How to compile a huge project

Sweetie said:

Umm, ok. This is kind of turning into a h44 thread though.

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okay thanks but I've also heard some of these drives are big endian and some are little endian which one is better for me ?

In seriousness though, you didn't include a link that I think you intended. Not sure why high RPM would be bad, I'd be interested in reading that. I've never heard anything about it.

ItDonnedOnMe said:

I haven't attempted to use USB3 for editing yet, so I can't really address it's suitability for the task.

I have been editing on a macbook with external drives since 2009 with no problems though - it's really not that big a deal. I still use firewire 800, as that's what I have invested in for the drives. I've worked on a 2+ hour documentary edit from 100+ hours of source footage on this setup.

You don't need super fast drives - personally I'd stay away from the small portable bus powered drives though. Any 3.5" single or multi-drive enclosure should work, thunderbolt, fw800 or (theoretically) USB3 should be fast enough for most use.

You have to start with knowing what format you're planning to edit with - that will define your bandwidth needs. Once you know that you just need a drive that can sustain that speed behind a bus that has enough bandwidth to max out the drive.

So - what format are you shooting, and what format do you intend to use for editing?

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Mostly h.264 unfortunately with the camera we use. But I'm going to experiment with raw for a potential night scene soon.

I think the general consensus though is that this is doable. I think my main problem with this thread is that my only external hard drive right now is USB 2 so I know how slow that is and it worried me.

Raw is a the only place where you're likely to run into speed issues, but you're also not likely to be editing it directly - you'll generate prores proxies to edit with, and only use the actual raw files once you reach the grading stage.

So with h.264 you're probably looking at anywhere from 28 megabits/second (AVCHD) up to maybe 100Mbs at the high end. Divide by 8 to get megabytes/sec - that's 3.5MB/s - 12.5MB/s. Most modern 3.5" drives can sustain well over 100 MB/s, so you've got plenty of overhead for playback of multiple simultaneous streams.

USB 2's issue is that it can't maintain high speeds steadily over long periods of time, so it's completely unsuitable for video, no matter how fast the drive is. USB 3 has reportedly solved this issue, but like I said - no personal experience with it.

Personally I'd recommend something like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...olt_external_enclosure-_-22-154-667-_-Product

3 TB for $279, thunderbolt & USB3, plenty of speed. I've run LaCie drives for years with no issues. It may seem like more capacity than you need, but it's always better to have too much than too little. Another consideration is that drives tend to slow down as they approach their capacity limits - you generally want to keep the drive no more than 3/4 full, so it's good to have excess capacity.

My school uses 2tb lacie drives. They work nicely for working directly off of. The one I use does require external power though.

Sorry I missed the link. Here it is. As I said before, I don't profess to understand what it's saying fully.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-higher-rpm-hard-drives-rip-you-off/

I wouldn't say that article is particularly relevant in this context; they're addressing drives that go beyond the typical desktop speeds (5400 - 7200 rpm). The metric they are comparing (IOPS) doesn't really matter for editing in a single workstation setup, and the price differential between 5400 and 7200 rpm drives isn't particularly significant compared to jumping up to 10,000 or higher.

The main metric that matters is read/write speeds - primarily read, as that's what needs to happen steadily to provide smooth playback. In general, at a given capacity, a 7200 rpm drive will have higher read speeds than a 5400 rpm drive. That said, many 5400 rpm drives have plenty of speed for editing, and you really just need to look at the performance of a specific drive to make sure it meets your needs as there are a lot of factors involved. For everyday editing of compressed video, any drive that has a sustained read speed over 100 megabytes/second should be sufficient.