HD Storage and Costing
by Michael Belanger
on
Oct 31, 2007 at 7:50:31 pm
Hi All
I have noticed of late that many large capacity HD serial drives are coming down in price, slowly but surely. Oddly enough some of the big HD storage companies are still at old world prices from months ago. I think one has also raised prices ... odd in this kind of market
On an unrelated note. I was pondering if using Pro Rez there is more overhead on the computer to deal with the highly compressed HD material? Haven't moved into the Pro Rez stuff yet just spinning HD uncompressed using HDCAM and the like.
Has anyone done any tests to see if leopard now makes FCP fly or if the 8 cores move through the software faster than before...
Here I thought storage would be a non issue at this stage of the game but shows what I know
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Bob Zelin on Oct 31, 2007 at 8:10:21 pm
Michael -
1) let me make this simple for you. Do you see the banner ads on the left and right side of this screen, from all these companies. Creative Cow charges them MONEY to advertise here. In todays' market, where you can get a 1TB SATA drive for about $300, you say "how can they be charging thousands for this product, when I can get a 1TB drive for 300 bucks".
SERVICE AND SUPPORT AND TAKING THE RESPONSIBILITY. Seagate and Hitachi are NOT going to research why you are getting drop frame errors from your drive array. This is the responsibility of the advertisers you see listed here, who test their products with FCP, Adobe, etc., and report to you with detailed answers that "yes, we do uncompressed HD", etc.
In addition, when your array drops dead, you can CALL THEM and ask them for help, and they will help you. Seagate and Hitachi will not, even though all of them use Seagate and Hitachi drives. "They" will test Leopard, "they" will test compatibility with AJA, Blackmagic, etc. The bottom line is, if you think that you are going to get SERVICE AND SUPPORT for no money - you are in dreamland.
As for FCP with Leopard - FCP with Leopard in pro enviornments does not work, as none of the Blackmagic, AJA, Matrox, or anyone elses hardware works with Leopard yet.
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Oct 31, 2007 at 8:50:03 pm
Thanks for simplifying it for me Bob... Thought we were dealing in a world where costs were always going down. Silly me. A couple years ago you could get a dual machine for what you can get a quad or even an 8 core now. Commodities always dictate price even for the big big boys. Make sense? Years ago ... an HDCAM cost 100k now under 50k ...tracking software used to cost 100s of thousands... now hundreds... So I always do wonder when prices go down and margins are still factored in, ie service etc, how they make their money... answer...their prices go down and for the most part they pass on savings all the while keeping margins intact of course. Drives fall into that category of course and as they are a primary commodity component of the mechanism they sell you would logically conclude prices would fall in line... as long as they factor in their margins ... as I am adequately aware they do.
Service and support for free?? That never existed since the days of AVID so I am not sure why anyone would think it exists today.. I don't and clearly am not suggesting they do provide it for free because it is usually factored into the margin side of the product along with advertising and other propaganda.
Glad I didn't miss anything with Leopard.
Any thoughts on overhead cpu for Pro Rez anyone??? More demand or not noticeable.
surely some geek has done a test on this one..
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Bob Zelin on Nov 1, 2007 at 12:12:05 am
Hi Michael -
I am glad you see what is going on. Because of my contacts, I see a lot of "no name products" from Singapore that do exactly what the more expensive products do (I actually have a new port multiplier card in my hand right now, that costs almost nothing). But who will I call for support - what if something doesn't work. If I can get a card for $79, and get the SAME card for $289, but I can CALL SOMEONE for that $289, and ask questions (I can't get this to work - can you help me ?) - I will spend the $289 in a SECOND, rather than cheap out, and try to sit there for 3 weeks, trying to figure out how to get "brand x" to work (and I may never figure it out).
Sometimes you get lucky - sometimes you don't. This is happening right now - with RED, with AJA, Blackmagic, etc. How can these companies be so cheap compared to "the old days", while the "old days" companies are still in business, and still selling product. Some inexpensive companies are good, and follow thru, some don't. It's all in the game that we play every day.
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Nov 1, 2007 at 12:53:31 pm
Understood Bob... did get a couple degrees in economics ... agree that if I had my choice spend a few bucks more to get something better... however in this case a major company has raised prices on a product whose primary component is an off the shelf drive which has a price on the market which is trackable .. Raising the price does't fly when the bulk of purchasers out there are pretty savy . So why do it? Not sure...
Any answers re the overhead issue with Pro Rez and cpu usage?
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Paul Provost on Nov 3, 2007 at 3:57:19 am
just for the hell of it we sent for a 5 drive sata raid and controller card from an asian supplier to see if the low cost (half the price of the caldigit and other names that are trusted here) units worked. and heres what happened.
the drives would not mount. called tek support and could not resolve the problem. read me's and manuals supplied were written in computer chinese to english jiberish translation. flashing firmware required pulling host card from mac and installing in a pc. supplier had no idea if leopard was supported or when updates for os upgrades would be provided. these products are just "parts" to these companies with no idea of the complex requirements of the pro video post user.
couldn't resist the low price and ended up waisting 3 or 4 hours of my valuable time.
at least they paid shipping for returning the unit.
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Nov 5, 2007 at 4:15:38 pm
Thanks Paul
Point well taken although it really is not what I am writing about. In the A class of companies putting out HD storage solutions, namely Cal Digit and the folks at Dulce, they are using components such as Hitachi HD that are like alot of things , commodities. As the price drops you would thinkk their prices would drop as well. Obviously a 1 TB drive when it first came out was higher priced than today... just check the prices on the web ... So why would they increase prices is what I am asking. Bob suggests that it is the service issue factored in and maybe the cost of doing business is why one of them raised their storage solution price by a grand over a few months. You got me but it did happen. With the quality of the product being built you would think that the amount of service would be mighty low considering how much experience and quality they put into their products. Really it defies my understanding but who am I. I am currently evaluating an HD solution that seems quite impressive so I hope that may solve my needs issue. I just wish they would supply empty cases and let me populate the drive bays myself.
HMMMM no takers on that CPU question and overhead exposure on HD PRo Rez
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Borjis on Nov 6, 2007 at 12:37:33 am
[Michael Belanger]"HMMMM no takers on that CPU question and overhead exposure on HD PRo Rez"
I'll bite because I know the answer and I know how annoying it can be when posters ignore a key question.
The answer is as long as your on an intel mac you can capture ProRes HD just fine.
Apple claims it works on a minimum of a G5 quad, but mine will not do it. It captures ProRes SD just fine (thats all I'm using now for SD) but HD in ProRes just does not cut it on a G5 quad because of the encoding overhead occuring during capture, but then thats where the AJA IO HD comes into play if you have a post house full of G5 Quads or Duals.
Now ProRes CPU overhead Was: HD Storage by gary adcock on Nov 6, 2007 at 1:42:44 am
[Borjis]"[Michael Belanger] "HMMMM no takers on that CPU question and overhead exposure on HD PRo Rez" I'll bite because I know the answer and I know how annoying it can be when posters ignore a key question. "
if you want to ask a question about ProRes - why does the header say HD storage?
Intel only - the more you want to do, the better the machine needs to be.
not just the CPU, but all the parts of the computer- RAM, Graphics Card, Storage,
and while we are talking about high end production in this forum- please remember that there is nothing cheap or easy about working in the highend.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Re: Now ProRes CPU overhead Was: HD Storage by Michael Belanger on Nov 6, 2007 at 2:14:25 pm
thanks Borjis.... I was aware of what apple claimed was capture capable for their pro res hd but really was wondering if pro res was also heavy on cpu just for regular editing and rendering etc. In many cases I have found that uncompressed vs some of the compressed formats has quicker renders because there is minimal compression and decompression needed whereas the dv and dvcpro HD etc will tend to bog down the system because although the drives do not require as much speed or bandwidth the cpu has do more calculations.
Yes Gary, as an editor for over 25 years with 4 decks sitting in two suites , I am aware that this is an expensive industry. No question... yet the concept seems to be avoided over and over. If a key component of the HD storage solutions is an off the shelf HD then prices on the HD Storage solution should follow that market price.. Anyways this is pointless as the manufacturer as already raised the price of the 6TB unit ... hey if others are ok with it .... whatever.. I know others have raised this issue before but in this case the price jump was staggering .... shocked a few of us for sure.. Hey but if it sells then who am I to question it
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Tim Kolb on Nov 6, 2007 at 2:26:02 pm
[Michael Belanger]".. however in this case a major company has raised prices on a product whose primary component is an off the shelf drive which has a price on the market which is trackable .. Raising the price does't fly when the bulk of purchasers out there are pretty savy . So why do it?"
Well...keep in mind that these storage providers aren't selling you some metal fab cabinetry alone. Most of the higher priced storage providers have things like redundant power supplies with pretty sophisticated switching in order to keep a hard drive from noticing a power supply failure. Self restoring with spare drives internal to the enclosure is a proprietary hardware thing...the enclosure needs some brains to handle these situations without troubling the editor. Rails you could build in your garage with some aluminum stock of course, but in many cases, the actual drives the system is populated with is a much smaller percentage of the cost amortization inside the unit than many might think.
Also keep in mind that the Hitachi drive you buy at your local consumer electronics superstore is typically not rated at the same level of robustness that the drives that populate these enclosures are...they are typically rated as "enterprise" drives.
Re: HD Storage and Costing by gary adcock on Nov 6, 2007 at 2:51:51 pm
[Michael Belanger]"owever PRICE went up from 5 months ago... WHY?"
Comon Michael???
Oil Prices are at all time highs and the dollar is at a 40 year low on the world exchanges, that means even the gear from China is 50% -200% more expensive,
I travel overseas quite a bit (heading to the middle east on friday) and the Dollar has lost 25% against the euro and 54% against the yen this year.
That alone makes anything from country outside the US cost as much as 2x as much as it did a year ago.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Re: HD Storage and Costing by gary adcock on Nov 6, 2007 at 4:44:25 pm
[Michael Belanger]"Funny thing is that another US HD Storage company did not raise prices ? Essentially the same product "
thats not uncommon either,
they have a stockpile of the older hardware or advanced the purchase to cover these eventualities - both of these are normal international biz practices.
Thats not to say that the company is not being true to their customers, but price increases do not just mean they are trying to gouge your wallet - we need to think globally and as long as we as a country are strong arming the rest of the world, we in the US will pay.
However if you make something the rest of the world wants- you have a gold mine on your hands for the export trade.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Nov 7, 2007 at 4:57:09 pm
Thanks Borjis
I was really wondering if when editing with Pro Res whether there was some sluggishness and some slowness related to filtering renders. So it seems it does. Just stick to uncompressed seems like a good workflow except for maybe offline.
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Nov 7, 2007 at 11:16:47 pm
Please correct me if I am wrong Tim but to my knowledge neither CalDigit nor Dulce provide enterprise class drives. They both use Hitachi Deskstar drives, not the Ultrastar, supposedly the entreprise level drive. If they BOTH provide that I would be very surprised indeed. For one those drives are notoriously hard to get, why I don't know, and for two they cost more money . Most of us silly editor folk don't run our drives 24/7 so I would guess the HD storage guys won't bother with putting in the enterprise stuff. But hey who am I to say...
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Borjis on Nov 8, 2007 at 3:05:54 am
They don't use enterprise drives (I have a caldigit HDPRO)
but the drives they do use are rigorously tested and if they pass all of the tests they qualify to be used in their product offering the highest standard for reliability.
in a way its not unlike the way intel used to test and rate their cpu's.
They would run for example all of the pentium series from 200mhz all the way down to 75mhz. (remember those days heh heh?) if they passed all tests and were stable at 200mhz they were stamped and sold as 200mhz cpu's. If they didn't pass, they got downgraded on the clock speed until they did pass. So the lowest performing yields became 75mhz cpus.
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Nov 8, 2007 at 9:13:56 pm
Thanks Borjis
Voice of reason from you indeed... thanks for the backup. I guess my response is that even though they test the drives in advance that these are essentially "off the shelf" drives used for workstations and as such are subject to fluctuating pricing. Since they are not enterprise class drives they would have no more cost than buying one "off the shelf" save for the testing which still would not account for an increase in price of 1 Grand over 8 drives, ie more than a hundred bucks extra per drive. That simply does not happen unless perhaps they are enterprise drives.....but they are not as you correctly pointed out.
Thanks for the info on the PRO REZ and overhead on the CPU. I guess you would recommend a dual quad for this codec. I imagine it would suck up quite a bit of computing power when rendering or even just shuttling around. I'll have to wait for the dual quads to come down a bit as apple is still hanging in on very old Canadian pricing up here. Almost a thousand dollars difference to buy the same computer up here vs the US....so much for a rising Can dollar..
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Nov 8, 2007 at 9:13:56 pm
Thanks Borjis
Voice of reason from you indeed... thanks for the backup. I guess my response is that even though they test the drives in advance that these are essentially "off the shelf" drives used for workstations and as such are subject to fluctuating pricing. Since they are not enterprise class drives they would have no more cost than buying one "off the shelf" save for the testing which still would not account for an increase in price of 1 Grand over 8 drives, ie more than a hundred bucks extra per drive. That simply does not happen unless perhaps they are enterprise drives.....but they are not as you correctly pointed out.
Thanks for the info on the PRO REZ and overhead on the CPU. I guess you would recommend a dual quad for this codec. I imagine it would suck up quite a bit of computing power when rendering or even just shuttling around. I'll have to wait for the dual quads to come down a bit as apple is still hanging in on very old Canadian pricing up here. Almost a thousand dollars difference to buy the same computer up here vs the US....so much for a rising Can dollar..
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Tim Kolb on Nov 17, 2007 at 2:05:20 am
Interesting. I guess i assumed that most of the structured storage solution providers used enterprise class drives.
Anyway, the larger point is that there are multiple other components that could have increased in price...or maybe they decided they were priced below market and simply raised them.
If there is another solution that is identical to your desired spec and didn't raise their price, why don't you purchase that one?
We can guess all day at why they might have raised prices and why they should or shouldn't have...it's not terribly interesting anymore.
The price went up. I guess the answer would be to purchase something else...
Re: HD Storage and Costing by Michael Belanger on Nov 19, 2007 at 2:10:08 pm
Yes indeed Tim... best to find alternate solutions with vitrually identical or better performance and service for less money. It's what drives my clientele that is for sure... Not sure what component would have gone up a grand ... not power supplies...not fans... not chasiss... maybe labour.....or maybe , as you pointed out, they can simply charge more cause they can charge more... tha's possibly it Tim.. This forum is a place where people can put forward questions, ideas or concerns about items with people of similar interests. No one is here to protect or put down any specific company but we are supposedly here to pass on info to others who might be looking for products and services that would suit their needs. I just thought the COW folks, being the informed people they are, would find it interesting about pricing and such.....most of the time they are.. COW on
