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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Let's talk about Computer for Scarlet

@ Tom

I agree with you on all of your points, for a typical user. I personally built my PC (two of them, actually) based on Sandy Bridge, but did so planning to upgrade to Ivy Bridge in March. I don't think Sandy Bridge E is worth the upgrade. Also, Windows software RAID (Dynamic Disks), as you state, is a very good idea. That is what I currently use on my 18 TB and 12 TB arrays. I'd recommend that to most SCARLET users. For anyone using a Mac Pro, I would recommend using the software RAID built into Mac OS X (configurable in Disk Utility). Regarding power supplies, I suppose 700 watts would be adequate for a typical SCARLET user. However, for only a small difference in price, I would recommend upgrading to a 1.2 kW one.

@ Everyone else

Total price on the workstation is ultimately going to depend on the quality of the components that you use. You could build a computer with the specs I listed earlier for much less if you don't use the most expensive components. It really all depends on your budget and how long you plan on using the PC before upgrading individual components.
 
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This is what I'm planning to get, hopefully I can get by without a rocket card for my upcoming Scarlet-X:

Processor : Two 3.46GHz Intel Xeon X5690 (24 cores)
Motherboard: Dual Xeon Nehalem Motherboard
Memory: 24GB DDR3-1333 Triple Channel (6 x 4GB)
Graphics: GeForce GTX580 3GB
Primary Hard Drive: 500GB SATA2 (7200rpm : 16MB cache)
Operating System: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Hard Drive 1: 2TB SATA2 (7200rpm : 64MB cache)
Hard Drive 2: 2TB SATA2 (7200rpm : 64MB cache)
Hard Drive 3: 2TB SATA2 (7200rpm : 64MB cache)
 
Brian Iannone said:
However, for only a small difference in price, I would recommend upgrading to a 1.2 kW one.
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It obviously won't hurt to have more power available, though I wouldn't want to see someone sacrifice quality for the sake of going for a higher power rating. Once you get to 1.2kw the power supplies themselves begin to get bigger which can pose a problem in some cases. I'd probably always stick to a sub-1k PSU for anything but the highest-end multi-GPU setups. There's also the question of efficiency. Power supplies normally perform most efficiently between 50% and 80% load so you don't want to have too much overhead. Considering such a build would probably consume at most 200 watts when idle, 1.2kw may actually chew more power than a lower capacity but more efficient PSU. Though this is all pretty irrelevant. How much you care about power efficiency probably depends on how broke you are after buying the Scarlet. $10 off your quarterly power bill may make the world of difference :)
 
Tom Wardrop said:
It obviously won't hurt to have more power available, though I wouldn't want to see someone sacrifice quality for the sake of going for a higher power rating. Once you get to 1.2kw the power supplies themselves begin to get bigger which can pose a problem in some cases. I'd probably always stick to a sub-1k PSU for anything but the highest-end multi-GPU setups. There's also the question of efficiency. Power supplies normally perform most efficiently between 50% and 80% load so you don't want to have too much overhead. Considering such a build would probably consume at most 200 watts when idle, 1.2kw may actually chew more power than a lower capacity but more efficient PSU. Though this is all pretty irrelevant. How much you care about power efficiency probably depends on how broke you are after buying the Scarlet. $10 off your quarterly power bill may make the world of difference :)
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I suppose for a typical SCARLET user, you are correct. Sub-1 kW will probably be enough. I was just suggesting what I would do (and already did). =)
 
Brian Iannone said:
@ Tom

I agree with you on all of your points. I personally built my PC (two of them, actually) based on Sandy Bridge, but did so planning to upgrade to Ivy Bridge in March. I don't think Sandy Bridge E is worth the upgrade. Also, Windows software RAID (Dynamic Disks), as you state, is a very good idea. That is what I currently use on my 18 TB and 12 TB arrays. I'd recommend that to most SCARLET users. For anyone using a Mac Pro, I would recommend using the software RAID built into Mac OS X (configurable in Disk Utility). Regarding power supplies, I suppose 700 watts would be adequate for a typical SCARLET user. However, for only a small difference in price, I would recommend upgrading to a 1.2 kW one.

@ Everyone else

Total price on the workstation is ultimately going to depend on the quality of the components that you use. You could build a computer with the specs I listed earlier for much less if you don't use the most expensive components. It really all depends on your budget and how long you plan on using the PC before upgrading individual components.
Click to expand...

Brian, I can't believe that you're 17 man. Unreal. Again, thanks for all the great info. As a guy who's worked in the IT industry for years and has always built his own PC, it's refreshing to get a different perspective as I've never considered putting a machine together that was capable of editing anything more than t2i footage. I've got a laundry list of stuff to look at going forward and it's nice to know that, since I put together my own machines, I don't have to start from scratch and can upgrade components as needed and as funds come in. And thanks to everyone, for that matter, who's put in their 2 cents regarding PC configs for RED editing. This is new territory for me and it's nice to hear from you seasoned veterans about your experiences.
 
Ryan Sauve said:
Brian, I can't believe that you're 17 man. Unreal.
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Lol. =) Thank you! I take that as a compliment. :) I'm glad I could help a little. I think it's really great that we as RED users have forums like this where we can discuss topics and gather opinions from an audience of thousands. This is the first time I've ever actively participated in a forum, and I really find it amazing. :) It's been quite interesting being able to discuss with all the professionals here!
 
Well if you're not in a hurry you could always wait till Ivy Bridge comes out early next year... which is not too far away
Intel says they will support native 4K playback and stuff like that :o
 
Brian Iannone said:
For anyone using a Mac Pro, I would recommend using the software RAID built into Mac OS X (configurable in Disk Utility).
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I would not recommend using the software RAID in OS X, especially Lion. I own a 12-core Mac Pro with 48GB of RAM and found the software RAID poses a lot of performance issues; I narrowed it down to corrupting data on two drives. I would spend the $650 or so for the Mac Pro RAID Card or the CalDigit one.

Secondly as to whether to use RAID or not, if you do use RAID I would not use RAID 0, I've had more than one hard drive fail after grading hours of 4K footage on them over the past two years, and if one drives fails in RAID 0, they're all worthless. I would recommend a RAID 5 or RAID 0+1 and a good controller for both striping and redundancy. I use two 32TB Active Storage ActiveRAID units using RAID 5 and never had any loss of data and they are faster than a CalDigit HDOne 6TB in RAID 0.
 
Scott Frace said:
I would not recommend using the software RAID in OS X, especially Lion. I own a 12-core Mac Pro with 48GB of RAM and found the software RAID poses a lot of performance issues; I narrowed it down to corrupting data on two drives. I would spend the $650 or so for the Mac Pro RAID Card or the CalDigit one.

Secondly as to whether to use RAID or not, if you do use RAID I would not use RAID 0, I've had more than one hard drive fail after grading hours of 4K footage on them over the past two years, and if one drives fails in RAID 0, they're all worthless. I would recommend a RAID 5 or RAID 0+1 and a good controller for both striping and redundancy. I use two 32TB Active Storage ActiveRAID units using RAID 5 and never had any loss of data and they are faster than a CalDigit HDOne 6TB in RAID 0.
Click to expand...

Disk Utility's software RAID (and pretty much the entire system) in Mac OS X 10.7 Lion has become unstable. I've found that my entire system (on multiple Mac Pro, iMac, Mac Mini and MacBook Air computers) experience performance issues on Lion. I would tend to agree with you in that software RAID is unstable. However, when the entire rest of the system is unstable, it doesn't really make too much of a difference. :-) Hopefully, Apple will fix some of the performance issues soon.

I only recommend RAID 0 to people who want the highest performance out of their arrays and who can afford to have a second RAID 0 backup of the primary array. If that person cannot afford to have a complete second backup of the primary RAID 0 array, I'd recommend something like RAID 6.
 
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Disk Utilities software RAID may be stable, but without a hardware RAID card where is it pulling it's power from? The Mac Pro's CPU and RAM, not an issue when working with small H.264 or even ProRes files, but RAW 4K is another animal. Now if your transcoding and grading in 4K at the same time you RAM and CPU has to control all those applications, plus has allocate a buffer to the the data going to the RAID array. You will see a decrease in read/write performance. To most this drop probably doesn't matter. Also a hardware RAID card has a battery backup in case your not connected to a UPS and if the power was cut suddenly you won't lose your all your files due to a corrupt drive.

You can backup a RAID 0 with another RAID 0, but it requires at least 4 drives, where a RAID 5 does the same thing with three and rebuilds itself if a drive were to fail. RAID 6 is essentially the same as 5 except with one more drive solely for redundancy and rebuilds faster when you need to change out a drive. It all comes down to what you can afford. I found RAID 5 to be the best speed to redundancy compromise on a budget.

In no way I was saying you're wrong, you provided a lot of insight to many people who are getting started, just wanted to share my experience with the software RAID in OSX. Unfortunately I lost more than one project to these types of problems.
 
Scott Frace said:
Disk Utilities software RAID may be stable, but without a hardware RAID card where is it pulling it's power from? The Mac Pro's CPU and RAM, not an issue when working with small H.264 or even ProRes files, but RAW 4K is another animal. Now if your transcoding and grading in 4K at the same time you RAM and CPU has to control all those applications, plus has allocate a buffer to the the data going to the RAID array. You will see a decrease in read/write performance. To most this drop probably doesn't matter. Also a hardware RAID card has a battery backup in case your not connected to a UPS and if the power was cut suddenly you won't lose your all your files due to a corrupt drive.

You can backup a RAID 0 with another RAID 0, but it requires at least 4 drives, where a RAID 5 does the same thing with three and rebuilds itself if a drive were to fail. RAID 6 is essentially the same as 5 except with one more drive solely for redundancy and rebuilds faster when you need to change out a drive. It all comes down to what you can afford. I found RAID 5 to be the best speed to redundancy compromise on a budget.

In no way I was saying you're wrong, you provided a lot of insight to many people who are getting started, just wanted to share my experience with the software RAID in OSX. Unfortunately I lost more than one project to these types of problems.
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You say that you find RAID 5 to be the best speed to redundancy compromise on a budget. I agree. While I prefer RAID 0 and while RAID 0 does offer more performance, it can quite easily get very expensive. For most users here on a budget, RAID 5 is an excellent choice.

If you read some of the previous posts in this thread, you'll find that I wrote that I prefer using hardware RAID cards than software RAID. I only recommended the users here to use software RAID because it's a budget-friendly option. For those who have no budget, I highly recommend hardware RAID cards from LSI. In my opinion, they're excellent.

Also, you brought up a good point regarding UPS's and battery backups. Whoever here is working on whatever type of computer, you must, must, must use a UPS. To me, that's sort of automatic, however I suppose there are some users here who don't know that.
 
Is not simple buy an external recorder like Blackmagic or Atomos and connect to Scarlet with SDI and then record direct in prores 422?
If work we can save a lot of money and not need many redmag SSD.
 
Tom Lowe said:
Get a gaming PC with a fast "extreme" i7 CPU that can be overclocked a bit + a nice cooling fan for the CPU + at least 24GB of fast ram + GTX 580 CUDA card + Adobe CS5.5. And you're all set!
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So that video of you editing your film in 4k on a gaming pc didn't include a rocket?
 
I will probably repurpose my dual esta 8 drive maxxdigital raid 5 media drive from my Mac pro for my new pc edit system. It is fast and rock solid.
 
Great read guys, I came into this knowing zero about raid. Still trying to figure out exactly what the best route for me will be.

Brian, would you mind expanding some on UPS and perhaps what is a good brand to consider.
 
PC:
Dual Xeon 5690's
EVGA Classified SR-2
48GB RAM
Dual Nvidia Quadro 6000's
4x OCZ 480GB SSD's
Dual 27" Doublesight monitors
Soon to have a PCIe to SAS ARECA external RAID SSD configuration as well.
 
JIM MALLON said:
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?
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If you are doing long form work, with a lot of original footage, there is a lot to be said for an offline/online approach, where you do exactly what you suggest. Transcode the footage to basic ProRes or DNxHD36 and just edit. Don't worry about quality. Blow it up as you need to, it'll look pixelated, but you can fix that later. Your editing system will be more responsive, and you'll concentrate on building the story rather than stopping every other shot to grade something. That will save you hours (days?) you'd spend fussing with things you're going to cut out later. Then, when your film is cut, replace all the footage with the R3Ds and grade it, tweak it, make it beautiful. The fastest editing system in the world won't give you back the time you waste tweaking things you cut out later.
 
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