Optomizing my scratch disks for Adobe Premiere Pro

[cirving]

I was going through the Total Training DVDs for Adobe Premiere Pro (which are fantastic by the way) and they suggested that if you have 3 hard drives, that you install the application on your main drive, and on the second drive put your captured media, and on the third drive, put your conformed audio files and other rendered stuff. I do have 3 hard drives, however one of my 80 gig drives is only 5400RPM as opposed to the other two being 7200RPM. Would you guys suggest I not use my 5400RPM drive AT ALL? Not even as one of the scratch disks options?

[tim6661234]

The best way to setup your HDD's is
1 System drive (Boot / Programs) on the the 5400 drive
2 7200 drives in what ever order makes sense to you.

[cirving]

Thanks for the quick reply!!

Are you sure that installing Premiere Pro and working with it on my 5400RPM drive is best though? Wouldn't the Premiere application require the 7200RPM spec the most? Which of the scratch disk features really require (or benefit most from) the 7200RPM?

Based on your recommendation I should set up my hardware like this, do you suppose:
Motherboard
-----
Primary Master - 80gig 5400RPM
Secondary Master - Pioneer A06 DVD+/-RW
Primary Slave - LiteON 24x CDRW
Secondary Slave - LiteOn DVD-ROM

Controller Card
-----
Primary Master : Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM
Primary Slave : Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM

If anyone has a better setup option I'd love to hear it, because I don't think my current IDE setup is as efficient as can be

Thanks!
Craig,

[proxyx99]

I also have 3 optical drives. I would keep 120 Gig as a pri.master moving DVD player to controller. I have that, and works great. The reason? If your ATA driver fails you loose nothing, can play and burn anything and have most HD space on IDE channels. I would disagree with the suggestion to use slowest drive for system. On the contrary. This should be your fastest with swapfile placed on the fastest partition. HD speed is still too fast for writing video so even 5400 RPM drive is more then adequate. I would use 120 Gig as system drive with 2 others as storage (this will save you migrating system to larger one when need arises).
120 Gig prim.master, 80Gig (faster) sec. slave, 80 Gig 5400 RPM on ATA.
Part. 120 Gig into 3x 40Gig part. 1.system & temp for all apps 2.apps in case system goes belly up 3. data. C: may be smaller 20 to 40Gig, apps as well 20-40 Gig. rest is for data manipulation (20/20/80).

[cirving]

Thanks!!! All of that makes complete sense to me... so let me refine my setup and see if I understand you correctly:

Motherboard
-----
Primary Master - Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM
Secondary Master - Pioneer A06 DVD+/-RW
*Primary Slave - 80gig 5400RPM
*Secondary Slave - Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM

Controller Card
-----
Primary Master : LiteON 24x CDRW
Primary Slave (or should this be secondary master?): LiteOn DVD-ROM

The ones I noted with the *'s... do you think they should be inverted?
I really appreciate you taking the time to write that out, however the only suggestion I don't think I'll take (unless you strongly advise me to) is the partitioning of my 120gb drive. I hate partitioning, will it increase performance drastically? Because I'd rather not. I'm far more organized without a zillion partitions, partitioning hinders flexibility (as I see it).
What do you think?

[sitlet]

where did you get those dvds? are they for total beginners, or is there more advanced stuff on them too?

[cirving]

www.totaltraining.com
They do TONS of Adobe stuff.
For beginners I guess, because when you start you'll be a beginner, but at the end of it all you're an expert.

UnderWaterDigitalVideo's website has a review of it if you want to read.
http://www.uwdv.com/

You can also get a course outline on TotalTraining's website.
They're video tutorial files (DivX) they go through EVERYTHING in Adobe. Even stuff like multi-camera editing, music video editing, 5.1 mixing, lots of advanced stuff.

It's long though, hehehe, the whole thing is like 20 hours

[tim6661234]

The 7200 disks are best used to store your video and as scratch disks.
If you think about the size of the application (how may DVD does it come on - NONE!). Compare that with the size of your video files (7 Gig or so). Then you can see that the faster disks should be reserved for video. You may want to put the windows page file on one of the other disks as this is written / read a lot too but the opsys on the 5600 is the best config. I've seen may a system spec with two HDDs Primary 5400 secondary 7200.

I'd use the other Two HDD as Source on one and render to the other. That way you reading from 1 HDD, processing and writing to the other.
If you use the same HDD you be delayed. Try it encode a file using the same disk as source and destination, then encode onto a different drive. The result is faster. Where you store the programs is up to you, you may get better performance installing on your second drive because the opsys will run faster.

Motherboard
-----
Channel 0
Master - 80gig 5400RPM
Slave - Pioneer A06 DVD+/-RW

Channel 1
Master Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM
Slave - LiteON 24x CDRW


Controller Card
-----
Channel 0
Master : Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM
Channel 1
Master: LiteOn DVD-ROM

Put DV on the 120 (as its so big)
Render too Maxtor 80
Burn with Pioneer

This way you never read and write to the same controller channel.

You can play around with where your scratch disk is to see which is best.

[proxyx99]

I disagree strongly. Putting a slowest drive for a system defies logic. This is where normally temp files are stored and this has to be done FAST. Most "operations" are done in the OS layer (like memory management). Writing video, encoding etc. is way slower then todays drives. HD speed is not an issue anymore (with regard to slowing down video). Processor speed is, as well as I/O subsystem speed (memory, chipset and ultimately HD'S). As I indicated I would put 120 and DVDR on 1st channel and CDRW and 7200 HD on a second. Slowest drive should be on controller (unless controller is faster then MB I/O). In this case still 7200 80 gig for master and the rest as you please following and matching controller -HD speed scheme. Read my previous post. Remember that you can configure scratch disks via software (easy) but Master /slave issues have to be resolved once and for all. Once OS is installed XP can give you a very hard time (you have to be really good with PC) to move system partition elswhere. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

[tim6661234]

Yes but memory management (ie your page file) can be changed. You can let windows handle it automatically or define how it operates your self.
You can put your page file (where you memory is swapped to) on any of your hard disks. It only defaults to your C drive. It can be changed just as easily as your scratch drive can in Premier. That's totally different to where your programs are or where your opsys boots from.

I repeat every professionally built system I've seen that has a 5400 drive has it as the opsys drive.

This is the logical way to do it spread the load on you HDDs that means how much data is being transfered / written from / too this drive.

The programs are nothing compared with the data in video files.

Your right about the type of controller making a difference. If a UDMA 133 disk is installed on the motherboard that only supports UDMA100 it makes more sense to put it on the other controller if it supports the faster disk.

Programs are in MB's. Video is GB's. The speed difference in reading a couple of MB's is tiny compare with trying too read 10GB's off it.

Your wrong about the logic after all I can run the same WinXP opsys and use word on it and my HDDs are not going wild transfering data. Its using an app like Premier that has to handle large video files that makes my system work hard. The data premier is processing is Video, if it takes 5% longer to read that file you are going too see the difference!

Example (from the web). Its an old system but most new one come will all 7200 drives which is even better.

Turnkey Dv editing systeem XP 1800+ Euro 1.135,00



De samenstelling van deze PC is gebaseerd op videobewerking. Dit is gerealiseerd door bv gebruik te maken van twee harde schijven: 1 voor het besturingsysteem en de tweede voor de uiteindelijke film. Natuurlijk is er bij dit systeem een compleet videobewerking pakket MovieDV, nederlandstalige software meegeleverd.

350 Watt Luxe ATX Miditower
Gigabyte GA7 DXR Raid moederbord
AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1533 MHz) processor
Titan Low Noise cooler
256 MB DDR PC2100 intern geheugen
20 GB 5400 RPM HDD
40 GB 7200 RPM HDD
FDD 1,44 Mb
Lite-on 52 speed CD-ROM
Lite-on 32x12x40x CD rewriter + Nero
Movie DV Suite FireWire IEEE 1394
Realtek 10/100 LAN on board
Geforce II MX400, 64 MB + TV-out
Creative Soundblaster CT 5880 on board
*Excl. monitor en Windows®

[cirving]

Both of those setups are interesting, maybe I'll just try them both out. Though I'd rather take an expert's opinion since I doubt I'd be able to tell a difference to easily (unless it's drastic).

However, just to clear things up. All my drives are ATA133 and so is my controller card, so their shouldn't be any slow down by going through my controller card I don't think.

Thanks again everyone!

[proxyx99]

Hmm. I did not come here to argue the accepted knowledge or common sense. Ultimately those who buid PC's have to live with their "baby" for some time. It is yet to be explained why slow system down to "gain" on video performance. Weird logic that may be a friut of too much theory but not enough practice. As I said having temp dirs on fastest HD is crucial. Why then put slowest HD as system home to later have to reconfigure all apps to use another drive. As to swap file and scratch disks, their configurability is beyond discussion. I also can't figure out why put fastest drive where they are least likely to be used efficiently. The key is to spread apps, system and data in such a way that data load is spread evenly. The idea of having a dedicated video drive is wrong. As the drive fills up it becomes slower.What that means in practical terms? Fastest drives are for temp writing and slowest for storage (to be filled up. Does that mean a suggestion that later video files should end up on a system partition?). Your configuration is just the opposite of that. OK, enough talk.

Last remark: posting a system config. which barely can be called amateur grade, to support your "theory", makes me wonder.

[tim6661234]

Well for some who didn't come here to argue your doing a dam good job.
Lets wait too see what cirving get out of testing the system.

I have not seen anything in your posting that explains to me why I am wrong. Instead of just flaming me, calling me an amateur when you configuration has 2 of your disks sharing an IDE channel and putting your CD drives on there own makes me laugh At least if you beleive that having the fastest drive fo the main system drive you should be seperating them onto different channels.

When it comes to video I am an amateur. When it comes to building systems I'm not.

The system spec I posted was an old one. Its not mine its from a web site. It simply shows haw it was done. They all come with all 7200 drives which of course is best of all.

All you have are IDE channel that can have a master and a slave dive connected. This channel has a maximum speed and ITS SHARED! Do not put 2 HDDs on the same channel if you have the choice.

I'll wait for your next post but I doubt that you'll justify any of the stuff your saying.

The best part of this is that you think the config is a weird setup and I'm coming up with some strange way of setting thing up thats out of the ordinary. I'm not this is the way its been done for years, I've seen loads of commercial systems built for Video and thats how they did it.

Any way your not stuck with you system config, as long as you can empty one of your drives they all come with utilities like let you swap your operating system from one to the other.

The only thing your correct about is you temp files need to be on the fastest disk (didn't I say that in my previous post). Now I'll say it slower this time YOUR TEMP FILES, SWAP, SCRATCH DO NOT HAVE TO BE ON YOU C DRIVE.

[pijetro]

I downloaded a tryout version of PrPro, and updated to WinXP just for the occassion..
It seems that my hard drive is getting accessed a lot more these days...
I previously had Pre.6.5, and was a lot happier with its' performance..It's as if Pr.Pro is loading the clip, rather than pointing to the clip for playback...
Is this due to XP, or PrPro??
I believe my harddisk configuration is decent, although a faster CPU would be nice to have..

Thanx.....

[newbie_one]

proxyx99:

You are absolutely correct! Use the 5400 for scatch, 7200's for OS and swap. This discussion so far defies facts and logic....

Regards-

[tim6661234]

What the scratch disk. You mean the one thats read/written to alot. How can that be the best way to do it? Surely you use your fastest disks for that!

Anyway the one thing we agree on is that that.

Posted: Mar 27, 2004 05:55

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm. I did not come here to argue the accepted knowledge or common sense. Ultimately those who buid PC's have to live with their "baby" for some time. It is yet to be explained why slow system down to "gain" on video performance. Weird logic that may be a friut of too much theory but not enough practice. As I said having temp dirs on fastest HD is crucial.
[/quote]

Why don't you give me the facts and logis rather than just a statement without any justification. This is not a black and white issue and if you can point me at a prof web site that sets it up this way I'll stand corrected but I've not seen it yet.

[turk690]

To add to the fray, Dave LaBorde (www.videoguys.com, WinXP Top Ten tips; great read I'd say) says WinXP will look for the 1st swapfile that is NOT on the same physical drive as the system drive and give priority to its use (having manually specified the swap file to be in another location than that WinXP defaults to).

[dcsos]

Top tip for getting "SCRATCH DISCS" in order for PREMIERE PRO EDITING CHORES
1. DO NOT USE FAT 32..it's not acceptable to this program
I did and the program nearly choked

I also read that if you have problems after capturing DV, while importing a file do 1 or both of two fixes.
1. Delete the PREMIERE GENERATED audio scratch file/conform file, so when it regenerates the 'scratch file/conformed audio' from the "imported clips list" premiere does it right only the 2nd time..
2. Chop your imported video on the timeline into 4 minute segments (this gets around another PREM PRO bug)

[cirving]

tim and proxy, your comments both make sense to me (though they oppose each other).

What if I just neglected my 5400RPM drive? Is it better to use all 3 anyway?

Cause what if I just install Premiere Pro to my OS drive (120gig 7200RPM) and store all my swap files to my other 7200RPM drive -- the 80 gig one. Based on Premiere Pro's 'scratch disk settings' are there any of those options well-suited for a 5400RPM drive? Or should I just use my 7200RPM drive for every one of those scratch disks? Maybe conformed audio files?

I guess I also don't really understand where the majority of my files go though, when I'm editing. I'll be creating a pretty long documentary, so whatever my setup is, I'll probably want to put the 120GB on the drive that stores all the footage. (i.e. the drive I capture to I'm guessing?)

I'm really not sure, I just want to make sure though that my setup will also maximize my disk space because that extra 40GB would help a lot.

[tim6661234]

I'm glad my comments make sense to someone

If your note using the 5400 drive then I'd do it like this.

80 with XP and your programs

120 for your video, that way your capturing onto a fast large drive.
Then you could use your other disk to archive stuff.

Play around with where your scratch disk is see if proformance improves.

Just don't partition your disks and use these for temp files. All your doing is causing 3 big fragmentation doing this. Thats why (as a prior posting said) windows will prefer to use a swap file on a different physical disk.
The one thing that slows IDE drives down is when the heads have to constantly move from one end to another

I think I'll leave it here hope the info helps. After all thats what I've been trying too do.

[proxyx99]

With regard to partitioning I would have to disagree again. How many posters here have lost their hard work due to corrupted partitions? I would guess quite a few. Partitioning protects data (easier to backup & restore partition then the drive). Also it makes a difference to loose 50 Gigs rather the 120. Next, it takes less time to optimize 50 gigs then 120. Why wait 3 hrs if you can do it in just 1 (defrag). Why also optimize what doesn't need that (together with what needs)? Partitioning and good data management will prevent this. When it comes to moving XP from part to part., try it and you will know what I mean (XP is very stubborn and gets tied to part. like no other system (check Powequest website as well as Microsoft to learn more about that issue). Good luck.

[tim6661234]

I have got no problem using partitions to manage data and all your reasons are valid and I totally agree but what I said was don't partition your system drive if you want optimal preformance. If you set it up with 3 parts Opsys, swap, programs then every time your system reads an windows file then swaps some thing out of memory followed by reading a program file the disk heads have to move from one extreme part to another. This could happen with a single disk but the less you install the less distance to travel and the faster your I/O performance will be. Partition it and you will make you HDD work hard from the start.
Better to balance the load across all you HDDs.

You should not have to defrag you system drive that offen anyway so this makes no difference.

Not sure I've read any postings about partitions corrupting but I've read a lot where the HDD has gone down completely and if you have not backed up you have to accept that it no ones fault but your own.

[proxyx99]

I promised myself not to post here anymore but decided to make one last exception. Disagree again with your take on partitions. Clean partition will perform like an empty drive. with 3 part. you can manage your data. Having one big part. is like a big trash can. If it slows down due to file/dir structure it affects eveything on the drive.

You should not have to defrag you system drive that offen anyway so this makes no difference.

I'm not big on defrag but the argument here defies logic. I defrag rarely because of my data management scheme, in your scenario it does not apply. There are too many things that would need to be addressed here and I don't feel like writing a novel. There are plenty resources on the Net so make good use of them. It's hard to deal with with postings that keep on undermining accepted knowledge. Too much nonsense for me to stick around any longer. No offence but you try to sound like you know and what you post is just the opposite. It's a waste of time. I'm out.

[tim6661234]

I don't agree with your last posting but your right this is going know where. Agree to disagree. The only thing I'd say is that you quote accepted knowledge and defying logic but if you'd have gone into some detail to backup what you were saying rather than just stating things as fact then maybe you'd have convinced me.

[racer-x]

Very interesting thread. Everyone has different opinions.

I use Premiere Pro on an Athlon XP 1700 w/2 HDDs:

HDD-1(120 GIG 7200): Three partitions. XP ad APPs on 1st and storage on other two.
HDD-2(40 GIG 7200): Capture Drive and scratch disks.

My setup works great dispite the reletively slow CPU. I did have to edit the Registry though because of a playback bug. All in all, no problems.

No need to defrag. After I'm done editing my project, I simply reformat my capture Drive. It only takes seconds and is better anyway. All my edited videos are stored on my storage partitions on my 1st HDD. When they get fragmented, I just simply copy files to 2nd HDD, then format the fragmented partition. The only partition that I defrag, is the OS partition.

[enstg8er]

set mine up like this:
scsi1 10gx 10k- w2k system boot
scsi2 10gx 10k- w2k dual boot video only (premier, shrink, decrypter...)
scsi3 10gx 10k- all temp stuff
scsi4 10gx 10k- working small projects
controller card=
channel 1- 80gx 72k- capture/storage
80gx 72k- partitioned 35x18x18 more storage- photos etc
channel 2- 80gx 72k- capture/storage
mb=
channel 1- liteon 411 dvd/cd-rw
lots of flexibility and no conflict problems. boot up is slow though.....