Caldigit vs Apple Raid Cards

http://www.barefeats.com/hard105.html

AND THE WINNER IS...
The CalDigit RAID card's maximum transfer rate is higher than the Apple Pro RAID, though the gap shrinks as you fill up the RAID set (See Disktester graphs). Though we tested four internal drives, the CalDigit RAID card distinquishes itself by support up to 12 external drives using three mini-SAS connectors.

KEY FEATURES
1. You can connect the factory Mac Pro mini-SAS connector to the CalDigit RAID card without the need for an adapter or extender.
2. It supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 50, 60, and JBOD (more modes that the Apple Pro RAID card).
3. CaDigit has developed what they call Active Sustained Transfer Technology (ASTT) which optimizes the best transfer size and timing between the RAID controller cache and the host machine.
4. You can expand the size and level of the RAID set without having to reformat or lose data.*
5. It boots Mac OS X (as well as Windows and Linux). It also works with Boot Camp partitions.
6. Battery backup is an option.

Blu Ray Links

Licensing and history of high end authoring
http://www.discmakers.com/community/resources/Edge/2008/dvdvsbluray.asp

Authoring issues for low end users
http://digitalcontentproducer.com/workflow/bluray_blues

Workflows
http://www.eventdv.net/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=38059
http://www.dv.com/features/features_item.php?articleId=196602808

FCP Crashing on iMac using HDV > AIC codec

I notice that you’re using the AIC codec to work with HDV material, this is no longer a necessary step to take as FCP 6.0 and the newer generation of iMac, Macbook pro and MacPros are capable of handling HDV editing much better. The AIC codec will create much larger files which will put a lot more stress on your system as each stream of video is 12 MB/s as opposed to 3.5MB/s in native HDV. Especially if you’re editing from the internal drive or the small external LaCie you purchased from us.

Your previous work in SD 720x576 is a completely different world regarding the processing and graphics power required to do this, you must consider that you’re working with twice as much resolution, twice as much compression and 4 times as much data throughput.

There’s also a few components involved here that we didn’t provide, including Final Cut Pro itself, which makes it harder for us to determine where the problem lies as we cannot guarantee the quality of these items, unless they came through a third party in which case can you let me know the account name/number.



I would suggest trying a native HDV workflow using the FW800 on your LaCie drive without the audio interface connected and see if you get the same errors. Also, if your OSX hard disk is over 85% I would suggest removing or transferring some non-critical data as this will improve the speed and efficiency of your machine, this also applies to any drive you’re editing from. You could also do some basic housekeeping on the system by repairing disk permissions (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1452) and trashing your FCP preferences (http://support.apple.com/kb/TA27510?viewlocale=en_US Relates to FCP4 but is the same in all versions), these two practices will often help irritating issues like this.

New Direction...

...this blog is now becoming the home for notes, links, emails and generally crap from the world of broadcast video consultancy and technical engineering. So it's gonna be a whole lot less interesting for anyone who stumbles across this from now on...