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Building video-audio system...

H

Harpoucho

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 7, 2008
7
1
Hello from a new Mac user.
I just switched to Mac from PC, and I'm trying to build a system for video editing and audio production.
I just received my Mac Pro (2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 16 GB memory, ATI HD 2600), my question is about hard drives choice...I need 3 1Tb drives in Raid for data storage and I was thinkin about Samsung Spinpoint F1 (but I heard some bad news about failure with this drive), WD Caviar Black, WD Caviar Green or...?
I would like to know your opinions about these drives in a Final Cut system.

And another question ( but I dont know if this is the wrong section to post it): how to optimize Leopard for maximum performance in video editing system?
Thanks in advance

H
 
Harpoucho said:
Hello from a new Mac user.
I just switched to Mac from PC, and I'm trying to build a system for video editing and audio production.
I just received my Mac Pro (2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 16 GB memory, ATI HD 2600), my question is about hard drives choice...I need 3 1Tb drives in Raid for data storage and I was thinkin about Samsung Spinpoint F1 (but I heard some bad news about failure with this drive), WD Caviar Black, WD Caviar Green or...?
I would like to know your opinions about these drives in a Final Cut system.

And another question ( but I dont know if this is the wrong section to post it): how to optimize Leopard for maximum performance in video editing system?
Thanks in advance

H
Click to expand...

The problem with most new large hard drives is that there is a high failure rate period on the drives. Doesn't matter who you go with.

Now I would recommend Seagate 1TB drives, just put 3 Seagate 1TBs in a Mac Pro and they work amazingly well. I would also recommend that you get them from ZipZoomFly.com. They package the drives way better than newegg does so you have a great chance on not get a hard drive that is dead on arrival (DOA).

As for your second question, I not sure, Leopard is already pretty optimized for media related work, but I am sure its possible. RAID and RAM are big components, so is Video Cards.

-iGrant
 
i just got a seagate 1tb and it's only been a week or so, but no probs so far.

you don't really need to do anything to optimize OSX.
 
Cave Man said:
You might have better luck posting in the Digital Video forum.

Personally, I don't buy WD drives as all three desktops that I've bought have failed prematurely. I only buy Samsung and Seagate (and am indifferent to Hitachi).
Click to expand...

I like Samsung F1 too, but I have read here on MacRumors Forum about failure when they are connected upside down inside Mac Pro.
On NewEgg best rating goes to WD Caviar 1Tb....but now I read here many users referring failure with these drives.
Damn, choice will be really hard...

H
 
Harpoucho said:
I like Samsung F1 too, but I have read here on MacRumors Forum about failure when they are connected upside down inside Mac Pro.
On NewEgg best rating goes to WD Caviar 1Tb....but now I read here many users referring failure with these drives.
Damn, choice will be really hard...

H
Click to expand...

The problem is the amount of data in a little space. Honestly the way to go is going to be SSD however cost per gb is really high. I am upgrading my wife to SSD because our cat keeps jumping on her laptop(poor cat is blind) and keeps damaging the internal hard drive.

I still waiting for them to come out with 3.5 SSD. The problem with large hard drives is the amount of data stored in a small space. 1TB hard drives just have a ton of room for errors. Hence why I say, no matter what drives you buy, bacck up your data onto DVD.

-iGrant
 
chromatronic said:
You mean you bought those 16 go of ram from Apple ???
Click to expand...

LOL...! I bought it from TransIntl. Maybe I could be a Mac newbie, not a complete idiot. :D

iGrant said:
The problem with large hard drives is the amount of data stored in a small space. 1TB hard drives just have a ton of room for errors.
-iGrant
Click to expand...

Do you mean is better to buy 500 or 640 Gb drives?

H
 
Harpoucho said:
LOL...! I bought it from TransIntl. Maybe I could be a Mac newbie, not a complete idiot. :D



Do you mean is better to buy 500 or 640 Gb drives?

H
Click to expand...

I find anything larger than 500gb is going to be hit or miss. I had two 1TB drives fail on me within 2 weeks, but that being said I installed 3 1TB drives in my Dad's Mac Pro and they are going great.

I like 500 personally, good price and really reliable.

-iGrant
 
Audio / Video System

I also have two Seagate 1Tb drives one is two months old and the other is 1 week old.
Newegg, source for second one, packaged very well and 109.00 inc ship.







MP 2.8Ghz 10Gb Ram, 2- 22" Dell monitors, FCS2, AWESOME!
First MP failed after 1week. Returned for full refund and repurchased 2 weeks later and so far all is great! Now I don't even want to turn the old PC on.

Big learning curve from PC to MAC but so far worth it.:)
 
Video Editing and audio production I have the exact same setup as you, except i bought the nvidia 8800GT.

I would buy a ATI 3870, it run all of you pro apps much quicker, look to barefeats for stats

Good on you on the transinternational ram, ihave the same config and it's blazing fast.

First off what software are you going to be running just Final Cut or Logic as well?

Hard drives:

Boot Drive WD Raptor 300GB is the best drive out at the moment
2nd Drive: Audio drive.... Seagate Barracuda 7200.11
3rd Drive: Video Drive.... Samsung F1
4th Drive: Back up Drive Partition 300 Gb for Carbon Copy Cloner for boot Drive and the remaining 700Gb for Time machine for your audio and Video Drives

5th Drive Take out your drive you got with your macpro and get a caddy from OWC with Esata and firewire800, this can be your download drive

Tips for Final cut......

Make a image copy of all of the DVDs before you install and mount the drives and install from the images...HEAPS quicker than doing it from the disks and when Snow leopard arrives you'll be happy you made the backups

If you aren't doing more than HDV don't worry about Raid you wont need it, if you need to do 1080P etc, invest in a Areca sas card and a monster 8 drive hard drive beast from a san/sas builder

I've found i get better performance with 1 single drive rather than 2 drives and three drives in raid 0 is ridiculous for the possibility of loosing one drive and loosing all of your work
 
SAS Drives and RAID

I have an 8 core 3.2 GHz machine with 16GB Ram and 7TB of storage.

If you want to work in HD video, you need a fast hardware Raid system.

I've been working with TB drive w/o Raid and they work, but not as well as a faster drive system.

I'm building an eternal case right now to fill with TB drives. My plan is to upgrade to 4 SAS drives with Apples Raid card, and put two more TB drives in the second optical bay, using the two extra on board SATA connectors, with a bit of extra vibration dampening because mixing drive types is not a good idea. Then I'll stuff all my seagate TB drives into my new external enclosure.

You can start like me and then upgrade like I plan to, or else bite the bullet and go whole hog right out of the gate.

The benefit of waiting, is they might come up with larger capacity SAS drives later on.

All this is for HD video. you don't need anything fancy for audio.
 
Harpoucho said:
Hello from a new Mac user.
I just switched to Mac from PC, and I'm trying to build a system for video editing and audio production.
I just received my Mac Pro (2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 16 GB memory, ATI HD 2600), my question is about hard drives choice...I need 3 1Tb drives in Raid for data storage and I was thinkin about Samsung Spinpoint F1 (but I heard some bad news about failure with this drive), WD Caviar Black, WD Caviar Green or...?
I would like to know your opinions about these drives in a Final Cut system.

And another question ( but I dont know if this is the wrong section to post it): how to optimize Leopard for maximum performance in video editing system?
Thanks in advance

H
Click to expand...

When it come to video work. securing your data (work) is the utmost importance, since the last thing you'd want is slow, dodgy or possibly faulty drives. Personally if your budget allows it, I'd would invest into a raid system, preferably hardware based and one that supports RAID5 or better yet, RAID6. From this you'll get both high data rates and redundancy.
 
UltraNEO* said:
When it come to video work. securing your data (work) is the utmost importance, since the last thing you'd want is slow, dodgy or possibly faulty drives. Personally if your budget allows it, I'd would invest into a raid system, preferably hardware based and one that supports RAID5 or better yet, RAID6. From this you'll get both high data rates and redundancy.
Click to expand...

+1

http://www.dulcesystems.com/html/pro_dq.html
http://maxxdigital.com/shop/index.php?cPath=58_104
http://www.cineraid.com/products_editpro8.htm
http://www.dulcesystems.com/index.html
 
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