eSATA Help

[Mark Von Lanken]

I am editing with Edius 4.5 and am entering the HD world... My new computer doesn't have eSATA connections. What PCI card would you recommend so I can use my eSATA external hard drives. Thanks.

[gdame]

My new computer doesn't have eSATA connections. What PCI card would you recommend so I can use my eSATA external hard drives. Thanks.

Hey Mark,

Tell us more about what is going to be on these drives and how you intend to use them. Is this for HDV, HD or SD? Are you just backing up to these drives or do you plan to edit directly from them? Do you use multicam?

A bit of detail and I will be able to make some recomendations.

[STORMDAVE]

Yeah, maybe PC specs too?

If you have onboard SATA connections on the motherboard you can buy an external eSATA bracket (About $10) and have instant eSATA.

[swsw1550]

Lacie

Go out and by a Lacie 2 port Esata card, this will give you true Esata speeds.

Cheers
Steve

[gdame]

Are you guys really doing HQ HDV on a single eSATA drive?

I don't know, maybe I am a bit old school. But I like to have video drives that are about twice as fast as I would ever need at the thickest portion of my time-line i.e. multi-cam, multiple PnP's etc.

In the RexRT days a 60MB/sec raid was great for DV.

I like having at least a 200MB/sec raid for HQ HDV. And with minimal CPU utilization. Gotta save that for filters and other real-time stuff.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Hey Mark,

Tell us more about what is going to be on these drives and how you intend to use them. Is this for HDV, HD or SD? Are you just backing up to these drives or do you plan to edit directly from them? Do you use multicam?

A bit of detail and I will be able to make some recomendations.

Hi George,

I'm shooting in HDV and editing in Edius HQ. I want the option to edit directly from the drives. I just recently made the switch from 3.6 to 4.5, so I haven't used mulitcam yet. The option may become useful at some point in the future. Thanks for your help.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Yeah, maybe PC specs too?

If you have onboard SATA connections on the motherboard you can buy an external eSATA bracket (About $10) and have instant eSATA.

Hi STORMDAVE,

Computer specs are, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6550 2.33GHz,4MB L2Cache,1333FSB, 2 gb ram, 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT.

I don't know much about eSATA, but the computer came with two DVD drives, which are SATA. I disconnected one of the DVD drives and plugged in one of those $10 brackets. It didn't work.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Go out and by a Lacie 2 port Esata card, this will give you true Esata speeds.

Cheers
Steve

Hi Steve,

Thanks. I'll check it out.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Are you guys really doing HQ HDV on a single eSATA drive?

I don't know, maybe I am a bit old school. But I like have video drives that are about twice as fast as I would ever need at the thickest portion of my time-line i.e. multi-cam, multiple PnP's etc.

In the RexRT days a 60MB/sec raid was great for DV.

I like having at least a 200MB/sec raid for HQ HDV. And with minimal CPU utilization. Gotta save that for filters and other real-time stuff.

Hi George,

I have done a few short projects on a single USB drive with my laptop. It was sluggish at times. I recenly added an express card to eSATA jack to my laptop and it really helped the performance with the eSATA drive. I did about half the current wedding edit with that setup before my new desktop arrived. This is my first complete wedding edit in HDV. The few other HDV edits have only been 1-4 minutes.

I'm doing weddings, so I'm not doing multiple PnPs. Many portions have very little filters and some section may the following filters, slow motion, B&W, key framed blur, anti flicker, border darken from the Old Movie Filter, audio filters and occasionally, White Balance.

[GrassValley_MD]

Hi Mark!! It is great to see you!

The LaCie Option is a good one and will give you what you need.

Can you call me when you get a few minutes?


Mike

[STORMDAVE]

Hi STORMDAVE,

Computer specs are, Intel Core 2 Duo Processor E6550 2.33GHz,4MB L2Cache,1333FSB, 2 gb ram, 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT.

I don't know much about eSATA, but the computer came with two DVD drives, which are SATA. I disconnected one of the DVD drives and plugged in one of those $10 brackets. It didn't work.

Hmm...you should have more than 2 SATA ports on your motherobard, but I don't know the model so...you're better off getting a PCIe SATA controller as mentioned in this thread.

[vienna1944er]

SATA is not the same as eSATA ..... eSATA have different electrical bus-specifications

the "eSATA bracket (About $10)" is a unsupported botch, can work but must not work
the "eSATA bracket (About $10)" is a "stop-gap" for move the picture\video on a disk to grandma at the retirement home

in a better english than mine......... External Serial ATA - WHITE PAPER
from page 10: ELECTRICAL SIGNALING REQUIREMENTS
One of the features identified above is the ability to have a longer cable, up to 2 meters, for an external application.
Since the original Serial ATA specification was designed for the internal 1-meter cable,
there was not sufficient design margin in the spec to drive the longer cable.

The Serial ATA specification sets minimum and maximum transmit voltages that must be sent from a Serial ATA host or device,
and also a minimum voltage that a receiver must be able to decode properly.
For the internal cable at a speed of 1.5 Gbps, the transmission voltage that must be sent from the host to the drive, or vice versa,
ranges from 400 to 600 mV. The receiver must be able to decode voltages between 325 and 600 mV
to account for some loss in signal though the cables and connectors.
With the 2-meter cable, in order to account for any additional losses over the cable,
the minimum voltage transmitted is raised from 400 to 500 mV,
and the minimum receiver sensitivity is further decreased to 240 mV.

These changes accommodate any additional degradation within the longer cable or additional connectors / in the signal path.
It should be noted that the signal levels vary slightly for the 3 Gbps signaling rate,
and that the compliance points where these signals need to be verified are at the point where the external cable is plugged in, not at the silicon device.

Source: faster and shorter on "wiki"
External SATA Minimum transmit potential increased: Range is 500–600 mV instead of 400–600 mV.
Minimum receive potential decreased: Range is 240–600 mV instead of 325–600 mV.
Maximum cable length of 2 m

friendly greetings from the "inhouse-librarian" ....... old Hans

[gdame]

Hi Mark,

Hey I won one of your videos as a door prize recently. It was at the NPVA meeting outside of Boston, Caleb & Julee.

If you do not have eSATA built-in. The easy solution would be to go over to Best Buy and purchase a PNY PCIe SATA-II dual channel Raid controller for $51. It has four ports, 2 internal and 2 external eSATA. You can use any combination of two ports. It supports Raid 0, 1 or JBOD (just a bunch of drives). I would take a pair of eSATA drives and stripe them as raid 0 and be confident that your editing of 1440 x 1080 HQ material was a smooth edit. It should feel fast like DV used to. Be sure to ckeck your mainboard for a free PCIe slot first.

[Mark Von Lanken]

Hmm...you should have more than 2 SATA ports on your motherobard, but I don't know the model so...you're better off getting a PCIe SATA controller as mentioned in this thread.

Hi STORMDAVE,

Thanks for the advice. Yes, I'm going to get a PCIe SATA controller.

[Mark Von Lanken]

SATA is not the same as eSATA ..... eSATA have different electrical bus-specifications...

...friendly greetings from the "inhouse-librarian" ....... old Hans

Wow Hans. You are quite full of useful information. Thanks.