G5 raid config questions

[Cystonic]

I am setting up a G5 dual 2 with dual internal 250gig serial ATA's and want to avoid cpu drain by hardware RAIDing them. As well as the internals I want to boot from a Tempo HD PCI hard drive card with a 60gig Hitachi Travelstar 7k60 HD(7,200rpm). With 500gigs striped and untouched by system files and such I can dedicate it to all the editing, and backup on two Lacie fw800 500gig big disks mirrored (RAID 1) with Panther's software RAID utility (I can live with cpu drain when backing up). Does anyone have any thoughts on this setup? In addition I have a few questions about this rig.

1. I am not sure exactly how to set the 2.5" pci drive to be a boot disk.

2. Does anyone know any hardware cards to RAID 0 the SATA drives that come with the G5?

3. Is it worth getting the SATA drives that come with the mac, or should I get third party ones and put the base HD in an enclosure?

4. Finally will this work at all.

Thanks and forgive the big old post
-Cystonic

[Ned_Soltz]

I presume that you are doing uncompressed since there is absolultely no reason to RAID drives for DV.

I would use 2 Hitachi 250gig Travelstar drives and boot from an external firewire drive. That is exactly the set up of the ProMax solution except they use an additional SATA card to keep the drives on two separate channels for maximum speed. Also know someone who merely RAID'ed two internal SATAs on the Apple bus and they are getting great through-put for SD. As I said, you buy yourself nothing for DV with a RAID, other than the greater chance of data loss should you lose one of the drives.

Ned Soltz
2-Pop Guide

[David]

wiebetech.com has a 800 FW striped raid solution that they claim operated at 105 MB/s.

check their web site and look for some 3d party reviews.

[Cystonic]

Thanks for the imput everyone!

Ned, how do I transfer dv into sd. do I need any hardware. or does software do the trick. also what are the benefits of working in sd over dv besides quality loss with compression.

I will be using my rig for mainly personal film editing. i.e. messing around with my own stuff and using it while in film school.

Thanks for your time

-cystonic

[David]

You can capture in DV, and then changing your sequence settings to 8 or 10 bit uncompressed, and re render.

However, you lose output through FW to your monitor when you do it.

Titling, and fx is better in uncompressed SD, if that is what you mean.

DV is standard definition, it's just compressed in the camera at acquisition.

it does not hold up as well as beta, digabeta, etc. when doing any rendering, titling, fx, etc.

[Cystonic]

[ QUOTE ]
However, you lose output through FW to your monitor when you do it.

[/ QUOTE ]

do you mean it won't be viewable? also by monitor I assume you are not speaking of the computer monitor, but rather the other monitor right? sorry I am new at this. I am not very familiar with the vocabulary or equiptment for that matter.

thanks again for your time.

-Cystonic

[David]

You can't view on your NTSC monitor, although it will run on the computer monitor.

[Cystonic]

[ QUOTE ]
You can't view on your NTSC monitor, although it will run on the computer monitor.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you don't mind expaining a little, why is that?

Thanks

[David]

If you are working with Firewire input and output, then you can see it on your NTSC monitor using the firewire output to your deck and NTSC.

If you are working in uncompressed footage, you are not using firewire to input the footage; instead you are using a Igniter, Digital Voodoo, or Cinewave uncompressed card.

The computer cannot send uncompressed footage signal out to a NTSC monitor using firewire. It can send only an uncompressed signal out through the card used to capture the footage.

So if you change your project settings from NTSC DV to uncompressed 8 or 10-bit, you need an output card that supports that setting. Firewire doesn't.

Change your settings back to NTSC DV for the footage you acquired using firewire, and you can see it both on your computer and the NTSC monitor.