Drive configuration for Video editing (Adobe cc)

[thestudentisrea]

Making sure I understand proper drive utilization for video editing.

So, I need a fast drive for the media cache, right? Is that the most important bit? How important is fast drive for the boot? I've read that it is, but I can't see anywhere WHY it is. Isn't everything I need from the boot drive already in ram when running?

Trying to avoid bottlenecks, so which drives exactly need to be separate? For instance, do I need one drive for the boot, one for the media cache, and a third to write to for renders? Can that drive be the same as the one hosting my footage? Is it slowing down trying to read and write to same drive?

Thx.

 

[wonderspark]

The boot drive doesn't matter, but many like an SSD here because it makes the boot time and launch time so quick. You're correct that an HDD is fine here.

I personally have a very fast RAID (over 700MB/sec sustained) volume for my main media and 'scratch' media, which in Adobe means the all previews and captured audio / video. For my cache files, I use a third RAID volume that sustains 220MB/sec. I also limit Adobe Premiere to only 26GB, leaving 6GB free for other processes in background, which seems to completely eliminate freezes and crashes.

I've found that with this disk setup and my 6-core 32GB RAM in a 2009 Mac Pro, I can play files directly on the timeline from DSLRs (Canon 5D MkII, Nikon D7000) or other footage such as EX3 without renders or previews, in layers and with most effects, in full resolution.

I found this setup works for me through a lot of testing my own personal workflow, and recommend the same for all editors. You may find something that works even better, but for me, this has made my system stable, consistent and transparent.