Let's talk about Computer for Scarlet

[Brian Iannone]

When I get to my editing PC I'll look up the REDCODE. I'm sure it was the lowest compression.
Yes I'm dropping the R3D file in my timeline and editing that. No transcoding or importing or injesting or digesting or regurgitating of any sort, PURE RAW R3D files. Editing in Vegas and its the same for Premier.

If you have a relatively new PC do the test for yourself. Download the trial version of Vegas 11 or Premier and drop your RED footage in there let me know how it works out for you.
Here is a link. Download the 64bit version if that's what your OS is.
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/vegaspro

I see. And you're editing files that are being sourced from a single disk?

 

[Arash Monjazeb]

I'm running AMD Phenom II (x4) quad-core 3.00 GHz, 4GB RAM, GeForce GTX 460
This setup is weak compared to Tom's gaming PC and I'm running fine for R3D 4K editing.

You don't need a kick ass PC but it helps

 

[Arash Monjazeb]

I see. And you're editing files that are being sourced from a single disk?

Exactly. I have an OS disk and then my video source disk. I recomend having a render disk as well for your final renders; it speeds up the rendering process.

 

[Brian Iannone]

I'm speaking from 15 years of IT work, having installed and managed many multimillion dollar corporate data centers. Even a $50,000 RAID server from HP had HD failures, sometimes two or three disks in the same week. Luckly they crashed one day apart so I was able to replace the crashed drive before the next one failed. Even a million dollar IBM SAN solutions had HD failures. The difference it that with these products you get immediate and reliable notification that a drive has failed and in some cases you can get early warning that the health of a drive is degrading, and replace it before it crashes.
But these low budget RAID solutions that do not provide you with the necessary warnings are disasters waiting to happen.

I never recommended using a low-budget RAID solution. If you look back to the previous posts in this thread, Ryan asked for thoughts about striping two 1 TB drives together in a RAID 0 setup. You recommended against doing that and I stated that I disagree with you. This discussion continued from there. However, I never recommended anyone to use a low-budget RAID solution. If I were to recommend a RAID setup, I would say to go with a $1,000 RAID controller from LSI with between two to four drives in RAID 0 with a mirrored backup, or a five to six drive array in RAID 10. A $1,000 RAID controller from LSI will absolutely alert you when a drive fails, and will switch to the parity disk automatically if configured properly. In fact, most RAID controllers in that price range have SMART monitoring and will alert you before the drive fails.

 

[Ryan Sauve]

You guys are a wealth of information! Really appreciate all the feedback you've shared with us.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Given the death of FCP 7 I am watching specs suggestions of pc systems with interest. I love Apple Mac Pro’s for their stability & without all the crap that existed with pc systems (past). But I suspect all that’s history. So with a new camera coming I'm looking to upgrade hardware .My problem is I am a creative person not a “hardware person” so the specs here are giving me a headache I’m across file standards, resolutions, but not across pc internal specs. Are there any good “of the shelf solutions” out there other than me doing a masters in computer science?

 

[Brian Iannone]

For anyone building an editing PC, here's my setup that I would recommend. Cost is about $4,000.

CPU: Intel i7-2600K overclocked to 4.9 GHz with a Corsair H80 liquid cooling system
RAM: 16 GB Corsair Dominator (overclocked to 1800 MHz)
Logic Board: ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z (make sure you use the Intel Z68 model if you're using the 2600K)
GPU: x2 PNY GTX 560 Ti (I plan on replacing with two GTX '600's when they're released in a few months)
PSU: Corsair Pro Series Gold AX1200 (1.2 kW, enough for however many drives you'd ever need)
Case: Corsair Obsidian 800D (enough room for however many drives you'd ever need)
Storage: 120 GB OCZ RevoDrive Series 3 for the boot volume (Windows) and six 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT's striped in RAID 0 for data

That said. I have an 8-core Mac Pro, so I have quite a bit of experience with that also. I can safely say that this PC beats the Mac Pro at literally everything.

 

[Brian Iannone]

Given the death of FCP 7 I am watching specs suggestions of pc systems with interest. I love Apple Mac Pro’s for their stability & without all the crap that existed with pc systems (past). But I suspect all that’s history. So with a new camera coming I'm looking to upgrade hardware .My problem is I am a creative person not a “hardware person” so the specs here are giving me a headache I’m across file standards, resolutions, but not across pc internal specs. Are there any good “of the shelf solutions” out there other than me doing a masters in computer science?

You could get a high-end Dell workstation. But, in my opinion, that wouldn't even come close to a custom-built PC.

 

[Arash Monjazeb]

I never recommended using a low-budget RAID solution. If you look back to the previous posts in this thread, Ryan asked for thoughts about striping two 1 TB drives together in a RAID 0 setup. You recommended against doing that and I stated that I disagree with you. This discussion continued from there. However, I never recommended anyone to use a low-budget RAID solution. If I were to recommend a RAID setup, I would say to go with a $1,000 RAID controller from LSI with between two to four drives in RAID 0 with a mirrored backup, or a five to six drive array in RAID 10. A $1,000 RAID controller from LSI will absolutely alert you when a drive fails, and will switch to the parity disk automatically if configured properly. In fact, most RAID controllers in that price range have SMART monitoring and will alert you before the drive fails.

Oh I agree with the solution you just proposed. That is a sound solution. But from what I saw from Ryan I didn't get the impression that he can/want to pony up thousands of dollars for a RAID solution.
From Ryan's system specs and presentation of his case, I got the impression he was throwing in two drives in his PC and using the onboard RAID controller or some cheap RAID controller to create a RAID 0. A needless disaster waiting to happen.

So if you got several thousands of dollars to throw at a RAID system with backups and a HD failure warning system then do it. If you don't then still with two HDs one as your video source drive and one as its backup.

It would be interesting to see a cost/performance analysis on these two setups.

Disclaimer
If you are doing a lot of commercials were you have more than two picture in picture video clips playing simultaneously, ie 4 or more clips playing simultaneously on the screen, and these clips are 4K clips, then the single hard drive solution will not give you the 24fps performance. You will need a RAID solution giving you at least 400Mb/s performance (100Mb/s per clip).
Potential work around: down-rez the clips to 720p or smaller. Anyhow had to throw that out there in case there is that one guy that runs into this scenario.
But If you're doing commercials then you can probably afford a good RAID system, unlike us indie film makers.

 

[Arash Monjazeb]

Given the death of FCP 7 I am watching specs suggestions of pc systems with interest. I love Apple Mac Pro’s for their stability & without all the crap that existed with pc systems (past). But I suspect all that’s history. So with a new camera coming I'm looking to upgrade hardware .My problem is I am a creative person not a “hardware person” so the specs here are giving me a headache I’m across file standards, resolutions, but not across pc internal specs. Are there any good “of the shelf solutions” out there other than me doing a masters in computer science?

What sort of projects are you going to work on? Short films and indie feature films, or commercial products needing lots of editing fx and multiple video clips flying around, motion graphics and other fx?

 

[Brian Iannone]

Oh I agree with the solution you just proposed. That is a sound solution. But from what I saw from Ryan I didn't get the impression that he can/want to pony up thousands of dollars for a RAID solution.
From Ryan's system specs and presentation of his case, I got the impression he was throwing in two drives in his PC and using the onboard RAID controller or some cheap RAID controller to create a RAID 0. A needless disaster waiting to happen.

So if you got several thousands of dollars to throw at a RAID system with backups and a HD failure warning system then do it. If you don't then still with two HDs one as your video source drive and one as its backup.

It would be interesting to see a cost/performance analysis on these two setups.

Disclaimer
If you are doing a lot of commercials were you have more than two picture in picture video clips playing simultaneously, ie 4 or more clips playing simultaneously on the screen, and these clips are 4K clips, then the single hard drive solution will not give you the 24fps performance. You will need a RAID solution giving you at least 400Mb/s performance (100Mb/s per clip).
Potential work around: down-rez the clips to 720p or smaller. Anyhow had to throw that out there in case there is that one guy that runs into this scenario.
But If you're doing commercials then you can probably afford a good RAID system, unlike us indie film makers.

In Ryan's case, striping two drives together using a cheap RAID controller is indeed a disaster waiting to happen. I agree with you. If Ryan were to purchase a good controller in the $1,000 range, he would not have a problem. However, you are correct. Ryan's post did sound like he is looking for a relatively inexpensive solution. In his case, using individual disks sounds like the only solution taking into account his budget.

 

[Björn Benckert]

maxx digital red rocket raid 8tb

maxx digital red rocket raid 8tb

Thats what we use.
It comes with pc express conector and goes nicly togheter with a mac book pro 17" and also it works with a stationary pc or mac...
in other words it can go out in the field an be the dit's dream mashine and also when back in the office work as a secure raid storage. that and the hdsdi up to 4k playout is to me the best option available to this date.

playing graded 4k out of a laptop in realtime is.. unreal, or was until this thing was made..
love it dearly.

 

[Mike Garrick]

What sort of projects are you going to work on? Short films and indie feature films, or commercial products needing lots of editing fx and multiple video clips flying around, motion graphics and other fx?

Most of my commercial work is in Broadcast Television commercials in both HD & SDI depends where it's going what countries blah, blah, blah. Yes you are right i have tonnes of graphics, animation elements, colour correction upto to 30 - 40 videolines deep. Never had a real problem just extended rendertimes if gets to big but there are solutions for managing that. The single scratch disk drive used for rendering is replaced on about every year but there cheap! Why have I ordered a 4K Scarlet i hear you say.....because I also do other stuff not so commercial.

 

[Brian Iannone]

Most of my commercial work is in Broadcast Television commercials in both HD & SDI depends where it's going what countries blah, blah, blah. Yes you are right i have tonnes of graphics, animation elements, colour correction upto to 30 - 40 videolines deep. Never had a real problem just extended rendertimes if gets to big but there are solutions for managing that. The single scratch disk drive used for rendering is replaced on about every year but there cheap! Why have I ordered a 4K Scarlet i hear you say.....because I also do other stuff not so commercial.

I still recommend a RAID setup if your budget allows for it.

 

[Mike Garrick]

Thanks Brian for the shopping list with PC specs may find some people to help source those bits in Australia & assemble. As after hearing bad things about new Avid MC6 looks like its Adobe land for me & from my understanding Premier runs better on a pc. Sigh farewell MacPros it was nice whilst it lasted ,

 

[AJ Aguirre]

Updated the original post with 2 of the recommendations thus far. Let's discuss this further and get a system dialed in that we can all build!

 

[JIM MALLON]

Is a possible option simply to process the Scarlets footage to high quality ProRes and edit it and out that at a high quality setting wiothout playing around with the original footage. I am wanting to do documenatary work so I need to store a large amount of footage or at least more than some. Will i lose a serious amount of quality if I go this route?

 

[Tom Wardrop]

I'd just like to give my two cents on this topic. First of all, let's talk about timing, as in when to buy or upgrade your PC. By the end of the year, we'll have the new Sandybridge-E processors from Intel. The line of products will include a couple of 6-core processors which core for core aren't much faster than existing the existing Sandybridge architecture, but a little faster none the less - the main advantage is obviously the two extra cores, so they'll be at least 50% - 60% faster clock-for-clock than an equivalent 4-core sandybridge processor. The other main advantage of Sandybridge-E is the extra PCI-e lanes which are quite important if you're thinking about dual-graphics cards and raid controllers which will potentially be bottlenecked by the 16 PCI-e lanes provided by ordinary Sandybridge. But if you can wait even longer, it'll be interesting to see what Ivy-bridge delivers in the first half of next year, though that's probably too long for most Scarlet owners to wait. The new series of graphics cards will be released later this year/early next year also, so I'd definitely be holding off a couple of months if you're trying to get the most out of your dollars.

Now moving onto RAID, it's definitely something to consider if you plan on playing multiple R3D clips at a time, though there's a couple of things I'd like to clear up. First of all, you'll want to run RAID 0. Data safety really isn't relative to RAID. Redundant RAID configurations like RAID 1 (mirrored) and RAID 5 (parity) are meant for systems where uptime is critical; for most video editors, they can afford to lose a couple of hours in replacing the hard-drive and restoring from backup. RAID is not a backup solution. You'll have to backup regardless of whether you have a redundant RAID or not, hence RAID 0 is the logical choice if performance is more critical than 24/7 uptime. Something else to discuss is RAID controllers. If RAID 0 is all you want, I wouldn't even bother with a RAID controller. I'd just run a software RAID in windows. You'll get at least 90% of the performance you'd get from a hardware RAID solution, but for free, plus you eliminate a potential point of failure - the RAID controller itself. My experience with software RAID has been good, so I assume it'll be as good for everyone else.

Now let's talk power supplies and cases. For power supplies, a quality 700 watt should be enough for anyone running a single GPU setup, and should be ample for 10+ hard-drives (each should peak at about only about 10 watts when under load). I'd only go higher if running a dual GPU setup, though even then only two of the highest end cards (like the GTX 580) would require anywhere near 1 kilowatt. Though you certainly can't do any harm by over-spec'ing your power supply. Remember, quality is more important than power rating. A quality 600w PSU will beat a cheap 700w PSU in every way, including total power delivery. As for cases, the things I value the most are practicality and cooling, in that order. I personally like Lian Li products. I like how they look, and they're very practical, plus they offer many accessories like hard-drive cages and other case modifications. For example, you could get a Lian-Li PC-9 case and a EX-H34 4-bay hot-swap drive cage to accommodate 8 easily accessible hard-drives and two optical drives (or one optical drive and an SSD). 8x 3TB + 1x 120GB SSD should be adequate for most RED users.

Finally, backup. I'd personally look into a QNAP solution. I've got 6-bay QNAP device populated with 6x 2TB hard-drives in a RAID 5 which I use for backup and shared storage. It gives me 10TB of storage with 1 redundant disk. One drive has already failed on me which put the RAID 5 to the test; it of course worked beautifully. It gives me protection against two levels of failure. I can lose a disk from my RAID 0 in my workstation and simultaneously lose a disk in my NAS, and still be able to get all my data back (I'd have to lose at least 3 disks at once to lose my data). It's quite an economical solution also. 10TB of redundant hassle-free storage for under $2000 AUD, and that was about 9 months ago. Something else worth mentioning is "previous versions" in Windows 7. I always allocate at least 10% of my disk to previous version information, which protects me against accidental deletion, overwriting, corruption, etc. If I accidentally overwrite a file for example but fail to relise until after the next backup has kicked in, then without previous versions I'd be screwed. With the previous versions feature however, I'm able to get that file back. So definitely something to consider having turned on for all your storage volumes.

If I was buying a machine for Scarlet, I'd be going for a 6-core Sandybridge-E processor, 16GB RAM, a total of 10TB storage to begin with (or 4x 3TB disks with the room for another 4 disks), and probably a mid-to-high end GPU like a single GTX 560, and a quality 650 watt PSU, though it really depends on your workflow and the applications you use as to whether a high-end GPU will help you or not. Such a system would probably come in at under $2000.

Anyway, I hope I've helped at least someone.

 

[Tom Wardrop]

Is a possible option simply to process the Scarlets footage to high quality ProRes and edit it and out that at a high quality setting wiothout playing around with the original footage. I am wanting to do documenatary work so I need to store a large amount of footage or at least more than some. Will i lose a serious amount of quality if I go this route?

The problem is once you've made that transition, you can no longer use the extra data stored in the original R3D files. You can't regrade, you can't use the extra resolution to crop out things on the edge of the clip, etc.

 

[Brian Iannone]

Well explained, Tom. You took the time to write the amount of info that none of us others were willing to.