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For video-capturing: Is Raid-0 worth it?

N

ndee

Lifer
Hey there,
I started to record some tv-shows on my computer, so I can watch it as SVCD on my DVD Player. I'm planning to buy an Adaptec IDE-Raid card, along with 2x40GB or 2x80GB Seagate Barracuda IV because they are very silent. So the Adaptec ATA RAID 1200A card, it is then a hardware raid, cuz the Raid-Card has it's on microprocessor right? Like a SCSI Raid, but just with IDE. And a Software RAID is when you make an array from windows2000 right? Just wanna be sure. On the drives, there won't be any critical data storaged. I also want to upgrade my Tbird 700 to a KT266A&Athlon XP 1600 combo. What do you guys think? Cuz my current setup is dropping about 1 Frame in a minute, and I'm a quality-whore, so that's not acceptable 😉

Thanx
 
Dropped frames aren't always caused by a slow HD. Your processor (Athlon 700, is that right?) could be failing to provide all the processing power you need, before saving it to disk. This can also be caused by a not-so-good capture card. If I'd bet on something, it'd be the processor. Get a new Mobo+CPU and only think about that RAID array after you upgraded your processor.
 


<< keep in mind that those seagates currently dont do very well w/ raid. >>


What do you mean?

Aiight, so I should first upgrade my CPU+Mobo? OK. If the experts say so 😉
 
Definately go with the CPU upgrade first. I don't know what kind of compression you are using, but it can eat up a lot of CPU time. For example, on my Athlon 1200 I record TV shows with the Divx codec at 320x240 and this eats up around 70% of my CPU resources. If I capture at 640x480 I get 100% CPU utilization and some dropped frames.
 
My experience has shown the speed and transfer rates of hard drives to have priority over CPU and RAM. I wasn't recording shows though, I was editing video using Adobe Premiere.
 
I'm using the loss-less huffyuv compression. My CPU load is between 50%-70%, so maybe a CPU upgrade would help out there. The data-rate of my SVCD format is about 13MB/s. So a Seagate Barracuda IV can handle that easily, right? I need more space anyway, so with Raid-0, I think it's the best solution for me.

Thanx
 
Editing is different... with editing the most important thing is to keep the data
streaming from the HD to the RAM and CPU and back to the HD for the finished edit.
That is where access time and STR of the drive comes into play, and why editing on
Raid, or from one drive to another is recommended.

With capturing, the video coming from the capture card has to be framed in memory
as it comes in, then saved out to disk in order, along with the audio track.
Depending on the capture card, the CPU may also have to do some of the encoding
work as the file is saved out. A good dedicated HD should be able to keep
up with the writing of the file, but the bottleneck comes in from the CPU-Memory
being able to keep up laying out frames to be encoded and saved.

You don't mention what frame resolution you are trying to capture at or
what capture program you are using. Trying to capture at higher resolutions
(for quality) can have an effect on how fast the encoder can keep up.
It almost sounds like Huffyuv is skipping frames that it cannot encode fast
enough to keep up with incoming data.

The capture program may also have additional settings to improve how the
data is framed to the encoder.


 


<< My experience has shown the speed and transfer rates of hard drives to have priority over CPU and RAM. I wasn't recording shows though, I was editing video using Adobe Premiere. >>



This begins to be truth when you have higher resolutions and/or quality. For the kind of capture he has in mind, transfer rates are not that important.
 
Is it "worth it"? Likely not.

The main bottleneck is your CPU. Software encoding is incredibly taxing on the CPU. There are hardware cards which are capable of MPEG2 encoding in hardware, but they're a bit pricey. The consumer level cards rely on your CPU. The higher the resolution, the worse it gets.

That said, most modern systems are capable of the usual resolutions without dropping any, or not many, frames. For example, MPEG1 352x240 (VideoCD). MPEG2 is more demanding and at high res (say 720x480) you'll need every last drop of CPU power to keep from losing frame(s).
 
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