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These are the important bits of my current PC:
AMD FX-8350
Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
8GB RAM
NVidia GeForce GTX 660
Editing my photography is easy with this setup. There is some lag when saving larger files to web, but I can live with that. What I'm really looking for is for quicker rendering and smoother 4K editing. I got my hands on a GH4 and have some trouble with scrubbing through the timeline to get a decent look at the edit.
For some reason I think CPU and GPU are the upgrades necessary for me to get those faster renders and smoother editing, but I thought I would ask anyways and ask for some recommendations.
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Smile
Smile -
What kind of hard drives are you running?
What's your editing software?
What codec are you using on the GH4? -
For 4k, I would:
1. Beef up your vid card to ~GTX 780 levels
2. Double/Triple/Quadruple your RAM
3. Make sure you've got a decent HDD subsystem (Fast 6Gbps SATA III @ 7200rpm or better, or RAID 0, 10 system) - think about multiple tracks of AVC decode each at 220Mbps
4. 64bit NLE up-to-date, with up-to-date drivers, to allow for hardware-accellerated AVC decode
5. Lean process overhead
For rendering/exporting/converting, a CPU upgrade would also help, but for timeline scrubbing, it shouldn't make much of a difference and yours isn't that bad to begin with.
Looks like you've already got Win7pro64, hard to tell what your HDD config actually is. Make sure HDDs are optimized & contiguous for better seeking.
Scott -
OCZ Technology 256GB Vertex 4 (Main Drive)Originally Posted by smrpix
4 x 2TB Optical Drives for storage
Premier Pro CC / DaVinci Resolve Lite
Mov codec in Cinema 4KSmileSmile -
MOV isn't a codec, but a container. It's never fully & explicitly specified anywhere in any of their manuals (which I've read through), but I'm pretty sure the codec used is AVC-Intra (at 200 or 100Mbps) or AVC (IBP at 50Mbps). The "MP4" option uses AVC ibp, as does the AVCHD option. Both of those at different bitrates (quite a range!).
2TB Optical? Is there a typo in there? What's your bus & configuration of those 4 drives?
Scott -
Sorry...
avc1 at 100mbp (4K 100MBps only (IPB frame order)) At least that's what I've found. There is a higher bitrate for 1080p.
2TB Drives bus & configuration...honestly, I can't tell you because I don't know what that means. Here's what I do know:
C drive is the SSD drive, boot drive. It has all my applications.
D drive is my optical drive (Blu-ray RW)
E drive is where all my photography files are stored and my Lightroom catalogs.
F drive is where all my video is stored
G drive is where my miscellaneous stuff goes: Website stuff, downloads, rendered videos, retouched photos ready for delivery etc.
I have 2 more drives (1.5T each that are USB 3) 1 is used to back up my photos, the other is empty. I have 1 USB 2 drive (250GB) that's just sitting there waiting to be used.
Not sure if that answered your question. If not, please let me know.SmileSmile -
You are correct: highest bitrate possible & AVC-Intra options only applies to 1080p.
...So, you are using only 1 drive to store your videos: (F)
Speed? 5400rpm? 7200rpm? 10000rpm? 15000rpm? (lowest one is NOT recommended, higher is better)
Is this internal (better) or external? (worse)
What connection type - Thunderbolt? SATA? PATA(IDE)? USB3? Firewire? USB2? (BTW, those are basically/roughly in descending order of video speed/efficiency)
With one drive, you clearly are not using a RAID setup. Well, at least you aren't using your boot drive for your videos!
Scott -
1 drive dedicated to video storage, correct.Originally Posted by Cornucopia
7200rpm is the speed for all internal. They are SATA drives.
The 2 external drives are USB3 drives.
No RAID setup as I'm not familiar with how to. I've heard and read the lingo but never dove into the details as to what it is and why someone would use it. Time to hit up YoutubeSmileSmile -
It's a good idea to do a drive speed benchmark test to see what your current video drive is doing and how that compares to what your media requirements would be.
For example: I have a modest, outdated XPproSP3 workstation, but it has 2x RAID10 (thats 0+1) systems in it (for a total of 8 drives dedicated to media). Allows you to read from one at full speed as you simultaneously write to another.
CrystalDiskMark rates them at 100MB/sec SeqRead/, 80MB/sec SeqWrite. (It would be much better if I had a newer mobo+64bitWin7Ultimate+better cache RAM, because the discs are SATA3s @ 7200rpm). Notice the read is faster than the write: that's because it can read from either or both stripes (whichever is fastest).
Compare that to even a UHS3 SD card which requires/guarantees 30MB/sec read/write. That's the kind of card needed for some 4k video. OTOH, DV and HDV and 25Mbps AVCHD are all expecting 3¼MBps.
Now, where this really comes in handy is when running an editing/compositing timeline that uses multiple video tracks (overlaid simultaneously). Let's say I ran 4 cams using ~220Mbps ProRes each. That's 880Mbps, or 110MBps, full out. Since I have 2 simultaneous systems, as long as I devote 1 system to 2 tracks and 1 system to the other 2 tracks, I should be able to read and/or write all 4 without a glitch (at least 160MBps R/W). Plus, being RAID10, it is fully fault-tolerant.
So it depends a lot on what you intend to do with it and the kind of requirements expected for that specific workflow.
Scott -
Thank you!!
I'm going to have to do some studying and possibly investing in a couple new HDD and maybe a case big enough to fit them all. But more studying...SmileSmile -
I'm sure my case is out-of-the-ordinary. A new PC build with components matched from the ground up will likely exhibit better performance, so you might not even need to resort to RAID. Plus, unless you are doing a regular gig and it's "mission-critical", you might not feel the need for fault tolerance.
And SSDs and/or Flash will obviously perform much better than HDDs (though they have their own compromises), whether singly or in RAID pair systems.
If your needs are more hobbyist, say 2 streams of Panny Lumix GH4 HD AVC-I at highest bitrate (200mbps), that equates to 50MBps. I note that on the Tom's Hardware HDD2013 chart, almost ALL the listed drives are capable of this (with modern system).http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/-01-Read-Throughput-Average-h2bench...3.16,2901.html
Studying first is a good idea...
HTH,
Scott
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