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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 :)

MacBook Pro Express Card Setups

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dev.doyle

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About to do a 2 week shoot as data wrangler and wanted to get some input on something. To date I always recommend that production acquire 2 G-Tech GRAID2s (with FW800 being the fastest i/o) for storage due to their performance/price point. I use my express card > 2 x FW800 adapter for the drives, while the RED RAID goes straight in to my 2.8 GHZ MacBook Pro w/ 4GB DDR3. Using R3D data manager the transfer times aren't too painful - considering checksums are happening - but I've always thought about going through my eSata adapter instead...

I've heard stories about how fragile/unreliable the eSata connection is (the fragility I can attest to using my 1 TB drive here at home for Time Machine, reliability has never been an issue), but theoretically the 300 MB/sec. eSata protocol would beat the pants off the 98.25 MB/sec. FW800 and might be worth the frailty. Entering a 10 day shoot x 2 cameras x 4kHD @ RC36 + a drive heading off to editorial nightly means that speedy transfers (particularly at wrap each day) are a must.

Countless people must be using eSata to do their dumps. Any comments on how robust the connection is/horror stories? I'd have to assume that eSata is the winner in speed hands down. What's the top transfer speed on the express port anyways? Is there a bottleneck there at some astronomically high transfer rate?

I've never been given the opportunity to compare the 2 protocols - tomorrow I'm going to advise for the GRAID3s to be picked up and give it a shot at prep. At the very least I can revert to FW800...
 
Not that it helps you now, but what will be an interesting on set system is the notebook series by HP that has integrated Dreamcolor technology for monitoring, native eSATA, express card, and HDMI for larger monitor. Add a REDCINE or upcoming REDCINE X to that, and you have a nice on set system for decent in the ball park color as well as no connector cards to get to eSATA. If needed, attach a real Dreamcolor monitor to it and you have a nice color decision environment. In my case, I add a MetaFuze for transcoding, and Media Composer on it, and I am good to go. If REDCINE X exports RLX and has a plug-in archtiectur or exports an XML of everything, then that could just send to MetaFuze directly for native MXF wrapped DNxHD and bypass QuickTime altogether.

Too bad Apple got rid of the express card on recent notebooks. It would be great to have a similar setup on Mac with all the tools that are available.

Michael
 
apple still has the express/34 option for the 17inch mbp. im thinking of getting on as i move to spain.
 
I've always used the express34 card on an MBP for backing up the raw camera files, with ShotPut Pro doing the transfer, and never had any problems. I also ask the producers to get 4 separate eSata drives, so that I can use 2 for backups and the other 2 for ProRes transcodes. Once everything's backed up, I run 2 MacPro towers with 2 drives connected to each tower. As per this article...

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/awilt/story/play_ping_pong_for_faster_file_flipping/

you get faster transcodes by writing the transcodes to a different drive. I get 6-8 frames a second this way (3-4 frames per second per tower) at half high res 2k ProRes HQ.

Also I would be leery of using gRaids for raw camera file backup. The whole idea of backing up files to separate drives is that if one drive fails, you have another to back it up. GRaids are 2 drives striped together in one enclosure, and if one of those striped-together drives fails, you lose everything on both drives. I would let the editors use the gRaids for bandwidth with the transcodes, but use single (and cheaper!) eSata's for backup and as the source drives for transcoding.
 
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joe hedge said:
I've always used the express34 card on an MBP for backing up the raw camera files, with ShotPut Pro doing the transfer, and never had any problems. I also ask the producers to get 4 separate eSata drives, so that I can use 2 for backups and the other 2 for ProRes transcodes. Once everything's backed up, I run 2 MacPro towers with 2 drives connected to each tower. As per this article...

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/awilt/story/play_ping_pong_for_faster_file_flipping/

you get faster transcodes by writing the transcodes to a different drive. I get 6-8 frames a second this way (3-4 frames per second per tower) at half high res 2k ProRes HQ.

Also I would be leery of using gRaids for raw camera file backup. The whole idea of backing up files to separate drives is that if one drive fails, you have another to back it up. GRaids are 2 drives striped together in one enclosure, and if one of those striped-together drives fails, you lose everything on both drives. I would let the editors use the gRaids for bandwidth with the transcodes, but use single (and cheaper!) eSata's for backup and as the source drives for transcoding.
Click to expand...

Im looking to doing something similar, you know of any programs that will back up from a primary stripped drive to secondary backup drive, maybe realtime or 5-10 min delay?
 
Garrick2007 said:
Im looking to doing something similar, you know of any programs that will back up from a primary stripped drive to secondary backup drive, maybe realtime or 5-10 min delay?
Click to expand...

ShotPut Pro will back up to as many as 3 drives at the same time from the camera drives or cards. Not sure what you mean by "real time"; RC36 4k 2:1 is about 100 gigs per hour of footage shot, and FW800 (which is the connection the camera drive uses) runs at about 2 gigs a minute, so that's actually twice as fast as "real time", and eSata goes more than twice as fast as that.

Raw camera file backups will go faster on a MacBook Pro if you use an eSata or FW800 card in the card slot because the camera drive or card and the backup drives won't be on the same bus. But it will still only happen at FW800 speed because the camera drive/card reader is FW800 (unless you have a FW400 card reader).
 
Well basically i just want something that will make a copy of my stripped drive and keep it up to date while in post, and real time probably wasn't the best word to use but just meaning instant updates to the backup drive if possible. Im reading the info on the ShotPut Pro page and im not positive thats what i need, Sorry if im hi-jacking the thread :biggrin5:
 
joe hedge said:
I've always used the express34 card on an MBP for backing up the raw camera files, with ShotPut Pro doing the transfer, and never had any problems. I also ask the producers to get 4 separate eSata drives, so that I can use 2 for backups and the other 2 for ProRes transcodes. Once everything's backed up, I run 2 MacPro towers with 2 drives connected to each tower. As per this article...

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/awilt/story/play_ping_pong_for_faster_file_flipping/

you get faster transcodes by writing the transcodes to a different drive. I get 6-8 frames a second this way (3-4 frames per second per tower) at half high res 2k ProRes HQ.

Also I would be leery of using gRaids for raw camera file backup. The whole idea of backing up files to separate drives is that if one drive fails, you have another to back it up. GRaids are 2 drives striped together in one enclosure, and if one of those striped-together drives fails, you lose everything on both drives. I would let the editors use the gRaids for bandwidth with the transcodes, but use single (and cheaper!) eSata's for backup and as the source drives for transcoding.
Click to expand...


That's a great idea about writing to a totally separate drive - makes 100% sense and I don't know why I wasn't doing it before on transcodes.

Regarding the G-Raids - I always recommend them because they're readily available and relatively dependable. I'm aware of the hardware RAID 0 configuration and thus always carry two for backups.

On an interesting side-note - yesterday was on a job and dumping in the following setup: RED RAID via FW800 directly in to MacBook Pro > thru R3D Data Manager > out thru eSata express card adapter. The dumps were timely, but the first clip dumped on the first drive in the series of backups ALWAYS failed the checksum test. The clip was fine, but it continuously failed to pass the test on each new roll. I ended up arSyncing the successfully copied clip from the second drive back over to the first until I switched to my FW800 express card adapter and enjoyed flawless transfers for the rest of the day.

Any ideas about what could have caused this?

And am I lead to believe that going over eSata to the destination drives is a moot point due to the fact that the RED RAID is limited to FW800 transfer rates? Thanks for any input!
 
dev.doyle said:
...the first clip dumped on the first drive in the series of backups ALWAYS failed the checksum test. The clip was fine, but it continuously failed to pass the test on each new roll. I ended up arSyncing the successfully copied clip from the second drive back over to the first until I switched to my FW800 express card adapter and enjoyed flawless transfers for the rest of the day.

Any ideas about what could have caused this?

And am I lead to believe that going over eSata to the destination drives is a moot point due to the fact that the RED RAID is limited to FW800 transfer rates? Thanks for any input!
Click to expand...

My "version" of checksum is to go through the transcodes before I give the camera drive back to the AC the next day to be reformatted, and make sure they actually end when the scene does (i.e. the director says "cut"), and if not I go back to the camera drive and see what's up.

And yes, eSata only makes a difference because it uses a different bus than the camera drive does, not because it does the transfers faster than FW800. The main benefit is when you have to give the transcodes/camera files to the editors (provided they have sata/eSata too), and it takes less than half the time that FW800 does.
 
What brand of esata card is everyone using on the MacBook Pro. I want to do the same set-up, but I heard that not all Express cards are compatible, especially with the G-Tech G Drive 3.

Thanks,
Chris
 
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