Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD
by Tim
on
Jul 7, 2006 at 11:32:11 pm
Hey all...need some advice here.
I have a maxed out G5 dual processor with Kona2 and the Kbox...I have been editing fine in the HDV, SD, and DVCPro worlds with my internal terabyte of storage.
However, I now have a client that is interested in shooting on Varicam or Sony 900 and wants to edit in uncompressed HD...I know I can't do that with my internal SATAs...I need more drives pinging at the sametime.
What I am looking for are suggestions on cost effective, external solutions to get to where I can edit 5 to 10 minute Uncompressed HD presentations. I have most of the hardware from where I sit, but I do not have anywhere near the storage or data thru put that I think I will need if this "potential" client becomes a full fledged client.
Thanks,
Tim Baker
Chameleon Mobile Video Productions
(239)849-3295
"It is not the light at the end of the tunnel that we should seek...it is the courage to take the next step in the dark that we must find."
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Bob Zelin on Jul 8, 2006 at 1:06:40 am
Tim -
you are in Fort Myers - right ? This is what everyone in Florida is doing now - you get a Sonnet X4P (for older G5's) or Sonnet E4P (for MAC Quads), and get 2 loaded Sonnet Fusion 500P chassis - stripe all 10 SATA drives together, and you can do uncompressed HD all day long. A single chassis with 5 drives will not be reliable enough to do uncompressed HD. If you are working with Varicam stuff, that is all DVCProHD native, and you can easily use just 2 SATA drives stripped RAID 0, and it will work flawlessly.
If you are working with Sony HD Cam, and have a Sony HD VTR, like the HDW-M2000, they you have lots of money, which means that you can afford to buy the drives you need (which will be around 5 grand). If you only need DVCProHD, you can get a Terabyte of storage for around $1000 - cheap enough (don't you have this right now ??). You can get all this crap from Ron Amborn 714 374 4944.
If you want to spend more money, the HUGE arrays are incredible, and will give you amazing performance, but they do cost more than SATA.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 8, 2006 at 1:12:29 am
Bob, interesting thought for Uncompressed HD storage. Would you recommend this for any mission critical type of HD set-up as in 10 hours a day, everyday for network broadcast production? I'm looking at options right now to either add on to my Med
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Bob Zelin on Jul 8, 2006 at 3:32:00 am
Walter - all I can say is TRY IT. SATA works. It ain't shared storage, and there is no raid protection - but SO FAR it has been unbelieveably reliable (I have NEVER seen a SATA drive fail - but it might happen tomorrow !) - and it's CHEAP !!!!! The Sonnet X4P will work in your 2 Gig G5's (no drivers required), and the Sonnet E4P will work in the new PCI-Express Quad machines. You get about 170mb/sec write and 220mb/sec read with AJA Kona System Test with a SINGLE 5 drive chassis. Remember - this ain't no hardware RAID - it's just a box with a port multiplier in it - you use Apple Disk Utility to stripe all the drives together. You can put 4 boxes (with 5 drives each) on one Sonnet card - that's 10 Terabytes with 4 chassis. You need faster than 170mb/sec write speed for uncompressed HD, so you will need more than 5 drives - which means TWO BOXES - all striped RAID 0. This technology only got released in early May 2006, so it's new to me as well, but so far - IT WORKS.
It is popular because it is CHEAP !!! Will it last as long as a Medea or HUGE array - I have no idea - but so far, I have not seen one fail.
The insane popularity of SATA has occured only because of it's price point - which is very important to most users.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 8, 2006 at 7:43:20 am
Thanks for all the advice Bob. Now I'm new to SATA, we're just testing a few LaCie SATA arrays in one of our suites and they've performed flawlessly to date.
So I can stripe up to four chassis together on a single Sonnet SATA card to get the maximum data throughput?
Is it possible to stripe two sets of units on a single SATA card or does that require two cards? That is two drives as one set and two drives as another set and still maintain enough throughput on each pair for uncompressed HD?
Thanks again for the information Bob!
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Bob Zelin on Jul 8, 2006 at 7:45:35 pm
Walter -
if you are using the Sonnet X4P on your 2 Gig G5 (and if the Lacie has the correct port multiplier chip from Silicon Image in it), you can have FOUR CHASSIS on your system, and stripe ALL of them together, if you want. The Sonnet Fusion 500P chassis, or the ProMax port multiplier chassis, that also has 5 drives in it, works great with the Sonnet X4P (and E4P).
Once you get your chassis working, run AJA Kona system test on it to see your speed test results. The more drives stripped together, the faster the performance.
TWO drives (drives, not boxes) are NOT fast enough to do uncompressed HD. TWO BOXES (8 to 10 drives) will allow you to do uncompressed HD. I seem to recall that the specs on the Lacie are slow - exactly which Lacie chassis are you using. If you are not using a port multiplier chassis, you are losing capability. I know that you like ProMax, and they have a great Port multiplier chassis that holds 5 drives, that works great with the sonnet.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 8, 2006 at 7:55:20 pm
[Bob Zelin]"TWO drives (drives, not boxes) are NOT fast enough to do uncompressed HD. TWO BOXES (8 to 10 drives) will allow you to do uncompressed HD."
Right, got that. Thanks for all the other info.
[Bob Zelin]"I seem to recall that the specs on the Lacie are slow - exactly which Lacie chassis are you using."
LaCie S2S. We're getting 135mb/sec running 4+1. 4 drives for media, 1 drive in backup mode.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Bob Zelin on Jul 9, 2006 at 4:02:59 pm
the Fusion 500P is SILENT, and so is the promax port multiplier chassis - they are quiteter than the MAC G5. They make no noise. (yes, there are cooling fans). The cable is a standard legnth (SHORT) eSATA to eSATA cable, that I believe cannot be extended. Most people keep the drive ontop of the G5 or just to the side of it (if there are multiple units.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by ken hon on Jul 9, 2006 at 8:34:57 pm
Andy,
The normal cable length for eSATA (the kind of cables used with port multipliers) is 1m but the eSATA spec supports cables up to 2m evidently. I've never tried those though, just 1 m. We have 2 ProMax 5 drive arrays using Hitachi 500 Mb drives and our G5 quad is much noisier than the arrays. They are certainly way quieter than our older SCSI drive arrays. All 10 drives striped together as Raid 0 gives us read write speeds slightly in excess of 450 MB/sec and 370 MB/sec using the Kona Drive test. I suggest testing each drive individually and formating them individually prior to the raid as we found 1 drive that was occasionally dropping in speed and it was causing problems in the array (erratic drops in the r/w speed). You can also make yourself a 20GB or so file and copy it back and forth to the array and use the checksum utility to make sure you are getting bit for bit accuracy. These drives work very well though. Also be sure the Sonnet card only goes in a 4x slot if you have PCI-e.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 10, 2006 at 4:53:09 pm
[Bob Zelin]"REPLY - you will get faster performance from the Fusion 500P, the ProMax array, or almost anyone else with 4-5 drives."
Bob, I just received some benchmarks from LaCie with 2 S2S units striped together showing 370 MB/s Write and 390 MB/s running in JBOD mode. 245 MB/s Write and 244 MB/s Read in 1+0 Safe mode.
How does thish compare to the Sonnet 500P? Speeds running in JBOD mode are actually a bit faster than I'm getting currently with my 10 drive FCR2X. Even running in safe mode they are showing some very good speeds.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Bob Zelin on Jul 10, 2006 at 9:18:32 pm
Walter - I just looked at your previous post, and you said in your previous post that you only got 135mb/sec - now you are getting dramatically faster results ? Whats up ?
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 11, 2006 at 12:17:31 am
[Bob Zelin]"
Walter - I just looked at your previous post, and you said in your previous post that you only got 135mb/sec - now you are getting dramatically faster results ? Whats up ?"
135mb/sec is a single S2S unit running in Safe Mode. The faster speeds are benchmarks from Lacie with Two units striped together running in both JBOD and Safe Mode. Hence the much faster speeds.
I just want to know if these speeds with two units striped together are comparable to what you're seeing on your Sonnet units, either a 10 drive unit or two 5 drive units striped together.
Pricing on the LaCie's would give me 5TB for about $5,500 which is incredibly cheap.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Ramona Howard on Jul 8, 2006 at 6:23:34 am
Walter,
SATA is more than stable for doing HD uncompressed. We have been offering this for the past couple of years in our products and many post-houses are running 24/7 on it :)
If you are in the need for lots of storage, SATA is great for both cost and stability and I'm sure Bob will point you in the right direction for the MAC side. I do recommend that you do look at higher-end drives, don't cheap out just because SATA is less expensive. Pay attention to spindle speeds as this will help as drives fill up and fragmentation sets in...
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 8, 2006 at 7:40:18 am
[Ramona Howard]"I do recommend that you do look at higher-end drives, don't cheap out just because SATA is less expensive. Pay attention to spindle speeds as this will help as drives fill up and fragmentation sets in..."
Thanks for the input Ramona. What drives do you recommend? I just went and looked at the Sonnet Fusion 500P chassis Bob is talking about and it looks pretty straightforward. But of course it's just a chassis and I'm really spoiled by Med
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Tim on Jul 8, 2006 at 12:22:21 pm
You guys rock...I knew I could depend on the Cow.
Price is definitely the concern for me.
Just some info...after I posted I gave the guys at ProMax a call where I bought the two edit systems that I have and they are offering I think what might be a similar box...two towers=10 SATA drives and I got a quote in hand for $2999.00 for 2.5TB...does that sound like a good price?
They said the price includes the card(s), as well...and they are stiped 0 so there is no drive protection, but I think I may be willing to take the chance with regular backups to firewire maybe.
Tim Baker
Chameleon Mobile Video Productions
(239)849-3295
"It is not the light at the end of the tunnel that we should seek...it is the courage to take the next step in the dark that we must find."
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 8, 2006 at 12:52:24 pm
[Tim]"Just some info...after I posted I gave the guys at ProMax a call where I bought the two edit systems that I have and they are offering I think what might be a similar box...two towers=10 SATA drives and I got a quote in hand for $2999.00 for 2.5TB...does that sound like a good price?"
Well, I just went and looked at it and the very first specification is a large red flag to me.
- Supports multiple streams of DV, SD, HDV, and most compressed and uncompressed HD formats**
Supports "most" compressed and uncompressed HD formats? Doesn't sound all that promising.
And you say two towers = 10 SATA drives, but the literature clearly states it's a 4 bay enclosure and they show 8 drives in their test material.
Our 4 bay solutions incorporate removable drives that can be striped as RAID 0 to serve DV, DVCAM, HDV, SD, and some compressed HD formats such as DVCPro HD.
So I would ensure it's really 10 drives and not 8. I love ProMax and purchase a lot of stuff from them so I'm sure they'll get you the right information.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Tim on Jul 8, 2006 at 1:24:19 pm
You know I caught that to about the "Most"...and I asked about that and he gave me an item # to search for and it came up with a 5 drive chasis X 2 that the online literature says Uncompressed HD...unfortunately I can't remember what it was and the quote does not have the item # on it.
If...in a perfect world...this was going to work...what do you think about the price point? And what would a similar system cost me from Bob's suggestion above?
Oh...by the way Bob...I am now in Orlando...been up here about a year and half.
Thanks all.
Tim Baker
Chameleon Mobile Video Productions
(239)849-3295
"It is not the light at the end of the tunnel that we should seek...it is the courage to take the next step in the dark that we must find."
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by JeremyG on Jul 8, 2006 at 9:08:27 pm
I hate to be the nay sayer here, but if I were in your shoes, Walter, 10 or more drives at RAID 0 is not what I would do in your situation. I know I might get lambasted for saying so, but at a shop like yours where you are working all the time, overnight renders, etc etc a protected RAID is what you need. Has your Medea ever lost a drive? Even one? Imagine if that happened in your RAID 0 4TB array. All of that info is gone and lost forever and don't forget about the downtime trying to track down the failed drive (it's hard in 'do it yourself' SATA situations). Recapturing tapes in one thing, but losing valuable renders and exports is another. I know Mr Zelin has never seen a SATA drive go down, but I have been on the receiving end of it. It's not fun to sweat while the client is staring at me as I fumble with cables and drives and have no one to call and wondering why the hell this thing won't mount. I know there have been leaps and bounds of improvements in the SATA equipment and architecture since I dealt with it three or four years ago (namely in Sonnet's cards), but it's not something I would do again. I'm sure I am preaching to the choir here, but I felt compelled. SATA boxes are cheap and therefore sexy, but I wouldn't run a RAID without parity especially at a busy shop. After I ponied up for my first fibre RAID, I have never ever looked back and said that was a waste of money.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Ramona Howard on Jul 8, 2006 at 9:28:41 pm
Jeremy,
You are correct in saying that working in any situation, SATA or otherwise is unwise unless you have a backup in place. SATA controllers do work in various RAID modes, the difference will be the need for more drives when doing this. Don't be afraid of SATA just be smart!
One of the biggest features we implemented this year (finally the controllers were fast enough) was to split up our 24 drive units into 2 12 drive arrays, the renders can be dumped onto the RAID protected array, while I/O with plenty of thruput is happening on the other (simultaneously), all using SATA.
Again, it's important to work with someone who knows what they are doing.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by JeremyG on Jul 8, 2006 at 9:45:37 pm
Agreed, Ramona. I had a SATA RAID from GVS that was fantastic, but it was not $3000 from ProMax. It's has a prebuilt, pretested, hardware RAID that happened to have SATA drives inside.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Ramona Howard on Jul 10, 2006 at 5:52:02 pm
Andy,
We are using 3Ware and these give us a variety of options for configuration, depending on the customers needs.
We are doing everything from a single card in either RAID0 or RAID5 to multiple (up to 3) cards in a system either running separate arrays or arrays striped in RAID0 or RAID5.
A software RAID will get the job done, given you have enough drives (depending on format) but the ideal solution is to let the hardware do the job.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 8, 2006 at 10:16:24 pm
[JeremyG]"Walter, 10 or more drives at RAID 0 is not what I would do in your situation. I know I might get lambasted for saying so, but at a shop like yours where you are working all the time, overnight renders, etc etc a protected RAID is what you need. Has your Medea ever lost a drive? Even one? Imagine if that happened in your RAID 0 4TB array"
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Bob Zelin on Jul 9, 2006 at 5:47:34 pm
Everyone here is correct - SATA is cheap, and it is intriging because of this (and I use it all the time), but there is no RAID protection like from companies like Medea and HUGE Systems. Both companies offer RAID 3 protection, and both products are excellent (and more expensive). In contrast to this, I just received a call (Sunday 7/9/06) from WFTV in Orlando - their Apple XServe RAID (raid 5) lost a drive, and it will not do the rebuild with the replacement drive. SO - if you have more money to spend, stick with companies like HUGE and MEdea.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Ramona Howard on Jul 10, 2006 at 5:41:08 pm
Bob,
We have been shipping using 3Ware controllers for close to 2 years now and they offer RAID5 mode and just like Medea, Huge and others RAID all works the same :). Not familiar with XServe and why there is an issue but SATA and RAID is pretty straight forward, given you know what your doing.
(After initial testing of a slew of controllers we went with 3Ware because of their roadmap for development and customer support)
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by moodyglasgow on Jul 9, 2006 at 10:44:11 pm
We had a string of bad luck once where 2 seperate drives went down in the span of 2 weeks. It was the first time I realized how important protected storage was.
Ever since then, when asked if we should spend the extra money for that little bit of protection, the answer will always be yes.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Ramona Howard on Jul 8, 2006 at 5:07:04 pm
Walter,
We have used both Hitachi and WD and both are great. We are shipping with WD RAID Edition at the moment but are not tied to drives with what we do. Abuse is a daily thing around here.....our customers are hitting drives very hard, in fact one studio is throwing an entire render farm at the box and getting sustained thruput (this is in 4:4:4 RGB) and SATA has held up as expected (and it keeps getting better).
SATA may give the illusion of "hey I can do this myself", and if you consider yourself a systems expert you possibly can but if your looking for reliable thruput 24/7 follow Bobs lead on the MAC side. As with anything in these workflows what works for one thing may not work for another so it's important to find someone you can trust that can look at your overall workflow not just that you need a particular thruput.
Medea products have always held up well for us and the new Ciprico stuff rocks (we are announcing support shortly for their products).
Walter, feel free to email me off the forum if you need any further details as I'm always happy to share with a friend.
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Tim on Jul 8, 2006 at 7:05:48 pm
Hey Ramona,
Could you send me your contact info, as well? I would love to look at what you have to offer...and get some quotes.
Sincerely,
Tim Baker
Chameleon Mobile Video Productions
(239)849-3295
"It is not the light at the end of the tunnel that we should seek...it is the courage to take the next step in the dark that we must find."
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Tim on Jul 8, 2006 at 7:07:45 pm
Sorry...if you want off board contacat...
tim@chameleonmvp.com
Tim Baker
Chameleon Mobile Video Productions
(239)849-3295
"It is not the light at the end of the tunnel that we should seek...it is the courage to take the next step in the dark that we must find."
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Oliver Peters on Jul 10, 2006 at 12:45:44 pm
Some alternate suggestions ....
If you want bullet-proof and mission-critical, look at Facilis and 1st Design (1 Beyond). For back-up, instead of FW800, look at the Rev PRO systems from GV. 35GB to a cartridge (rated for 30 years) and there's an 7-cartridge Autoloader drive as well. Drives connect via USB2 or FW400.
Sincerely,
Oliver
Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
www.oliverpeters.com
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by walter biscardi on Jul 10, 2006 at 12:49:42 pm
[Oliver Peters]"For back-up, instead of FW800, look at the Rev PRO systems from GV. 35GB to a cartridge (rated for 30 years) and there's an 7-cartridge Autoloader drive as well. Drives connect via USB2 or FW400."
35GB cartridges aren't going to do me much good when I have at least 1TB to back up at any one time. When I say backup, I simply mean immediate backup. Long term storage is done on removeable SATA drives if the client wants that. For short term, project based backup, a 500GB - 1TB Firewire drive works perfectly.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
"I reject your reality and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters
Re: Kona2 and ability to do Uncompressed HD by Oliver Peters on Jul 10, 2006 at 1:01:50 pm
[walter biscardi]"35GB cartridges aren't going to do me much good when I have at least 1TB to back up at any one time. "
I would tend to agree, but I'm of the school that camera tapes are still a better archive. The 35GB cartridges seem viable for all the non-TC based material. I work with one place that tries to use FW drives loaded with B-Roll footage for continuing ongoing projects. They are starting to find that juggling storage is actually just as cumbersome as simply recapturing from edited selects reels. Hence the value of solid, true RAID-protected shared storage for this type of work. ... But that's a different topic.
Sincerely,
Oliver
Oliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
www.oliverpeters.com
