Scratch Disks on MacBook Pro?

I

Ianscreations

Well-known member
I have moved from a PC to a MacBook Pro Retina with a SSD for editing with Premiere CS6.
What setup do you think I should utlitize for Raw Footage and Scratch Disks?
I only have 8GB of Ram and will be using Thunderbolt 1TB external drive (which is not SSD). I also have a 1TB USB 3.0 External Harddrive.
I had initially put my raw footage on the MacBook and set scratch disks to the External Thunderbolt.
Do you think I should reverse this or do some variation of this setup in order to best utlitlize the devices I have?
 
I would recommend putting your raw footage and scratch disks on an external drive. That's usually my practice cause you never know if you computer will crap out on you in the middle of project.
 
I recommend the following as a starting point for a good editing experience:

System
Projects
Scratch
Media
Exports

5 drives, all internal.

I recommend the following as a bare minimum:

System
Projects/Scratch
Media/Exports

3 drives, all internal.

You can of course get away with less, I do myself on occasion. But as you descend from the 5, you introduce bottlenecks and lags. As you descend from the 3, you get even worse performance.
 
Jim Simon said:
I recommend the following as a starting point for a good editing experience:

System
Projects
Scratch
Media
Exports

5 drives, all internal.

I recommend the following as a bare minimum:

System
Projects/Scratch
Media/Exports

3 drives, all internal.

You can of course get away with less, I do myself on occasion. But as you descend from the 5, you introduce bottlenecks and lags. As you descend from the 3, you get even worse performance.
Click to expand...


Joe,
Being that your recommendations are not an option for me. What woudl you recommend based upon my setup?
Well, these are the two drives I have:
LaCie 1TB Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series Portable Hard
LaCie 1TB Rugged USB 3.0 Thunderbolt Series Portable Hard
And
Western Digital 1TB My Passport for Mac USB WDBGCH0010BSL-NESN

Appears not to be 7200 rpm?

Should I use one more than the other?
 
What camera will you be using to produce the video?

You mention "raw footage," without explaining what that means.

How many gigabytes on the SSD boot drive? Have you considered installing a larger boot drive, and keeping the media off an external?

All this bears on what type of media drive you will need.
 
Last edited:
David Saraceno said:
What camera will you be using to produce the video?

You mention "raw footage," without explaining what that means.

How many gigabytes on the SSD boot drive? Have you considered installing a larger boot drive, and keeping the media off an external?

All this bears on what type of media drive you will need.
Click to expand...

David,
Thanks for clarifying.

I am shooting with the Panasonic GH3, so my HD files are .mov an shot at 1080p, 30fps.
I am using the MacBook Pro Retina so I am not able to swap out drives. I chose the max Ram I could get (8) but a smaller SSD HD b/c
I knew I would be using externals with Thunderbolt. So the internal SSD is 128GB.

Thanks for helping!
PS
I was reading that the 5400/7200 rpm doesn't matter as much if you have thunderbolt? I don't know how true that is.
I can't find the speed of My Passport Western Digital anywhere!
Which needs a faster drive...raw footage or scratch disks?

Right now I have it set up as follows:
Internal SSD: OS and Programs
Thunderbolt LaCie: Raw Footage and Project Files
WD USB 3.0: Scratch Disks and Output Files


Any thoughts?
 
What codec are your HD files off the the GH3? Are they h.264?

If you intend to edit h.264 natively, then the CPU and GPU determine how well, and how fast they will be played back. And it won't necessarily be very well.

If you convert to pro res LT, then you can edit off most Thunderbolt drives.

Finally, macsales.com offers MBPR internal SSD updates with the availability of an external HD USB3 drive to edit from using the original internal drive
 
David Saraceno said:
What codec are your HD files off the the GH3? Are they h.264?

If you intend to edit h.264 natively, then the CPU and GPU determine how well, and how fast they will be played back. And it won't necessarily be very well.

If you convert to pro res LT, then you can edit off most Thunderbolt drives.

Finally, macsales.com offers MBPR internal SSD updates with the availability of an external HD USB3 drive to edit from using the original internal drive
Click to expand...


David, the files are .mov files natively. I have not had any problems with playback or rendering, but I don't do heavy effects or filters.

That being said, with the setup I have, do you think I have this running optimally by having the raw footage and project files on the LaCie Thunderbolt and the scratch disks and output files on the WD My Passport USB 3.0?
 
Thunderbolt over USB3. SSD over platter based HDs.

BTW, ".mov" is just a container. A ".mov" file can be h.264, Pro Res, Animation, MP4, motionjpeg, HDV, or some other type of codec. Some codecs are computational intensive and require a fast CPU and/or GPU.

The codec is the most important thing.

What codec are the files?
 
David Saraceno said:
Thunderbolt over USB3. SSD over platter based HDs.

BTW, ".mov" is just a container. A ".mov" file can be h.264, Pro Res, Animation, MP4, motionjpeg, HDV, or some other type of codec. Some codecs are computational intensive and require a fast CPU and/or GPU.

The codec is the most important thing.

What codec are the files?
Click to expand...

David, curious if you have any further recommendations based upon my setup? Thanks :)
 
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