I don't see these extra pixels. I have a VERY clean edge. And this is HVX-200 footage from a P2 card.
See:
Can you show us your footage?
Shane
Dual 2G G5, 3.5GB RAM, Powerbook 1.67ghz-1.5GB RAM, CalDigit S2VR Duo 1.5TB Mac OS X (10.4.7) AJA Kona LH, Matrox MXO, 2.5TB Dark Tower SATA Raid, FCP 5.1.2

HDV guide for idiots....and me! Basic questions, I need your help!

Hello,
in my hand, I'm holding my first HDV tape. I've never edited HDV before, and before I continue and make all kinds of silly mistakes that make me loose even more sleep, I thought I'd post some questions on this forum:
But first things first:
I am working on a QuadG5, 4.5GB RAM, fibre-channel RAID, FCP 5.0.4, OS10.4.5, Blackmagic Multibridge Extreme, Sony HDV-Deck HVR-M10E, and I live in PAL land.
Thanks to Chris Jarvis' answer in a different post, I managed to set my deck properly, so that I can now capture HDV to FCP without a problem. So if you read this, Chris, thanks a bunch! However, I was wondering if it is possible to capture the footage to a different codec. So, here we go....
1) For example, could I downconvert it to DV and capture it via Firewire?
2) Could I capture HDV via component to my Multibridge as uncompressed 8bit material? I will have to mix this footage with footage captured from BetaSP etc., so wouldn't it make sense to convert it during capture already, thereby avoiding rendering later on?
3) Is it possible to monitor HDV on an SD monitor? When I use my Blackmagic video out and set it to 8bit/10bit, anything really, I only get an image when I pause play. Am I right to assume that I would need an HD monitor to properly monitor what I am doing?
4) I dimly remember people having trouble getting HDV stuff to DVD. Have others experienced that, too? Would I, once again, be better off capturing the whole shebang uncompressed from the start?
Hm, that's all for the time being. I hope some of you can give me some answers, I'd really appreciate it a lot. And if I annoyed you because I was asking the same questions that everybody tends to ask about HDV, please forgive me, I did look through several posts on this forum, but thought it'd be nice to gather all the answers here.
Yup.
Cheers and thanks,
Colin
PowerMac G5 2.5GHz DP and PowerMac G4 500MHz DP

Hi Jerry,
and thanks for your reply. Yes, in the end it will go out on a SD DVD. I did down-convert the footage to DV, since I got more DV stuff over the last couple of days. I'm glad about my decision, because I did a couple of test edits in HDV, and while it looks great, I must admit that it is a bit of a pain to work with. And not being able to monitor what I'm doing just doesn't do it for me.
Thanks once more and have a nice weekend,
Colin

Shooting sideways

I work for a photo magazine who edits video for web content. Recently we have decided to turn our cameras (Panosonic vx 100 and sony vx 200) sideways to capture more of a portrait style vs, the standard landscape. I am working on a Mac G4 with a 1TB raid, FCP 5.1.4, and Quicktime 7.4. I capture all the footage as I would any other format, but when I go to edit I set up my sequence as 480x640 and select none under the Quicktime video setting compressor pull down tap in sequence settings. 2 of my problems are
1. maintaining frame dimensions, bascily i dont want my image squashed, or squeezed.
2. how would you recomend outputting to a quicktime file to maintain the proper frame dimensions and then also carry it out to a Flash video (FLV) using sorenzon squeeze.
All in all i think my main problem is in my compression settings.
any help would be great, thanks
Mr. Scott

DV is 720 x 480, not 640 x 480. I hope that's what you're capturing at. The only compression setting you should be using is NTSC/DV. None is actually the name of a codec; it doesn't mean no compression.
Just use Easy Setup and choose NTSC/DV. Create a new sequence. In Sequence Settings, change the frame size to 480 x 720, and leave the rest alone. Drop your clip in and rotate it 180 degree.
Export it as a Quicktime Movie with Current Settings.
Import it into Squeeze and apply Flash Settings for high quality. I haven't used Squeeze in a while, so I'm not sure of the exact settings. But I know there's a Flash preset. The video will already have the proper dimensions, so it's mainly the data rate you'll be adjusting for best image quality vs. file size.
Good luck with the experiment. I don't think I've seen this done yet.

Multiclip trouble

Base: G5/2.7/3Gb memory/256video/2tb RAID/FCP 5.0.4/100% memory cash for FCP/uncompressed SD video/cinevawe 4.6RT Pro
problem:
I unite 6 posts in one multiclip. When i push play in a 20-30 second video make dropframe and freeze
if i use 5 cams all ok, but i need 6!
g5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

You could do a multiclip edit of say, offlineRT, then relink...? Use Media Manager to recompress the clips, then simply create offline of that sequence, set it back to uncompressed, and reconnect to the originals. Probably will have to collapse the multiclip, in the sequence before creating a new one, but I dont' see why this wouldn't work.
Course you could do the edit with 5, then simply add the 6th where you'd like it...
Jerry

Unable to capture to external RAID drive FCP 7

Here are my specs:
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Name: Dual-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per processor): 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.33 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MP11.005C.B08
Running:
OS X 10.5.8
Final Cut Studio 3 (recently upgraded from Studio 1)
At the end of last year I had a problem with capturing and upon research it seemed to be that the most recent update of QuickTime was not compatible with Final Cut Pro 5, which was causing my machine to not be able to capture at all. So we upgraded to Final Cut Studio 3 (FCP7) and part of the problem was solved but an issue still remains.
For over 3 years we have been using an external Raid drive as a capture scratch and we still have over 5 TBs free. The Raid is connected by SCSI. Earlier last year I was able to capture to the Raid drive without any problems but now the capture will freeze whenever that is set as the capture scratch. If I set the internal drive as the capture scratch it captures without any issues.
The problem is that using the internal as the capture scratch can only be a short term solution. The drive is only so large and I have a problem with finder if I try to move files from the internal drive to the external. Finder freezes up and I can't even force quit properly. So being able to once again use the external as the main capture scratch is the only real solution. The external is fully functionally and communicating with the Mac.
Any help with resolving this would be appreciated!

Off the top of my head, because I haven't worked with SCSI in years--
"The problem is that using the internal as the capture scratch can only be a short term solution. The drive is only so large and I have a problem with finder if I try to move files from the internal drive to the external. Finder freezes up and I can't even force quit properly. So being able to once again use the external as the main capture scratch is the only real solution. The external is fully functionally and communicating with the Mac."
Are you trying to move files while you have FCP open? The fact that simply moving files is giving you finder issues and freezing you up, says that all is not well with the scsi raid. You should not see that at all.
You might try powering down the mac and the raid, unplugging and letting the machine sit for a while to discharge the capacitors. Then try reseating the scsi card. (pull it out carefully and plug it back in.)
On another note, when you upgraded fcp, did you do a clean install?

Creating the best RAID setup for my MacPro using FCP

I have a MacPro, 2 x 3GHz Dual Core, 16GB ram, 4 x 500GB drives and I work in FCP 5.1.4 and with my Hardware setup I feel it should be faster and I've been wanting to set up a RAID but not sure how to do it, or the best way way to do it.
Out of the 4 drives I have, Drive one is my main drive (boot drive, apps etc.) Drives (2 & 3) which is a TB combined, I'd like to turn those into a RAID) to speed up rendering, editing etc. In FCP and Motion. Drive 4 is where I keep all my working files.
My files are backed up regularly onto external harddrives and kept offsite.
Can I leave everything I have on my entire system the way it is and just turn Drives 2 & 3 into a RAID that's best for this application? People who work in VIDEO I know do this all the time to speed things up but I can't find the steps for the best way to do this. Bits and pieces all over the place but I can't put this puzzle together.
Can you point me in the direction in how to do this?
As I'm doing this is there anything I should be careful about?
Please help me understand this process.
Just in case you need to know what kind of drives I have here's the info:
Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: ST3500641AS P
Revision: 3.BTA
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk1
Bay Name: "Bay 1"
OS9 Drivers: No
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Startup Drive:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 367.86 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk1s2
Mount Point: /

My advice would be 'yes' to what you are saying... with the exception of the Softraid stuff - not that I think its wrong, but I've never used it, so I can't comment if you need it or whether the Mac OSX raid is sufficient - but others here say they prefer it so fair enough. You can see some comparisons here http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/softraid/351/
amug always have indepth benchmarks of stuff.
I wouldnt call myself an FCP guru, but I think that your suggestion of putting the FCP scratch disk and client, video files on the raid are the best idea. The scratch folder is essentially where the temp-rendered clips go, so its audio and video - you want that folder to be on a really fast volume. You also want your source video files to be on a really fast volume, so they can be streamed fast enough to play in realtime too when playing unrendered areas, or building a preview.
Some might say in FCP you get bast performance when your scratch disks and video files are on seperate disks. Thats totally true, so it can read from one disk and write to the other at the same time. But in your case you have a 3disk stripe, which is roughly 3x faster than either of your disks! So it would still be faster to have them all on the same stripe.
You can leave your FCP app on the sys drive, keeps things cleaner (drive1 for sys and appsm raid for data). You can keep your project files where ever you want, they're not very big and are kept in memory so dont affect performance at all. Though to stay clean I would keep it on the raid, so again the raid is for data, and you can back it up accordingly. The system drive is only for apps and system so you can back that up accordingly too (less frequently probably).
P.S. Technically your 'point 8' is inaccurate. After creating the raid you will not see drives 2,3 or 4. You will see only one 'volume' for all 3 drives. Overall your mac will have 2 'volumes': the system drive, and the stripe of 2,3,4. Physical drives and 'volumes' that mount in your OS are completely seperate. You can create multiple partitions in a single drive, or you can combine multiple drives into a single volume (e.g. using raid). But basically yes, you copy your client files back to the raid.
And remember, if any ONE of the disks in the stripe dies, you lose ALL of the data on the entire 1.5TB volume. So it is pretty important to backup regularly!!!!
(I dont wanna confuse you any more, but raid5 is a good option if you want more security and don't mind paying extra :P, you'll need more hardware for that, and more drives to make it worthwhile - but I would say skip that for now, as you can build your raid0 for free or almost free and use that until you think you need more)

G-Raid drive disappeared while using FCP. Will no longer mount.

Ah! Help! I'm on deadline to edit a film trailer for tomorrow and my hard drive and all my footage just disappeared. I was using Final Cut Pro (6.0.6?) with my G-RAID 2TB drive as my scratch disc, and while I was using it, the drive unmounted. I tried powering it off. Restarting the computer. Swapping out new fw800 cables. Switching to a differnt fw800 port on my drive. Restarting again. The drive powers up but does not show. I then tried putting the fw800 cables into my other smaller drive. This also did not show up. I've used two sets of cables. I don't have any other cables to try. But it makes me feel like something is wrong with the Mac now. I am very tech inept and stressed about this deadline so any help would be great. I recently (a few weeks ago) upgraded to 10.5.8 and have had no problems. (this was after an intital upgrade several months ago that worked fine until all of a sudden it got stuck on the login page. I reset the pram and pressed C and and a number of things on start up and eventually rebooted from the leopard discs and reinstalled with no problems. just mentioning it in case). From time to time when I have started up FCP in the past, it has not been able to see my g-raid drive, but that just seemed to be a factor of me starting it up too late or out of order.
Imac 7,1
Intel Core 2 Duo
10.5.7
Any more info I can provide? Any help would be great! I am desperate to have my footage back and computer working so that i can make this grant deadline tomorrow!
Thank you!

Try doing a SMC reset, that might do it. Make sure ALL peripherals are unplugged when you do it and plug them one at time, test, next one, test etc...
_SMC RESET_
• Shut down the computer.
• Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
• Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
• Release the power button.
• Attach the computers power cable.
• Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Roger

RAID + FCP

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