I’ve often wondered just how much better an SSD is for multicam editing than an HDD (spinning hard disk drive). Recently, as part of detailed review of the OWC Thunderbay 4 HDD RAID, I decided to find out.
The short answer: SSDs blow the doors off HDDs for multicam editing, regardless of which NLE you use.
As this chart illustrates, while each NLE handles multicam editing differently, in all cases the SSD is faster. Much, much faster!
The bars indicate the maximum number of multicam streams (camera angles) that can be edited in each NLE without dropping frames.
The limiting factor is not read or write speeds, but latency. That’s the time it takes for the hard drive heads to move from one file to the other. SSDs have no latency, HDDs have a lot. When an HDD plays only one file there’s plenty of time for the heads to move around the disk. But when more than one file is playing, the heads start spending more time traveling around the drive than they do playing files.
When the latency grows large enough, the drive starts dropping frames.
NOTE: For the technically astute, I’m combining seek time with latency to make the concept of “time needed to move the heads to a new position” easier to understand.
What’s important to know about latency is that file size (or frame size / frame rate) is not important. What IS important is the number of files playing at the same time. So these limits are essentially the same for any frame size or frame rate video – proxies or SD or HD or 4K.
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4 Responses to Why SSDs Are Better for Multicam Editing For All NLEs
Hi Larry this is one of the reasons when I decided to update my old 2015 MBP two years ago I choose to get an Apple Refurbished MBP M1 Max with 64 gig of Ram and most importantly a 4TB internal hard drive over the latest M2 model at the time. By getting the M1 Max with the 4TB HD I was paying less than a 1TB M2.
It was the best decision I have ever made, I regularly edit up to four camera 4K edits using FCP and this system just eats it, with the blazing speed of the 4TB internal HD cutting these multi cam edits is like slicing butter. I can see this machine looking after my need for years to come. The moral of the story as you say Larry, fast SSD HD’s are perfect for multi cam editing.
Cliff:
Absolutely right. If you are only editing 2-4 camera multicam, a hard disk will be OK. But the speed of an SSD – or the internal Mac drive – just opens a world of possibilities.
By the way, a Thunderbolt 3/4 connected SSD supports 30-40 streams of video. So you don’t need to mortgage the ranch to buy Apple storage – a Thunderbolt SSD or SSD RAID will be just as fine and much cheaper.
Larry
Thanks Larry as it turns out your experience with the thunderbolt Raids are welcome as I will be looking at updating my 5 year old G-Raid running Raid Raid 0 to SSD Raids in the new year so I will be keeping an eye on your experience. I think I can speak for a lot of people that your recourse is invaluable and greatly appreciated.
Luff:
Thanks for the kind words. I like doing this kind of research.
Larry