Do I need and ext. hard drive?

I

Indyreel

Well-known member
I am about to buy MC5 for editing a feature length film and was told that I need to keep all my content off my computer, as MC5 will tax it so much that it could wreck it.

They suggested that I get an external hard drive that is up to the task of completing a feature length film.

This is the link to the hard drive: http://www.tapeonline.com/products/caldigit-vr-2b-4000-4tb-external-hard-drive

The person who suggested it use to work for Avid as a tech, and seems legit. I just want to check it with you guys first.

Any input would be greatly appreciated :)
 
You don't want to store your media on your system drive, really. And if you're cutting SD or low-rez offline HD footage an extra internal drive may work as well (or better) than an external.

What are your system specs, what format is your footage, and do you have internal drives besides your system drive you can store your media on? What type of drive and what drive speed and size are they?

The more info the better.
 
You definitely want an external HD, or a number of external HDs. They're cheap these days and fast, and you can take them places if you need to edit somewhere else or deliver huge files. And if your house catches fire or something you can run out the door with it and still have your film intact. Don't feel like you have to buy that particular hard drive though. There's the G-RAID ones which are good, and really a bunch of others that work fine too, look for fast and quiet IMO.
 
And I am shooting on a GH1 in 1080P
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AVID can not edit AVCHD so you will need to transcode to DNxHD. It is very efficient and you should have no problem even with a non raid internal drive. Just add a second drive to your machine. 100 bucks would get it done. 7200 rpm 1TB.

Be carefull with ATI graphics on that machine and the home edition OS. They are not Avid qualified and could cause some headache.
 
jason.adams said:
AVID can not edit AVCHD so you will need to transcode to DNxHD. It is very efficient and you should have no problem even with a non raid internal drive.
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Do you know what DNxHD quality I should use? I was going to use 220 but the avid tech I spoke with said that 220 and even 145 would be a waste, as I only needed 35, because AVCHD is so compressed. Do you know if this is true?

I want to filmout for theatrical Distribution and want to use the highest DNxHD setting I should to do that.

jason.adams said:
Just add a second drive to your machine. 100 bucks would get it done. 7200 rpm 1TB.
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The Avid tech is having me buy a $900 drive, and says it is the minimum he can recommend for editing an entire feature film. Do you know if this is correct, i.e. can I acutally edit my entire feature using a $100 drive?

jason.adams said:
Be carefull with ATI graphics on that machine and the home edition OS. They are not Avid qualified and could cause some headache.
Click to expand...

I plan on upgrading the OS to windows 7 Pro. Do you foresee any problems with that?

Thanks for the input.
 
who is the AVID tech you spoke with? Is he from Avid or your local reseller?

Is the Avid tech saying you need an external raid. There are much cheaper raids out there.

I find it strange that the Avid tech is recommending a 900 hard drive and not saying anything about the unapproved HardWare specs.
 
The tech use to work for avid but is now working for a Massachusetts company.

The tech is recommending the $900 hard drive as the best option for my budget. Originally, they were recommending I use a much more expensive drive.

He said that this drive will prevent problems while editing a feature length film, as it can handle the workload.
 
DNxHD is not a finishing and mastering data rate - while it looks great as an offline format, it is not designed for finishing. DNxHD is an I frame codec - LONG GOP formats like MPEG, etc. look better at lower data rates because of the encoding structure of LONG GOP. If you are going to DNxHD, then go with DNxHD 145 family as that will produce a mastering level quality format.

Michael
 
MichaelP said:
DNxHD is not a finishing and mastering data rate - while it looks great as an offline format, it is not designed for finishing. DNxHD is an I frame codec - LONG GOP formats like MPEG, etc. look better at lower data rates because of the encoding structure of LONG GOP. If you are going to DNxHD, then go with DNxHD 145 family as that will produce a mastering level quality format.

Michael
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I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that straight DNxHD is not mastering quality, but DNxHD 145 is?

If so, then would DNxHD 220 be even better, even though my original footage is shoot on AVCHD 1080/24p?
 
I don't use external, but I would recommend raid. raid 5 or 10 will increase performance and give you redundancy incase of failure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID gives a lot of info on raid. The device you linked only does raid 1 or 0. 0 is pretty unsafe since there is no redundancy. 1 is kinda slow but will probably be ok for what your doing. They do sell external raid 5 drives which i would recommend. You can also install an internal raid if your comp supports it. (ask HP) Inturnal does raise the cooling ishie depending on the size of your case. I have a 8 drive internal raid and can edit just about anything. Your not working with uncompressed HD so you should be fin with raid 1 (2 drives) you would be better off with a 4 drive raid 5 array. (External or internal) Raid 5 will speed it up a bit to decrease render times and such. (I don't have a mojo [now nitris] so HD speed is very important.)
 
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