Video FX: video effects and editing drive (incl. RAID disk arrays)

Question

Having had an issue with rendering iMovie effects and read through a few posted thread, I ran an experiment that pinpoints an incompatibility between iMovie and large size (800GB) RAID array volumes. Hence the following questions:
Is iMovie designed to support large sire RAID disk arrays ?
Could anybody test a non-RAID array large size (say 500GB or better 1000GB) volume to check if it is size or RAID dependent ?
When can we expect a fix ?
For more details, please read on.
Reading through the other threads talking about the Quartz composer effects, it sounds like the Apple programmers have a lot of work ahead to deliver a more robust 6.0.2 version.
I wanted to record the noticed incompatibility of working with a project outside the System & Application drive and applying Quartz composer effects.
Most keen videographers are using either a good large size external drive, a RAID array or a separate partition to store their video footage and editing work. So the noticed incompatibility needs to be looked into.
Interestingly, I read of other users having the same problem but Karl Petersen also mentionned that he didn't have the problem ...
So, what's wrong ? If the problem would be consistent, it would be easy to have Apple on their toes to fix it, but if not ...
So I ran a small experiment. I took the same iMovie project and copied it to my different disks and volumes (at least the ones where I had enough space) and tested 3 types of effects:
-1- the non-Quartz Composer 'fast/slow/reverse' effect, which caused me trouble already in iMovie '05;
-2- the Quartz Composer 'sepia tone' effect, which I was using without problem in the previous version;
-3- the non-Quartz Composer 'aged film' effect, which I was using without problem in the previous version;
My disk and volume configuration is the following:
-> First internal 500GB Serial ATA Disk split into 3 partitions:
a) 30GB System & Applications Drive (Start-up Disk);
b) 20GB Pictures Drive;
c) 415.6GB Partition as Slice 1 of my Apple RAID array;
-> Second internal 500GB Serial ATA Disk split into 4 partitions:
d) 15GB Virtual PC System & Applications Drive;
e) 15GB MAC & PC Documents Drive;
f) 20GB Musics Drive;
g) 415.6GB Partition as Slice 2 of my Apple RAID array;
-> Internal 831.3GB Apple RAID Array - striped RAID set made of 2 slices (volumes c and g above);
-> External 120GB FireWire Disk in one volume.
All volumes are formated using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
The result is consistent and points towards an incompatibility of iMovie with either very large size volume or RAID array. Indeed, all tested effects preview fine on all tested volumes, however, they can be applied seemlessly on all tested volumes apart for my large size RAID array.
When the project is on the RAID array, hitting the apply button results in the following:
For the non-Quartz Composer 'fast/slow/reverse' effect and the Quartz Composer 'sepia tone' effect, rendering starts but then stops a fraction of a second later (as if it was unable to write the rendered file to disk). Resulting image in the video viewer is shifted diagonally to leave a black corner on the bottom-left.
For the non-Quartz Composer 'aged film' effect, rendering starts and proceeds but the resulting image in the video viewer is again shifted diagonally to leave a black corner on the bottom-left. Note that resizing the iMovie window corrects this viewer issue.
Conclusion:
Is iMovie designed to support large sire RAID disk arrays ?
Could anybody test a non-RAID array large size (say 500GB or better 1000GB) volume to check if it is size or RAID dependent ?
When can we expect a fix ?
Regards,
Alex

Answer 1

I had the same problem rendering a movie with iMovie 6 when the file is placed on a second internal disk.
Clicking the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tick box is a solution but I find it too blunt. My Mac is configured as a multiuser system and I bought the second internal disk to use it for my /Users directory. I thus don't want the different users to be able to create files in each others directories.
When unclicking the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tick box again I'm surprised to find that rendering still works fine for all users with the desired file integrity.
I would have preferred to set up all the permissions using unix commands instead of all this magic. Can anyone explain the proper way to configure the correct permissions using the Terminal?
Power Mac G5 DP 1.8GHz   Mac OS X (10.4.5)