edius 4.24 hdv capture error

[dougj7]

Hi, I am getting an error "hard disk too slow" when I capture 24p hdv from my canon hv20. I can capture for about 15 seconds before the error message pops up. My capture drive is an e-sata 500mb 3 gb/sec. Is there some setting I can change to speed up my hard drive? Thanks, Doug

[Khoi Pham]

Try to defrag your drive and see if it help, and how fast is your computer?

[dougj7]

The capture drive isn't even half full. PC is an intel dual core 2.8ghz with 2gb ram. Is that sufficient for hdv capture?

[GrassValley_BH]

Are you capturing native HDV or to Canopus HQ?

For native HDV, you should have more than enough bandwidth (HDV is 25 Mbit/sec). Capture to Canopus HQ requires both disk bandwidth (HQ is ~120-160 Mbit/sec) and CPU speed.

[dougj7]

I'm using Canopus HQ.

[Khoi Pham]

You will need raid, 1 drive is too slow for HQ, or you could captured as HDV and then use Procoder to convert to HQ.

[dougj7]

Thanks, I think it's time to look for a new computer again. -Doug

[T-Bone]

or maybe just a raid card and another drive or 2? - your cpu and ram ought to be fine

[dougj7]

That's a better idea T-Bone. Any recommendations for a good sata II raid controller?

[Aristotelis]

check this out: http://www.highpoint-tech.com/

I have tested a few during the year and I'm very happy with their performance...

[dougj7]

Thanks to all for the help. I purchased a highpoint RocketRaid 1742 controller and a Sans Digital MS2T1 external enclosure with dual 160gb sata II drives set up in raid 0. Hopefully it will be fast enough for Canopus HQ HDV. -Doug

[xeberdee]

Megabits

1 drive is fine for HQ. At 160Mbits you're only moving 20MB a second, then of course audio and overhead. Haven't tested the actual size of 1 sec HQ, audio and overhead as we speak but even if it's 30 or 35MB a sec, you should have loads of headroom on a single S-ATA disk for both reads and capture.

Now that you've bought a RAID, then it's all a bit pointless, but I think the issue was not about disk performance. What about access times, CPU & disk cache, block sizes, file system, RAM, running processes, anti-virus etc. These could all have an effect on sucessful playback and capture of anything.

[createmedia]

Hi, I am getting an error "hard disk too slow" when I capture 24p hdv from my canon hv20. I can capture for about 15 seconds before the error message pops up. My capture drive is an e-sata 500mb 3 gb/sec. Is there some setting I can change to speed up my hard drive? Thanks, Doug

Well now this is an interesting one.

It turns out to rear its head when the scene splitter is active. At this time Edius has to close the last file off and create a new file name for the next clip whilst the tape is running. I use an intenal SATA raided pair and those drives are fine for a whole HDV tape without error.

The remote disk pool (5TB) was running Sanbolic Melio FS file sharing software where the small transfers showed a very poor response speed as measured with the Atto Benchmark tester. 2K transfers showed only 2MB/sec whereas the raided pair were showing 33MB/sec at the same transfer size. The remote disks had no problem at the high end reporting 200MB/sec. Now when the new file name is created at a scene split only a small amount of data is tranferred and the response time is lousy, hence the message disk drive too slow. I reprepped the disks under NTFS and immediately the small transfer speed increased. I then updated the Axus drive firmware and got 9MB/sec on small transfers. Sanbolic admitted they had a problem with small transfer speeds and are releasing newly written software for November 07.

In the meantime I am using Tiger Technologies MetaSAN which works fine but really ties up the LAN with Metadata, so I would prefer the Sanbolic solution asssuming they issue a release which works.

Mike Sanders