Hard Disk config for animation

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Hard Disk config for animation
by Scott Portingale on Oct 6, 2012 at 2:00:17 am

Hello All,

I'm having some difficulty finding info on hard disk configuring that is consistent.

I'm making a stop-motion animated film and am trying to configure my hardware the best that I can. Below is my plan. Please, if you see a more efficient way of doing it let me know. I also don't mind spending a few extra $$$ (possibly on SSDs to do it more efficiently).

Here are some details about the projects parameter's and the CPU/hardware that I'm running, and how I plan to set it up.

*I am running Adobe software (Ps, Ae, Pr, latest versions, on cloud).
*I run 2011 iMac (see image at bottom)

*Here are my HDs:
*Lacie 4TB (thunderbolt) (two stripped HDs) http://store.apple.com/us/product/H8279ZM/A/lacie-4tb-2big-thunderbolt-seri...

*1 - 1TB iOmega Firewire 800
*5 - 2TB 7200 RPM Hitachi drives with toaster (for back ups)

Should I run the Applications through the iMac internal drive and everything else through the Lacie?
Or should I run the media from the Lacie and the scratch disks from the iOmega?
I just bought the Lacie and I could return it and buy an enclosure for my Hitachi drives I currently use with the toaster. Should I do this?
Should I buy a solid state (250GB) for the scratch disks?
If there is a bottle neck please show me what I should do short of buying a new CPU.

So many questions... One more...

I also want to utilize the mercury playback engine to its full potential. Will I with my current graphics card?

Thanks for reading this far into my query.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

~Scott

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Re: Hard Disk config for animation
by Walter Soyka on Oct 8, 2012 at 1:06:10 am

[Scott Portingale] "Should I run the Applications through the iMac internal drive and everything else through the Lacie? "

I would.

[Scott Portingale] "Or should I run the media from the Lacie and the scratch disks from the iOmega?"

A single disk on FW800 is not nearly as fast as a RAID on Thunderbolt.

[Scott Portingale] "I just bought the Lacie and I could return it and buy an enclosure for my Hitachi drives I currently use with the toaster. Should I do this?"

I wouldn't -- again, TB RAID should be fast.

[Scott Portingale] "Should I buy a solid state (250GB) for the scratch disks?"

I don't think there's a need for this for Premiere. If you're talking After Effects (which uses a different, more disk-intensive caching system), it might be a good idea, if you can connect it via Thunderbolt.

[Scott Portingale] "I also want to utilize the mercury playback engine to its full potential. Will I with my current graphics card?"

Your card is not supported; the MPE will run software only with your graphics card.

Some folks have manually added their iMac GPUs to the opencl_supported_cards.txt file, but I'm not sure what kind of results they're getting, and your configuration doesn't have very much memory on the GPU. You may be better off leaving it on software-only mode.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog - What I'm thinking when my workstation's thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

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Re: Hard Disk config for animation
by James Scott on Oct 8, 2012 at 8:53:20 pm

Thanks for the clarification.
I will be using Ae quite a bit so I may get a 250GB SSD for the scratch disks. I hope that will be enough space.

As for MPE...
My iMac's MPE is enabled but I looked on Adobe's site and although they support the type of graphics card I have, it should only be functional if it has over 1GB of memory. This confuses me because the MPE is enabled by default on my iMac and can not be enabled on my 5 year old MacBook pro. I guess it is functional but not working at it's full potential.
I'll do some more MPE research and post a new thread if need be.

Thanks again,
~Scott

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