Storage/Backups for Large VHS-to-Digital Project

[KarMa]

HDDs use the 12 volts from a PSU, and usually your PSU will have a 12 volt AMP limit for each strand of cable or just a limit on the sum of all 12 volt connections. HDDs these days use around 5 watts on a 5400rpm, coming out to around 0.4 amps. Maybe double that amp rating if you consider the starting amps needed to get the platter moving at startup. On much older drives, smaller than 200GB in my experience, the starting amps needed was much higher and they consumed more power overall. But these days the starting amps is not as bad and they run more efficient overall.

I honestly doubt you will go over any 12 volt amp limit on your PSU with the addition of one or two HDDS but it's certainly worth a look. I also don't know anything about your PSU so you could already be over for all I know.

Edit: So I found a Western Digital Spec Sheet, and they list the starting amps at 1.75 (@12 volts) for a 6TB Red, and reading/writing at 0.44 amps (5.3 watts). Idle is 3.4 watts.

https://www.wdc.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800002.pdf

[johnmeyer]

No need to do any calculations. As I said in the last post, you can find these power supply calculators all over the place. Here are a few:

http://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

https://www.enermax.outervision.com/

[pandy]

Use dedicated NAS - perhaps on second hand market - something like Qnap TS-1673U or Supermicro SuperChassis SuperChassis 846BE1C-R1K03JBOD.

[koberulz]

dedicated NAS

What? I Googled the QNAP thing and I'm still not sure what it is or what it does or how it works.

I have an Antec Truepower 650, which seems enough. Those PCIe cards are all but impossible to search for, though; I get so many irrelevant results. And know almost nothing about PCIe and its versions and such.

[jagabo]

You can use a single drive hot swap rack if you don't have multiple bays open.

https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-Aluminum-Backplane-Enclosure-Optimized/dp/B0002474VM/

[lingyi]

dedicated NAS

What? I Googled the QNAP thing and I'm still not sure what it is or what it does or how it works.

I have an Antec Truepower 650, which seems enough. Those PCIe cards are all but impossible to search for, though; I get so many irrelevant results. And know almost nothing about PCIe and its versions and such.

The NAS enclosures pandy linked to are far beyond anything you would possibly need. Don't bother with them.

HDDs have become much more power efficient and your power supply which is a very good brand is more than enough to add three (or more) HDDs to your system.

Use this card: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124045&cm_re=pci_sata-_-16-124-045-_-Product&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-na-_-na-_-
na&cm_sp=&AID=11552995&PID=5412144&SID=19619X76941 3Xdb65f44aecb6b3060bca2ba7abaede64

And use one of the slots in the pic below

[Attachment 45366 - Click to enlarge]

This is from the manual for your motherboard - H170 Gaming-[M]3 (attached)

[koberulz]

I'd rather not order from NewEgg, though, they want $40 to ship that here. It's insane.

Had a further thought about this: would the drives be compatible with a Mac?

[koberulz]

Can anyone answer that last question?

[Cornucopia]

If you are asking "does qnap support formatting drives as HFS+ and serving via SMB or AFP or NFS protocols?", then yes it does. Doubt if it supports AFS ("apple filesystem", new to High Sierra), though.

Scott

[koberulz]

I meant using the hot-swap 5.25" bay thing.

[VHSAlessandro]

I'm more on the video transfer side. DV 50 codec is basically lossless. I am curious what playback machine you are using. Have you considered doing a cheapie transfer of everything to DVD, then making notes from the DVD as to what is the most valuable footage you have, then actually finding someone with an amazing VHS studio to do transfers just of the scenes that matter? There is no reason to go uncompressed with the DV 50 codec out there. DV 50 codec can handle betacam sp quality which is probably four times the quality of VHS. (just guessing)

[Cornucopia]

The hot swap rack says it is compatible with MacOS, but you'll be hard pressed to find a MacPro that supports 3.5" sata drive bay AND is modern OS upgradable, as the last year model that had a traditional tower/desktop form factor was ~2012.
Of course, you could create a satellite rack/enclosure that connected via Thunderbolt or something, but that wouldn't work for bootability.
So...not really meant for Mac. It's clear, Apple doesn't seem to care about DIY computer geeks & power users anymore, going for mass-consumer mobile devices now.

Scott

[Cornucopia]

Dv50 codec is NOT basically lossless - it is acceptable.
4:2:2 color is better than 4:2:0, but not up to 4:4:4. It only supports 8bit depth. It uses anamorphic (stretched) pixels. You can still see dct blocking with difficult/complex material. It's also strictly for SD.

For VHS work, it should be fine, but if I were needing something that was "basically lossless" for processing work on fragile material, I'd just go with lossless (Lagarith, UTvideo, MagicYUV, etc). In many ways, those are better supported (exception: traditional full-blown NLEs and old school Quicktime), and you don't have those restrictions. Or is bitrate the issue?

Scott

[koberulz]

I'm not concerned with the rack itself, that'll stay in my Windows machine. Just need the drives readable on a Mac when I'm done, whether that's through an enclosure or something else. I don't use Apple products so it's beyond my knowledge. Not sure why you're bringing up bootability, unless I'm misunderstanding something; it won't have the OS on the drive.

[pandy]

The NAS enclosures pandy linked to are far beyond anything you would possibly need. Don't bother with them.

Any justification for above? How efficiently you can deal with tens of TB with some minimum protection? All depends on HDD size but anyway such enclosure solving many problems simultaneously (data organization, power supply, heat, storage space etc).

[VHSAlessandro]

Dv50 codec is NOT basically lossless - it is acceptable.
4:2:2 color is better than 4:2:0, but not up to 4:4:4. It only supports 8bit depth. It uses anamorphic (stretched) pixels. You can still see dct blocking with difficult/complex material. It's also strictly for SD.

For VHS work, it should be fine, but if I were needing something that was "basically lossless" for processing work on fragile material, I'd just go with lossless (Lagarith, UTvideo, MagicYUV, etc). In many ways, those are better supported (exception: traditional full-blown NLEs and old school Quicktime), and you don't have those restrictions. Or is bitrate the issue?

Scott

Thanks Scott. I was going off of old information. And I agree with you about Mac. I think Mac has prioritized what they can charge the most while using the least amount of Rare Earth Materials for maximum profits. Apparently FCP 10.4.1 just now figured out how to make a properly functioning color wheel. https://digitalfilms.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/fcpx-color-wheels-take-2/

[VHSAlessandro]

Does anyone hear ever consider using a hardware device to make the jump from SD to HD? Black Magic makes a lot of these Hardware boxes. I've never used them but may consider getting one for SD to HD transfers.

[koberulz]

Giving Cineform a whirl for my VDub-to-Premiere step. What's the best quality to go with?

[poisondeathray]

Giving Cineform a whirl for my VDub-to-Premiere step. What's the best quality to go with?

"filmscan2" for the regular version

It's actually a native format in newer PP versions - they implemented the gopro sdk

[koberulz]

WWhat about the 4:4:4 encoding checkbox? Do I need to select a specific color depth?

[poisondeathray]

WWhat about the 4:4:4 encoding checkbox? Do I need to select a specific color depth?

It's not enabled in the regular version. The "normal" version is 10bit 422 , which is probably what you want if you are using the official go pro version

[lingyi]

The NAS enclosures pandy linked to are far beyond anything you would possibly need. Don't bother with them.

Any justification for above? How efficiently you can deal with tens of TB with some minimum protection? All depends on HDD size but anyway such enclosure solving many problems simultaneously (data organization, power supply, heat, storage space etc).

The OP is struggling with the concept and cost of of 1-3 bay drive cages and 4-5 bay external enclosures and never mentioned needing a NAS, especially large 16-24 bay enclosures you recommended.

[koberulz]

I don't even know what a NAS is.

EDIT: The Cineform file won't play in VLC or open in Premiere.

[poisondeathray]

NAS = Network Attached Storage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage

Not the "Nas" the rapper

[koberulz]

Was editing when you posted, I think. The Cineform file won't open in VLC or Premiere.

[poisondeathray]

EDIT: The Cineform file won't play in VLC or open in Premiere.

It should play in newer VLC versions, because cineform support was added to ffmpeg. BUT - the open source variant for decoding is buggy and slow

I would stick with official gopro implementation. Unfortunately that means installing GoPro Studio to decode it in older PP versions (it's native in CC). But this is the workflow that people used back then too with CS6. On windows it's either cineform or dnxhd/dnxhr for near lossless codecs. Prores is supported natively too now in CC, but it's much slower than on a Mac, so usually not preferred on windows

Installed codecs aren't supported in VLC, so you would need to use MPCHC, WMP etc... to view cineform in a player. Vdub /vdub2 can preview it too

[koberulz]

I installed the GoPro thing - had to find an older version as I only have Windows 7 though - that's how I created it in VDub in the first place. PP just gives an 'unsupported format or damaged file' error. MPCHC also fails to open it, saying it couldn't render one of the pins in the graph. The "LAV Splitter Source (internal)::video" pin failed to find a connectable filter.

LAV Splitter Source (internal)::Video

Media Type 0:
--------------------------
Video: CFHD 720x576 50fps 99543kbps

AM_MEDIA_TYPE: 
majortype: MEDIATYPE_Video {73646976-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
subtype: Unknown GUID Name {44484643-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}
formattype: FORMAT_VideoInfo {05589F80-C356-11CE-BF01-00AA0055595A}
bFixedSizeSamples: 0
bTemporalCompression: 1
lSampleSize: 1
cbFormat: 92

VIDEOINFOHEADER:
rcSource: (0,0)-(720,576)
rcTarget: (0,0)-(720,576)
dwBitRate: 99543353
dwBitErrorRate: 0
AvgTimePerFrame: 200000

BITMAPINFOHEADER:
biSize: 44
biWidth: 720
biHeight: 576
biPlanes: 1
biBitCount: 20
biCompression: CFHD
biSizeImage: 1036800
biXPelsPerMeter: 0
biYPelsPerMeter: 0
biClrUsed: 0
biClrImportant: 0

pbFormat:
0000: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 d0 02 00 00 40 02 00 00 ........Ð...@...
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 d0 02 00 00 40 02 00 00 ........Ð...@...
0020: 39 e9 ee 05 00 00 00 00 40 0d 03 00 00 00 00 00 9éî.....@.......
0030: 2c 00 00 00 d0 02 00 00 40 02 00 00 01 00 14 00 ,...Ð...@.......
0040: 43 46 48 44 00 d2 0f 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 CFHD.Ò..........
0050: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00|00 00 00 00             ............

EDIT: Read the Wiki page on NAS, not sure how it differs from any other hard drive enclosure.

[poisondeathray]

Is this vdub classic ? or vdub2 ?

Did you use GoPro cineform official, or vdub2 with cineform (native) to encode ?

If you re-import the export, does the file open correctly in vdub?

[koberulz]

VDub 1.9.11, GoPro CineForm Codec v9.2.1.

Yes, the exported CF file opens in VDub.

[Cornucopia]

@koberulz, re drive shuttle: as stated, unless you have an older MacPro tower, you wouldn't be able to use the drive dock natively on a Mac. You would have to remove the drive from the dock and put in an external enclosure. If you are going to do that, just have it be in an enclosure the whole time!
Get a Windows Tbolt or esata card and an enclosure that allows for USB2 as fallback + USB3/USB-C/eSata/Tbolt (or whatever combination you expect to need).
Then connect on the Windows side and on the Mac side. No worries.
But you will have to get an additional driver either on the Win side (e.g. Mediafour Macdrive) or on the Mac side (e.g. Paragon or Tuxera NTFS for Mac) so you can read-write both places. Unless you were willing to remain lowest common denominator (FAT32), which isn't smart for video files these days.

*******************************
Also, you don't say which PP you have. That will greatly affect codec workflow. And in this day and age, there really can be no perfect cross-platform intermediate format (finger points to Apple).

Scott