Need a Lickety-Split system for Video Editing....questions

[Fun Guy]

Well, I'm building the first system I've built in a few years. Last time I built one, there was no SATA, no DDR2, onboard RAID was just coming out onto motherboards, and the i845 was the newest chipset. So a lot has happened since then. Please be patient with me if I seem ignorant (it's because I am ).

Although I have a dual-processor Xeon system for video editing, I am building a single-processor system to see if it is capable of performing as well as (or close to) the dual system, and I may eventually sell the Xeon system. The dual system uses a 72GB Seagate 15.3 U320 drive for the main drive, and two 120GB EIDE drives - one for source video, one for destination video. I will want the new system to be as fast (or faster, preferably) than this setup. And quieter, because with all the drives and fans, it is kind of obnoxious.

I am not going to go into the new LGA775 CPU configuration....I will stick with 478-pin chips and likely get the 3.2Ghz IMB L2 Prescott with 2GB DDR RAM (Corsair XMS). No issues here.

For video I am getting the ATI AIW 9800 Pro. This will work great for my needs, so I am good to go here, also.

Storage, on the other hand, is an absolute mystery to me. Seems like the whole playing field has changed. The motherboards I am considering have the i875 chipset, IEEE1394, and some form of SATA/PATA/RAID. For example, here is the ASUS board I am considering: P4C800-E Deluxe. I am also considering this board from Intel: D875PBZLK FMB 1.5. I am absolutely unclear as to what the possibilities are for configuring these boards for storage, and my needs. This is what I need help with.

I need an extremely fast boot/system drive. This was taken care of on the big system with a 15K RPM U320 SCSI drive (which was fairly quiet by the way, but I wouldn't mind quieter). Since I am entertaining boards without SCSI, I have been trying to get up to speed on SATA technology and whether it will work for a system or boot drive/array.

It seems like the 74GB Raptor is a great drive....problem for me is noise. I don't want any to speak of, it drives me nuts, especially when I'm working on video with audio. So my question becomes, if I don't want the Raptor, what's my next best bet? Do I even need SATA?

What I was considering is two Samsung SpinPoints in RAID 0 boot array, since these drives are so, so quiet. Is it possible with the onboard controller to have RAID 0 boot/system array? Would this be faster than one SpinPoint alone as the C: drive?

Let's say I end up going for two drives in RAID 0 for the boot array....how many channels will I have left for source/destination drives? I guess this is not really a big deal, because I could always add another HDD controller card, but I would like to know how these onboard controllers work. I see there are additional, separate ATA/100 controllers for UDMA CD and DVD drives, but it looks like there are more ports (PATA) on the Asus board.

So that takes care of my storage questions.... :unsure:

Anyone have input on quiet cases and fans?

 

[SadisticOne]

Said it before, and I'll say it again...

You should use...

RAID1 for system/boot drive.
RAID5 for additional long term storage

The only application for RAID0 is for short term data... like... video editing source/target, 3d composition and temporary workspace db's for databases. You can certainly point your video editing app there, but don't put your boot drive on there.

Since money doesn't seem to be a significant concern for you.. what you may wish to look at, is real SATA h/w RAID.

Several controllers can do 4,6,8 or more disk RAID, in a variety of multi-volume multi-type configurations. 3ware, LSI and Promise are some of the vendors. Check out THG for articles about the new SATA RAID controllers. RAID 0+1, 10 or even 50... may be exactly what you're looking for.

 

[Fun Guy]

So let me guess....the reasoning behind RAID 1 for the boot/system drive is (1) for data integrity, and (2) boot/read speed due to there being two sources for boot files? Do I have this correct?

Also, can I boot into a RAID 1 array with either of these motherboards?

Will the Samsungs give me what I'm after here (quiet with good speed), or is there another drive that competes with them? Please know that I am not interested in 2 x 250GB or 2 x 300GB boot drives, that is of no use to me. This is why I am considering the Samsungs...they come in 8MB cache, 80GB capacities, which is ideal (maybe even a little overkill at that capacity) for a boot drive. Don't need anymore capacity than that.

 

[imported_NoGodForMe]

Stay with 320 SCSI using the Adaptec controller and the Seagate Cheetah drive.
Diagnostics are on the card, and I don't care what people say about the newer drives, SCSI is reliable as my drives have not failed. If money isn't a problem, I'd stay with SCSI on the secondary drives and go with Baracudas.

On the memory, go with OCZ or Gskill. Corsair is good if you want to run at stock, but I can't get mine to run at those fancy 2225 timings. If you're not going to OC, then get the value ram.

You could actually build a P4 3.4c (northwood) and it would run cooler than a prescott. You'd end up buying a computer like mine (see sig below), and it will fly.

Noise isn't a problem on my system. I have the Antec P160WF case that has a fan on both sides, one for intake, one for exhaust. The CPU has a Thermalright SP-90 heatsink, and a 90mm fan that runs slow, but does the job. They are much quieter than fans of the past.

 

[Fun Guy]

Originally posted by: NoGodForMe
Stay with 320 SCSI using the Adaptec controller and the Seagate Cheetah drive.
Diagnostics are on the card, and I don't care what people say about the newer drives, SCSI is reliable as my drives have not failed.

On the memory, go with OCZ or Gskill. Corsair is good if you want to run at stock, but I can't get mine to run at those fancy 2225 timings. If you're not going to OC, then get the value ram.

You could actually build a P4 3.4c (northwood) and it would run cooler than a prescott. You'd end up buying a computer like mine (see sig below), and it will fly.

Thanks for the reply. I am considering sticking with SCSI, though I haven't made up my mind yet.

My issue with the Northwood is 512KB cache....wouldn't this limit the speed/ability to address RAM? Wouldn't the 1MB cache on the Prescott enable a much faster overall system?

 

[DaveSimmons]

For quiet, get an Antec SLK3700AMB case, replace the power supply (Zalman 400watt is near silent, and there are others), get a Zalman 7000 / 7700 -alcu (NOT -cu) heatsink for the CPU, and get a low speed Nexus 120mmx25mm intake fan to keep your drives cool.

This case has great airlfow over the drives once you add the silent intake fan, and the drives are attached with grommets to lower vibration noise.

www.SilentPCReview for quietness tips, www.SiliconAcoustics.com as one source of the Nexus fan and other quiet parts.

Why do you need a high-speed boot / OS drive? Windows taking 40 instead of 50 seconds to boot shouldn't matter.

Also, you don't need RAID1 for the boot drive if you use something like Acronis True Image to make an image backup of the C: partition. Get a second drive, but use it for storing images and backups of data files.

Samsung spinpoint drives are cool and quiet, and if you use the separate source and destination drives setup you described they should be fine for video editing.

 

[bob4432]

why not keep your 15k rpm scsi drive and use a lsi u160 card for it. you can use u320 stuff on u160 cards, the lsi card is only $30 at newegg - lsiu160, and that drive will be faster than a raptor. a single u320 15krpm scsi drive will have faster seek times and a sustained transfer rate of about 75-85MB/s, which a u160 card could handle.

for storage get a couple of huge pata (the maxtor 250GB 16MB cache drives come to mind for only $160/ea and they are pata) drives since they are cheap and equally as fast as the sata drives. current sata drives (with the exception of the raptors) are pretty much just pata drives with different connectors.

you also might want to look at benchmarks for the programs you use to see if a skt 939 athlon wouldn't be better for you. about 9 months ago i upgrade my machine because i was doing quite a bit of video editing and using a lot of adobe products, which are most smp/smt aware. the system sees the p4 as 2 cpus, and i was using squeeze for encoding, well it turns out that squeeze isn't smp/smt aware and wouldn't even come close to 100% cpu usage. for my wmv encoding, i used the free windows media encoder which is smp/smt aware and used 100% cpu. personally i am going back to amd via the skt939 with my next upgrade.

personally i wouldn't worry about raid unless you are doing some type of redundant setup or more than 2 drives. if you use 2 ide drives and the scsi, just put each pata drive on its own channel.

don't worry about boot time, it doesn't mean anything as far as how fast a machine is. if you have a 15krpm scsi, it will boot slower than a regular pata based system just becaue the bootup needs to go through the board and then the scsi card and find all of the attached devices.

keep the scsi!!!

 

[Fun Guy]

Well, if I go SCSI I will be getting new SCSI hardware (drive and controller).....I will sell the old system intact.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Fun Guy
Well, if I go SCSI I will be getting new SCSI hardware (drive and controller).....I will sell the old system intact.

definately price stuff out as the 15krpm 73GB drives are expensive...you might be better off keeping yours.

 

[Fun Guy]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Fun Guy
Well, if I go SCSI I will be getting new SCSI hardware (drive and controller).....I will sell the old system intact.

definately price stuff out as the 15krpm 73GB drives are expensive...you might be better off keeping yours.

I will likely be looking at 36GB drives since all I will be housing on there is the OS and applications. The Fujitsu comes in at $204 and the Seagate is $315.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Fun Guy

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Fun Guy
Well, if I go SCSI I will be getting new SCSI hardware (drive and controller).....I will sell the old system intact.

definately price stuff out as the 15krpm 73GB drives are expensive...you might be better off keeping yours.

I will likely be looking at 36GB drives since all I will be housing on there is the OS and applications. The Fujitsu comes in at $204 and the Seagate is $315.

i am looking at getting one of those fujitsus too, i have a 10krpm one and love it, and the 15krpm is so reasonable...

 

[jose]

How much disk space do you need ? for os, source & destination & backup space.

A friend of mine (with my help) built a nice system. He used a P4c800e mobo , w/ a P4 3.0c w/ 2 gigs of rams and had the following hd config:
boot drive : 36g 15k scsi w/ lsiu160 controller
source drive: 2 - 74g raptors raid 0 ichr5 cntrl
dest drive: 2 - 74g raptors raid 0 promise cntrl
backup drive: 205g seagate ide port

This may be something similiar to what your looking at. It's not the same as a system w/ 64bit pci scsi raid, but it's fast..

As far as noise is concerned, I'd recomend a case that has atleast 2 - 120mm fans , these are quiet compared to 80mm fans.
And the Zalman AcLu7000 cpu is very quiet. Here's a nice case:

http://www.computernerd.com/ycc-61f1.html

You may be able to do all scsi depending on your space requirements. Myself I prefer scsi, check my sig... The most noise I get is from the 6800GT video card I just got.
Soon I'll get a NV Silencer 5 for it..

Regards,
Jose

 

[MScrip]

With all this talk about the best hardware... what sort of video editing software do you plan on using? Premiere, Vegas, Avid... anything? What are your sources? You mentioned an ATI AIW card... so I assume you're capturing analog video? No Firewire MiniDV yet?

All video editing packages will benefit from advanced hardware. But... give some thought to a "realtime" solution. Something like the Matrox RT.X100 will let you capture and edit video without having to wait hours for it to render. It combines Adobe Premiere with dedicated hardware for video editing.

I'm editing video on a P4 1.5 GHz, 80gb IDE drive for video. I'm an amateur. I use Pinnacle studio to capture DV tape from my camcorder. I edit the video, add music and titles, etc. when I get done editing, it takes like 5 times the length of the project to render and compress the video into MPEG2 to burn to a DVD. So a 1 hour video takes 5 hours to render. So, you can see why realtime would be a better solution. BUT, even though I have to wait for it to render, the final project is beautiful. My DVDs look just like the DV tape. So, in my case, I get perfect quality, but I have to wait for it. Even with a dual Xeon and RAID Raptor system, you're still gonna have to wait for it to render... unless you buy a realtime solution.

So, you can have the fastest hardware on the planet, but no CPU will process video fast enough to do realtime. Hard disk I/O is nice, but I'd rather have horsepower in video rendering and acceleration.

Even with the best hardware... you still have to know how to edit to tell a good story. I could be given a $600 paintbrush... but I'm a crappy artist, so it wouldn't matter. Right now, I'm using a "slow" computer with crappy ATA66 hard drives... yet I can make beautiful quality videos. Hardware only represents a small portion of the creative process. Human creativity is important. You can't rely on hardware to bail you out.

 

[Fun Guy]

Thanks for the feedback and comments. I agree with you completely.

I will have Avid XpressDV on the dual Xeon machine and Premiere (for now) on the new system. I may migrate the Avid over the new box, depending on how it does with Premiere. I have the Sony PD150 but am looking at the HVR-Z1U and am interested in what people think about it, since it is new.

Do you have links to your videos you can send me? I'm interested in what you have done with Pinnacle Studio.

What do you recommend for realtime video editing? Is there anything affordable or even close? Thanks.

 

[MScrip]

No problem Fun Guy, I'm glad I can help.

Pinnacle Studio is a great little $99 program. When I started video editing a couple years ago, I tried all the consumer programs... Pinnacle, ULead, Roxio, etc... Pinnacle Studio had scene detection and built-in DVD burning, and I had a few other friends who like Pinnacle too. So I got it. It's basically is like the other programs, but I liked it the best.

I don't have many videos online to demonstrate Pinnacle Studio. Most of the projects I do are on DVD. I go to dance competitions, record my dance studio's performances, edit them all together with a menu to select the individual dances, and sell it to the parents. I've made other promotional videos for dance as well. Basically, I use Pinnacle Studio for the simple stuff. Studio comes with dozens of transitions and effects, an extra audio track, still picture capability, titling, and the new verson has an addition video track as well. It's a pretty capable $99 program, even though I don't fully exploit every single feature. I've added music and voice-overs too.

In terms of quality, Pinnacle Studio is perfect. I have a Panasonic PV-GS200 3chip camcorder, record to MiniDV tape, then capture the video through Firewire into my computer. The camera is great, the captured video is great, and the completed DVD looks great. Nowadays, DV camcorders are awesome. You have to worry more about the human behind the camera, than worry about the camera itself.

On a trip to Ireland in September, I shot 7 hours of video of our travels. I wanna edit it all together and make a one hour docu-tainment video. I shot the video knowing I was gonna edit it, so I've got tons of material. I'm probably gonna wait and get a new computer, and possibly some better software. I could probably get the new version of Pinnacle Studio with the extra video track, but I might step up to something bigger like Vegas or Premiere. I'd love to have the Matrox realtime system, but that's $1000 hardware/software combo. I just heard about Adobe Premiere Elements for $135. That might be an option. This will be a serious video, I'm dealing with 7 hours of tape, and I need a program with good capabilities.

I've heard good things about the Matrox RT-X100 realtime system. It's a PCI video accelerator and includes Adobe Premiere, Encore DVD and Audition in the box as well. Basically... for $1000 you get an amazing realtime PCI card, and $800 worth of software included too!

http://www.matrox.com/video/pr...x100xtremepro/home.cfm

For Avid users, the Avid Xpress Pro software is $1695. If you add their Avid Mojo DNA realtime hardware, the price swells to $3000. It's the industry standard, but you're gonna pay for the interface.

http://secure.digidesign.com/i...ndex&categoryid=61

We live in an exciting age where you can comfortably edit video and make DVDs in our homes. The camcorders are excellent, the video is of perfect quality, and the software has many capabilities. The differences between the results of a $99 program versus a $3000 solution is how long you wanna wait. Using comsumer software I can make beautiful DVDs, but I have to wait hours for it to render. Realtime solutions offer instant gratification, and the ability to quickly make changes and burn the DVD right from the timeline.

 

[Fun Guy]

I just spent about an hour at the Matrox link you included above....interesting stuff. I have a Canopus DV Raptor that came with Premiere 6 I believe....they've come a little ways since then with Premiere, I see.

I also spent some time on the Avid site. I have Xpress DV version 3.5, so I can upgrade to Pro for $445....not a bad deal at all really. Don't know how long the deal will last, maybe until the end of the year. Hmm.

And now after some thought and seeing what some single CPU boxed are capable of, I may actually sell my Supermicro dual Xeon workstation and just build another newer, smaller box with a Prescott CPU.

Thanks again for your input.