Best way to configure SSDs

[kohlson]

SSDs are very affordable now, and come in different formats. I have a couple SATA SSDs and an NVMe (PCIe) on order. Does anyone have experience with the best way to configure a cMP for video editing? By "best" I mean best performance for import/export, and no lags while working on the timeline.

I think there are 3 categories of data/files: boot/apps, media, cache. So for example, is it best to have boot/apps on a SATA and media and cache on an NVMe? All of them on an NVMe? Each category on its own drive?

I work in FCPX and Resolve. But a friend with Adobe PP CS6 will want to know, too. Curious what people have, and what they think will work.

 

[iluvmacs99]

SSDs are very affordable now, and come in different formats. I have a couple SATA SSDs and an NVMe (PCIe) on order. Does anyone have experience with the best way to configure a cMP for video editing? By "best" I mean best performance for import/export, and no lags while working on the timeline.

I think there are 3 categories of data/files: boot/apps, media, cache. So for example, is it best to have boot/apps on a SATA and media and cache on an NVMe? All of them on an NVMe? Each category on its own drive?

I work in FCPX and Resolve. But a friend with Adobe PP CS6 will want to know, too. Curious what people have, and what they think will work.

You were not specific in describing which format of clips you are going to be working with; whether it be in interframe (h.264 codec) or in intraframe (Pro Res) and your final product either in intraframe or interframe. They are 2 different formats requiring different ways to manage your clips and editing the footage. For example, my Macbook Air without RAID 0 and only relying on its internal SSD, a Thunderbolt bridge (which runs around 100MB/s+ off my Mac Mini server as a read drive; same server connected to my cMP through a gigabit switch) and a USB 3 output hard drive smokes my cMP with SATA SSD Raid 0 and RAID HD 0 and a WD Black read HD drive in decoding and encoding. However, when I deal with intraframe footage in Pro Res or RAW, my cMP smokes my Macbook Air easily as it requires the least amount of encoding and decoding, but demanding throughput from all available media drives. Which means you need a media delivery system (SSD or HD) to maintain sustained throughput necessary to keep up with the flow of editing. A combination of 4 HDs in RAID 0 array is good enough to maintain a sustained read or write of about 500Mb/s, which is enough to work in 4K 10bit Pro Res @ 60fps. If you are working with 6K or 8K intraframe footage, then you would need to step up to the Highpoint RAID NVME which will allow you much higher throughput than a single PCIe NVMe will allow. Most people will use the Blackmagic disk test to check whether their media system is capable of maintaining sustained throughput for the media they are working with. You should only be concerned about the placement of your media in the best possible configuration to achieve high throughput based on your intraframe footage requirements. Having a higher performance system does not mean you are going to take advantage of it. Take a Ferrari for instance. In the German autobahn, the Ferrari will smoke most cars because it is allowed to flex its muscles without any restrictions. But in the middle of New York city in the peak of rush hour, most of the Ferrari's muscles will never be utilized. That's wasted resources that you will never to tap other than rightful bragging rights that you have. In the video world, this is the h.264 footage whereby the frames are highly compressed and you don't need as fast of a media system setup other than having some kind of hardware acceleration like Quicksync which is available on Intel Core i series and not in the Xeons. And h.264/h.265 acceleration is also built into the T2 security chip in the newer Macs and so it makes more sense that if a person will be spending more time editing h.264 footage and rendering the final output in h.264 is to focus on using an external renderer setup like Adobe Media Encoder or FFMPEG or in my case, use Davinci Resolve and output the final as archive to my Mini's network RAID drive and then use my Macbook Air as its h.264 rendering machine to final output in h.264 from the RAW archive from the network drive through a Thunderbolt bridge as my cMP is too slow to render the same footage in h.264 codec. But if you are working exclusively in 6K or 8K intraframe footage, then I would say the media should stay in NVMe in RAID 0 using Highpoint.

Hope this helps.

 

[ruslan120]

I have the following config on an iMac:

Internal: 1TB SSD (OS + main for video editing, NVMe will always be fastest) (1.5GB/s Write, 2.4GB/s Read)
USB-C: 2TB SSD (home directories here + large dashcam video edits) (600-850MB/s Write, 800MB/s Read)
USB 3.0: 2 x 4TB Hard Disks in RAID 0 (time machine, all videos go here after they're uploaded and are removed from the SSDs) (slow R/W)

In general a SATA SSD will be adequate for most video editing (unless you're working on very taxing, pro-level workflows). So putting your edits on the NVMe will be faster, but the SATA SSD should work fine as well if you'd rather keep the data separate.