check my DIT workstation

[Michael Morlan]

Hi guys,

I'm to the nuts/bolts of building an on-set DIT REDCine setup for a low-budget film. I've budgeted myself $3K for the workstation, external drive array, UPS, racks, etc. and could use some feedback. (Production pays for all media.) For now, I'd like you to poke holes in my choice of PC workstation.

My intent is:

• RAID1 for captured RED .RAW from CD and/or RED Drive
• once filled, splitting RAID1 & dupe into 3 HD copies
  • one on-set/near-line for potential recall of a non-circle takes
  • one sent to safe haven
  • one sent to post facility

• circle-takes duped to separate JBOD or RAID1 array and kept on-set/on-line with either:
  • gigE NAS/SAN to serve PC and Mac FCP workstation, or;
  • REDCine transcodes of circle-takes for Mac FCP system HD's

My intended data pipeline, presuming post facility accepts RED .RAW without need for transcoding, is;

RED CF/RED Drive
--------------------------------
PC REDCine Workstation:
-> CF/eSata reader
-> motherboard, hot-swap RAID1
-> upon filling, half RAID1 kept on-site, half shipped to safe haven
-> dupe w/checksum to HD or post facility
--------------------------------
External RAID (possible NAS or SAN) box:
-> circle-take dupe to on-line JBOD or RAID1 HD's w/checksum
-> circle-take dupe to editing Mac either RED .RAW or SD transcode
or Mac shares PC JBOD array via gigE (possible NAS?)

If post facility requires transcoding, I would duplicate my REDCine workstation to serve that alone. (The primary workstation would switch to transcoding at night.) Alternatively, the Mac workstation could handle transcoding.

PC REDCine Workstation Spec:

• Intel Core2Quad Q6600 Bx - 2.4GHz w/1066FSB
• ASUS Maximus Formula motherboard
• 4GB PC6400 DDR2 memory
• sufficent SATA 300 drives for the onboard RAID w/hot-swap trays
• Addonics SATA CF adapter (CF<-> SATA)
• Windows XP 32-bit (will only recognize 3GB mem)
• video card undecided and seems irrelevant for REDCine
• Antec Take 4 Rackmount - quiet, 450w PS

Thoughts, opinions? The above spec (without video card and I own WinXP already) is quoted at $1350 at my local Fry's. Confining my motherboard choices to ASUS, is there another MB you would recommend?

My head is still swimming over external drive boxes to serve the on-line circle-takes. Perhaps all I need is another PC workstation to serve the circle-takes that can also render when not serving. Essentially, I believe I seek;

• RAID 1
• eSATA or gigE NAS or SAN connection?
• 4 hot-swap SATA 300 drive bays
• rack mount
• low noise

Thanks for any input.

Michael

 

[laguun]

[*]video card undecided and seems irrelevant for REDCine

no, on windows you want a -strong- nvidia gpu. it makes a mayor difference for the redcine software. 8800 series are the "sweetspot" for the price (we are using quadros).

[*]RAID 1
Michael

if you have some budget to spend, go raid 6 with areca or a similar powerful raid.

[*]eSATA or gigE NAS or SAN connection?

both

also, if you don´t want to use dozens of terrabytes and do 4k, have a look at the cineform products.

 

[Cail Young]

My head is still swimming over external drive boxes to serve the on-line circle-takes.

Have a look at Wiebetech's RTX trayless SATA enclosures - don't know if they make a rackmount version but it's pretty slick if you're ripping drives in and out constantly.

 

[Michael Morlan]

Laguun, thanks. I got that backwards. I've added an NVidia 8800GTX to the spec.

Cail, I'm now considering keeping the circle-take serving RAID within the main PC (or a duplicate PC.) Perhaps, I'll add the Kingwin KF-4000-BK 4-bay, tray-less rack to insert in the front of the PC case. It fits four drives in a three-drive space and presents sata cables to my motherboard ports.

 

[MikeHedge]

Mike.

looks good. will you be out in Austin for SXSW?

what monitors are you using?

Mike Hedge

 

[Simon Baechler]

I'm most likely going to get a BSI M5 case. It's MicroATX with a built-in 15'' LCD screen in a portable and rugged aluminium alloy chassis.
It's $2345 with a P4 CPU (which I would replace). These systems are used by the army and NASA so they are reliable.
Here is the link:
http://www.bsicomputer.com/portable/pcatxm5/pcatxm5_intro.htm
The only downside (apart from the price) is that it only supports PS/2 power supplies which are hard to find.
The same case is available in Germany from mh-service for 2680€ (with ATX PSU).


For storage I'm going to go with these for smaller projects and transfer to the editing:
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ae4rcs25nsa.asp

I'm thinking about putting an LTO drive into the second drive bay. LTO is faster than a harddrive so if the editor has an LTO as well this would be the better option to transfer the footage.

 

[Jay A. Kelley]

I'm most likely going to get a BSI M5 case. It's MicroATX with a built-in 15'' LCD screen in a portable and rugged aluminium alloy chassis.
It's $2345 with a P4 CPU (which I would replace). These systems are used by the army and NASA so they are reliable.
Here is the link:
http://www.bsicomputer.com/portable/pcatxm5/pcatxm5_intro.htm
The only downside (apart from the price) is that it only supports PS/2 power supplies which are hard to find.
The same case is available in Germany from mh-service for 2680€ (with ATX PSU).


For storage I'm going to go with these for smaller projects and transfer to the editing:
http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ae4rcs25nsa.asp

I'm thinking about putting an LTO drive into the second drive bay. LTO is faster than a harddrive so if the editor has an LTO as well this would be the better option to transfer the footage.

I am not sure this case and it's size will support an 8800 card

 

[Shawn Nelson]

Don't forget a nice cart to put it on at location and a big nice UPS so you can keep safely downloading cards after grip & electric blow the fuses and have to go reset them.

 

[Michael Morlan]

Mike, I live in Austin so, yes, technically I'll be in town for SXSW. Now, whether I'll actually get to attend... :sad:

Simon, nice find with the ruggedized PC formfactor. I'd be concerned about it being big enough to support the horsepower I'm loading under the hood. I like the .25" disk array as well although some had commented about laptop drives being a bit less reliable than their larger brethren. That statement seems anecdotal for now. Of course your bank for buck is better with the larger drives.

Shawn, yep. I have the filmtools.com junior camera cart for the RED Package itself. Presently, I'm loading my entire station into a foam-padded rack-mount case. (I have to find one deep enough to handle the PC case. May require custom) I'll roll that around set on a hand truck, perhaps, or it will live in the camera truck.

 

[Michael Morlan]

Okay, on to the other elements of my DIT solution. (All this is predicated on the post facility being ready to take PC formatted drives or LTO-3 tapes.)

Monitor:

I'm convinced I can get a very fine image with the Dell 2407WFP-HC, suitable enough, with its 92% of NTSC color gamut, for on-set review and one-light grading as available in REDCine or Photoshop. In addition, I can monitor straight off the camera's HD-SDI via a Blackmagic HDLink. How does that scan with you guys?

Alternatively, I may go for broke with the HP Lp3065c 30" monster. This would serve very nice double-duty on my desktop at home. The NVidia 8800GTX interfaces quite nicely with this monitor's dual DVI connectors.

Either monitor will be mounted within a custom-built flight case and rest either on top of the 19" rack or to one side when I have the luxury of a work surface.

Power:

A Tripp Lite 1500L LCD UPS will provide clean and assured power on the set.

Network:

The PC provides two gigE connectors. One may be dedicated to the companion Macintosh editing setup. The other will be attached to a Netgear GS108 gigE switch. (I need to check into support for jumbo frames on all devices.)

I may also provide the set with WiFi connected to a Sprint EVDO card.

Carriage:

All but monitor will be mounted in a 19" rack like this:http://tinyurl.com/2w8jxm

This one is not deep enough to hold the Antec PC case which is 26" deep plus connections.

Other PC case choices:

StarTech.com RC4080S - 21" deep


Rack-mount drawer(s), KB/mouse, (and lots of paperwork) round out the package.

Thoughts, opinions?

Michael

 

[Chris Swartz]

What are you gonna do for noise problems. Have you heard the fans on a 8800gtx? Not to mention the tape drive.

One other question. Do you plan to capture that HD-SDI or just monitor it? Will you be able to capture and load footage onto the raid at the same time?

Chris

 

[R Fogg]

What are you gonna do for noise problems. Have you heard the fans on a 8800gtx? Not to mention the tape drive.

One other question. Do you plan to capture that HD-SDI or just monitor it? Will you be able to capture and load footage onto the raid at the same time?

Chris

There is quite a bit of variation in fan volume with the 8800 series - my evga?8800 gt is nearly silent.


Michael check out these cases http://www.rackmountsolutions.net/SKB_Shock_Mount_Case_Rack_30d.asp
they go to 30 inches deep but are pricey.

 

[conrad gaunt]

Heres an option for PCs/possibly Mac ->

You can get adapters that allow two PC/Mac (or possibly more) to share one monitor/keyboard/mouse. You just turn a switch and ,er, switch between which PC output you want to see (you can manually unplug/plug monitor of course, but that sucks). I think Belkin make such devices. I`ll find one and post a link. Not sure what they`re called. This would allow you to use two machines or more if needed, but share a monitor. If you need to drag equipment around this could make life a little easier for you (Even if you already have ten monitors).

Distributing tasks between multiple machines is undoubtly faster and cheaper than buying one super CPU machine, since CPU mhz/CPU Price ratios are not linear. ie, Four very basic PCs (with cheap processors) can all share a monitor, thus saving money, since a good monitor will cost more than a simple PC. When transcoding etc you could periodically check each PC hasn`t crashed, by turning a switch to see their output. This way your money is buying you time/speed, not extra, possibly unnecessary, monitors (which can`t be conveniently stashed under a desk out the way a like PC/mac box can).

NB, use same brand (ie Intel/AMD) for all machines when setting up distributed processing stations, since different processors can produce different floating point values, which MAY produce slight visible differences, which MAY be an issue. Newtek said it was with Lightwave 3D render nodes, and said users should be aware of this.

ah, heres a link to a 4-way KVM switch thingy (i found one):
http://www.comms-express.com/pd-1065299867.htm?categoryId=180

 

[Dylan Reeve]

My intent is:

• RAID1 for captured RED .RAW from CD and/or RED Drive
• once filled, splitting RAID1 & dupe into 3 HD copies
  • one on-set/near-line for potential recall of a non-circle takes
  • one sent to safe haven
  • one sent to post facility

• 
  
  My hesitation with that is the splitting of the RAID set. While you certainly can split a RAID 1 set into it's component drives, my advice from people who know a lot more about these things than me is that it's a BadIdea(TM). Something about unexpected behaviour with a damaged RAID set.
  
  The advice I have is that it would be better to maintain separate stand-alone drives and use a software mirroring tool to keep them in sync (so you copy to drive 0 and a separate process duplicates that data to other drives in the set). You end up with the same level of redundancy with mirrored copies of data, but you have drives that can stand-alone without being in a 'damaged' state.

 

[Michael Morlan]

RFO - good question about fan noise. There isn't a high-horsepower system anywhere that won't be blowing air across the components. This system is designed to be near-set, not on sets where environmental noise is an issue. For exteriors, it could probably sit closer in a camera tent. My laptop will serve as a subsidiary data collection setup when I'm needed on a quiet set.

Ronx - monitor switches rock. I use one at home to switch between two to four PC's in my rack. I'm upgrading to a 14-unit rack which will leave room for a second PC, if needed and a switch is definitely in order then. Not sure how to switch between Mac/PC with the same keyboard/mouse, however.

Sycophant - Interesting point about the RAID versus simple duplicate drives. I can reduce the overhead of a RAID and, with checksummed dupes, get the same results.

Michael

 

[R Fogg]

This one is not deep enough to hold the Antec PC case which is 26" deep plus connections.


Michael

Michael, I think the antec is only 21" deep as well so any case with a 26 inch rail to rail should be plenty for the case and connections

 

[Michael Morlan]

RFO, the Antec Take 4 specs read as "12.1" (H) x 26.3" (W) x 22.5" (D)." But, I doubt the case is 26" wide in a 19" rack and looking at the case at Fry's it certainly is deeper than it is wide. (I didn't have a tape measure at the time.) In addition, the first thing I would do is break off the flip-down front panel to provide ready access to all the drive bays.

 

[Chris Swartz]

Michael,

I have the case in front of me and it is

19" from mounting bracket edge to edge (Width)
17" from edge to edge of computer (Width)

20.5" from mounting bracket to back of computer (Deep)
22" from front of handles on bracket to back of computer (Deep)

7" High

BTW are you looking for a deal? PM me.

Chris

 

[Simon Baechler]

Simon, nice find with the ruggedized PC formfactor. I'd be concerned about it being big enough to support the horsepower I'm loading under the hood. I like the .25" disk array as well although some had commented about laptop drives being a bit less reliable than their larger brethren. That statement seems anecdotal for now. Of course your bank for buck is better with the larger drives.

They also have full ATX cases with 20'' screens. I'm trying to stay lightweight so I decided on a compact case with a separate raid if more than 750GB is needed. I spent this summer lugging a 535 with big zoom around in the swiss mountains. I was hoping with the Red and it's downloading system you would not be killing your back anymore ;-)

There are now server versions of 2.5'' hard drives.

Simon

 

[Michael Morlan]

I have the case in front of me and it is
19" from mounting bracket edge to edge (Width)
17" from edge to edge of computer (Width)
20.5" from mounting bracket to back of computer (Deep)
22" from front of handles on bracket to back of computer (Deep)

Odd, that. I wonder if their declared dimensions are that of the shipping box... Ah, well. I've already ordered the StarTech RC4080S which better suits my needs. It has eight 5-1/4" bays up front. I'll insert the Kingwin KF-4000-BK Multi-Bay Rack into three of them.

Everything will now go into a Road Ready RR14UAD24W 24" deep, shock-mounted rack.

Michael