MacBook Pro w/ esata vs. FW800

S

senomar

Well-known member
Hey everyone. I searched and searched, but couldn't find a definite answer to my question. Maybe someone can jump in...

I just bought an HVX. I am a die hard apple user, and am planning to get a MBP to compliment it. But I'm a bit confused as to the advantages/disadvantages when using external drives.

What, if any, are the advantages of using the Firmtek esata adapter with esata drives vs. FW800 raids like those from gtech?

What about HD vs SD on these drives?

Thanks
Cody
 
Maybe something you havent thought about yet, Firewire 800 may be a better investment at the moment, because with the Duel Adapter by Duel Systems, you will be using the Expresscard slot to connect the P2 card, and then transfer to your FW800 drives.

Just a thought.
 
From Experience, I have the Firmtek esata and FW800... the Firmtek kicks the **** out of the firewire drives... Especially since it's expandable storage at a price you can't match with firewire... What do you do once your FW drives are full...? My reco is to get 1 firewire drive to use for offloading and also get the Firmtek esata to use while editing... So, offload your MXFs to the firewire drive (either right off the camera, or via this DualAdapter or PowerBook with PCMCIA).. Then when you're ready to edit, ingest the P2 MXFs in Final Cut and set the Firmtek eSATA drive as your scratch... All your MXFs are on the FW800 and your editable QT DVCProHD footage is right where it needs to be on the SUPERFAST SATA drives.. This is the workflow I use.. The timeline in FCP used to be a little choppy when i was editing HD over FW800, now very smooth and fast with eSATA... Just don't pay more than .30 a gig for drives..
 
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AbstracTheory- The ironic about your name is that what you are saying is exactly what made sense in my own brain, I just couldn't find the evidence through searches on this site to find many people with this setup... Is it just me, or are there not many out there??? The way I understand esata, it's a no brainer...
I got a couple more pennies for yours or any other persons thoughts on this...
-cody
 
My Firmtek is so fast, but I do get the point about needing the port for the dual systems adapter. Hadnt thought about that yet, still waiting for the adapter.
 
ah! yeah, i got so wrapped up in my last post, i forgot about cynic... sorry
I can definitely see that being useful to many people, but I really don't see myself using the P2 cards all that much. I'm getting a firestore, and will also be doing direct capture to the MBP.
Which actually brings up another thing I wanted to settle once and for all... Is firewire 800 fast enough to capture footage to (through Final Cut Pro)? Including 1080? Hell, for that matter, is firewire 400? What about Capturing to the esata drives (again through FCP), and creating a backup later on a separate FW drive?
And not to be the "one more thing" guy (columbo?)... but with the Firmtek adapter, you are limited to 2 drives, right? So by "expandable", you just meant getting 2 bigger drives, is that correc?

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate the help
cody
 
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800 is plenty fast enough for almost all applications. 400 works OK as long as theres not alot of talk back going through the firewire at the same time, after all that is how the camera records to Firestore. Honestly for just playing the video itself, you wont even notice the difference, its not untill you start moving data around (like backing up) that you really notice a huge difference. I dont know about you but transferring video is something I just dont like to sit and wait and wait and wait for.
 
i second the notion!
I'm assuming you're referring to capturing to a FW800 drive, and then transferring to the esata drives, right?
so what's your setup besides the firmtech adapter? which drives are you running?
And as far as I can tell, you are limited to 2 esata drives with the adapter... so it's basically a Raid 0 *only* system? unless you mirrored it, in which case it would defeat the whole purpose....
 
Sunstream said:
800 is plenty fast enough for almost all applications.
Click to expand...

Plenty fast for capturing 1080 on an external FW800 drive through a laptop(MBP)? Maybe best through a expresscard-FW800 adaptor to act as a separate FW bus? Or should one settle with eSata as the optimum solution?
 
nudge said:
Plenty fast for capturing 1080 on an external FW800 drive through a laptop(MBP)? Maybe best through a expresscard-FW800 adaptor to act as a separate FW bus? Or should one settle with eSata as the optimum solution?
Click to expand...
The Problem with the MBP is that the FW800 and FW400 ports share the same bus.
For recording direct to disc, this means 400Mbit/s maximum, because the FW protocol only allows the slower speed when connecting both 800 and 400.
So for best performance - and I´d rather go with "a little bit to much" here then with "works in most situations" - I´d add an eSATA card and drives.
True, for offloading P2 you´ll need to swap cards and use a FW800 drive, but for streaming (and editing later) eSATA will be the fastest solution.
BTW, many only use FW400 successfully so you may simply go with what´s already available to you...
 
thanks spartacus. Expanding on the eSata issue, Robert Lane mentions the following on a dvinfo post:

"This device [2disk eSata] is mainly for storage, not an array for editing as it won't have the throughput required for multiple-stream previews and fast renders. Any JBOD e-SATA array would need a minimum of 4 drives in RAID-0 (as tested with the KONA System Test) to sustain the required througput and, it also requires an HBA interface not USB or Firewire as that throughput is limited to about 90mb/s."

Anybody here editing multiple 720/1080 tracks or streaming directly to a MBP and happy with anything less than 4 drives in RAID-0? Or even maybe with a single Sata drivebay?
 
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Will we eventually be seeing Sata II through express slot to external drives or will Sata be it? Just curious.
 
We are still talking about DVCproHD from the HVX here, right?
Not recording and editing uncompressed HD material?
For DV100 eSATA should be more than enough, eg the eSATA version of the G-Technology drives
claims playback of 4 video streams in realtime...
 
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I use eSata drives, atached to my expresscard adapter. I ALWAYS make an image of the P2 itself, be it from the Firestore or from my P2cards (to either eSata, Firewire or even USB2 if I have the extra time.)!. Then I extract from THAT image to a eSata DISK This also solves the Mac FCP-P2 issues. I do not alter the original P2 imaged media after that. It becomes my backup, and I work with the extracted media on a seperate eSATA drive. Remember you are alays limited by the weakest link. If your copying from camera or firestore to a drive it can only go as fast as they can send it so anything more than a firewire 400 speed is overkill. Once you start working with the media, thats when you want the speed. The ExpressCard slot is ot limited by the condtraints of the Firwire bus. I am guessing that this is how I will work with the P2 reader. I will copy the P2 image to a backup disk (FW or USB2) then hook up the eSata to extract to. Im guessing that the process of extracting the media will be the weakest link so the slower connection of the bckup will not be an issue. There is an extra step, but it is so important have redundancy, and it has worked very very well for me. It does not take that long.
 
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Sunstream said:
I use eSata drives, atached to my expresscard adapter. I ALWAYS make an image of the P2 itself, be it from the Firestore or from my P2cards (to either eSata, Firewire or even USB2 if I have the extra time.)!. Then I extract from THAT image to a eSata DISK This also solves the Mac FCP-P2 issues. I do not alter the original P2 imaged media after that.
Click to expand...

Sunstream or anyone, are we talking making a disk image on a mac through disk utility? Whats the advantage of that than simply copying? Whats the process involved?
 
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