[ This is an excerpt from a recent on-line webinar: “Ask Larry Anything!” which is available as a download in our store, or as part of our Video Training Library. ]
EXCERPT DESCRIPTION
One of our favorite – and most wide-ranging – sessions returns with “Ask Larry Anything!” Presented by Larry Jordan, this is a free-form conversation based on questions submitted by viewers. In this short video, Larry has a conversation about Mac computer performance in the real-world, specifically for video editing.
A Conversation about Mac Computer Performance for Video Editing
TRT: 5:51 — MPEG-4 HD movie
SESSION DESCRIPTION
One of our favorite – and most wide-ranging – sessions returns with “Ask Larry Anything!” Presented by Larry Jordan, this is a free-form conversation based on questions submitted by viewers.
This session looks at computer obsolescence, system performance, and optimizing storage. Specifically:
AUDIENCE LEVEL
These questions span a range from beginner to intermediate. Subjects change quickly, so if you aren’t interested in the current question, another will be along in a few minutes.
2 Responses to A Conversation about Mac Computer Performance for Video Editing [v]
Hi Larry: Love getting your emails and tips. Just watched your short video on hard drive speeds. I am on a 27 inch 2015 iMac with 32 giga of ram. I just switched from an 8 drive Jellyfish(#1) to a larger, 4 drive 56tb raid from OWC. The last project I edited (for Westdoc Online) was the first not on the Jellyfish, but on the newer 4-HDD Raid. I am cutting with the latest version of FCPX with four camera inputs on multicam. It was slow going trying to cut the original mp4 video, and not much better with prores or proxy. But, two of the inputs were compound clips. Would that make a difference? Or is my new 4-HDD raid drive too slow to edit a 4 camera multicam? Not according to your charts. Many thanks.
Chuck:
MP4 video? Then, yes, I suspect your RAID.
Here’s the problem. Assuming (and I know that’s a dangerous word) that your MPEG-4 videos are encoding using H.264, the RAID needs to not only find the current frame, but, then, travel back to the start of the GOP and load all the frames before the current frame to figure out what the actual image looks like.
The more angles you have, the more the heads are jumping to the current frame, then jumping back to find the I frame at the start of the GOP, then jumping to the other angle and doing the same thing. This essentially doubles the bandwidth you need from the RAID.
The seek time and latency of the RAID’s heads will make most multicam edits really choppy.
This problem can be minimized using optimized media, because there are no longer any GOPs. It is minimized further using proxies, because there is less data to transfer. So I would convert your projects to ProRes Proxy ASAP.
Worst case, though, you’ll need to use an SSD – ideally, NVM3 SSD – for your multicam edits. SSDs have no latency or seek time, and NVMe is fast enough to support all current frame sizes.
Larry