Computer possibly slowing down post-production?

Intuitive Films

Intuitive Films

Hellooo,

I've decided to do a short film over the summertime (probably around 3-5 minutes long), but I'm concerned there might be a technical hitch. Basically, I do all my post production on a MacBook Pro 13", dual core i5 with 2.4 Ghz., with 450 GB of space, and edit with Final Cut Pro X, After Effects, and Motion 5. Because I don't own an external drive (yet), I'll be storing all the footage on the hard drive so I'm a bit worried that I could potentially run out of space on my computer, since I'll be shooting full HD and possibly exporting at Pro Res 4.2.2.

Any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks! :)
 
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sfoster said:
Depends on how much footage you shoot. If you use every second of footage, 3-5 minutes isn't too much.

If you do 12 takes for each scene.. well then yes you will run out of space.
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Thanks, that's good to hear. It's just that I've never done a film over 3 minutes before, so this is my first time trying something "bigger" lol.
 
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Intuitive Films said:
Thanks, that's good to hear. It's just that I've never done a film over 3 minutes before, so this is my first time trying something "bigger" lol.
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If you only import some of the files at once, and then delete the takes you don't like you can probably make this work. Although technically that will slow down your post production
 
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I would strongly advise you buy an external hard drive - USB3 or Thunderbolt 2.

Imagine having just to keep the takes you like then finding out later that you picked a poor take or need a cut from a scene you do not have... Or your laptop simply dies on you, or grinds to a halt.

This thread has advice along the lines of the question you posted.

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=54009
 
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HIFF said:
I would strongly advise you buy an external hard drive - USB3 or Thunderbolt 2.

Imagine having just to keep the takes you like then finding out later that you picked a poor take or need a cut from a scene you do not have... Or your laptop simply dies on you, or grinds to a halt.

This thread has advice along the lines of the question you posted.

http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=54009
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Thanks Hiff, which one do you think is better for me to get, the Thunderbolt 2 or USB 3?
 
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First step would be to look at the system inspector and verify that you actually have USB 3.0 available on your specific macbook. If you do, USB3 drives will tend to be less expensive. I believe thunderbolt gets a lot better throughput though. Aside from theoretical speed similarities and differences.. in the real world, thunderbolt generally is significantly faster than usb.

But, if you've got USB3 available, picking up a cineraid enclosure and a couple of bare drives would probably be your best bet.
 
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Will Vincent said:
First step would be to look at the system inspector and verify that you actually have USB 3.0 available on your specific macbook. If you do, USB3 drives will tend to be less expensive. I believe thunderbolt gets a lot better throughput though. Aside from theoretical speed similarities and differences.. in the real world, thunderbolt generally is significantly faster than usb.

But, if you've got USB3 available, picking up a cineraid enclosure and a couple of bare drives would probably be your best bet.
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Yes, I do have USB 3.0 available so I guess the next step would be to choose one. Thanks for your help!
 
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Something like this would be good...

2x 1TB Western Digital RED
1x 4bay drive enclosure

Total cost about $235

Set up as (software) RAID 0. No redundancy, but it'd be fast storage.. could double the space for $60 more by going for the 2TB drives instead of the 1TB drives.

I'd go with a 4bay enclosure, so you have room to grow with it, but you could save a bit of cash up front by going with a 2bay enclosure instead. The Western Digital RED drive series is intended for network storage, which means they're designed for continuous read/write access.. perfect for a RAID setup. I have 4 of the 2TB drives in the system I built a few months ago, I get read/write access on that array at speeds equivilent of an SSD, but with the bonus of it being 8 usable terabytes, and only costing me $400 :D lol

Yes, this would be a software raid setup, rather than hardware raid... with the speed of processors these days, and whatnot, it's not really an issue. The setup I mentioned in my recently built hackintosh is using software raid, and obviously I'm not having speed issues with it ;)

Of course, depending on the amount of footage you anticipate, and the fact this enclosure is not a hardware raid enclosure, meaning you can run a single drive in it without issue, or multiple as separate disks, etc.. you may well be fine with the enclosure and a single drive, in which case I'd say get the enclosure and a single 2TB drive, then add more drives later when you need more space, and just keep it as separate drives.. if you're going to edit from it though you'll want to use multiple drives and set it up with software raid so that you can take advantage of as much usb bandwidth as possible.

The other bonus with it being usb, if you were to opt for a universal format (ExFAT probably being the best option) you could use the same disks on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
 
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Universal format has downsides. There is a cap on how big a file you're allowed to transfer. I've encountered this before on my external hard drive that is universal. Wasn't able to transfer a video to someone
 
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