is it possible to edit/color 4k RAW video with a 850EVO SSD?

[Dan Wake]

there are various brand and size of SSD and M.2 in the market. 

 

I have some budget problem and I need to stay on the low profile but I wish to be sure my new HDD will work for my purposes, if not I will make different choices.

 

basically I have found those 2 models: SSD 500GB 850 EVO and the M.2 500GB 850EVO. 

I wish to buy one of them because price seems to be good for my pockets the problem is: will it worls with video editing and color in 4K raw video? 

I will use Premiere and Davinci Resolve.

Are those SSD recommended? 

thx a lot for your help, tomorrow I will buy the new PC and I really need this info! :P

 

 

[sondreg]

It depends on the RAW format and bitrate - but keep in mind the speed of the drive shouldn't affect the playback speed of a clip that has been altered with, because it's still playing back the same file. A good graphics card will help more. CPU doesn't do as much when it comes to price/performance. I would personally still recommend an SSD but not for storing footage, unless if its going to be its only purpose.

[Dan Wake]

15 minutes ago, sondreg said:

It depends on the RAW format and bitrate - but keep in mind the speed of the drive shouldn't affect the playback speed of a clip that has been altered with, because it's still playing back the same file. A good graphics card will help more. CPU doesn't do as much when it comes to price/performance. I would personally still recommend an SSD but not for storing footage, unless if its going to be its only purpose.

thx for your reply.   

Searching over internet I have not found the right answers. The only thing I have found is this video. So I noticed there is not the 4K test inside the parameters. do you believe it can playback at 4K 24p? thx a lot :P

 

 

[Dan Wake]

sorry guys another short question please, will 32GB of ram be enough for 4K raw video editing and color? thx again

[sondreg]

It still depends on what codec you are shooting with. 16GB of ram has sufficed for me personally, more will probably help but no less. With 4K H265 I use a standard HDD, a not so ideal i7-3770 processor (4 physical cores) and an AMD Fury X, also not "ideal" per sè, playback is fine, but any adjustments kill the playback speed. I don't think disk speeds matter that much for playback.

[iaremrsir]

I get around 500-550 MB/s with my 840 EVO and 850 EVO drives. As long as those are connected to a SATA III port or you have them in RAID, you'll be fine. The big bottlenecks will be CPU, GPU, and RAM. For 4K I recommend a minimum of 32GB of high speed RAM (1600 MHz or faster), ideally 64GB. For your GPU the GTX 1070 is a good starting point. It's inexpensive and has 8GB of RAM which is a great help for 4K. CPU will need to be the highest end i7 CPU or a Xeon to edit smoothly. Of course this all depends on what your delivery format is. I can get 18fps with a 1080p timeline using 4.6K raw footage on a 3 year old overclocked CPU. But that drops drastically if I use a UHD timeline. Are you looking to build your own PC or buy a complete system from a company like Dell or HP?

[Andrew Reid]

What 4K raw codec will you be working with?

I'd probably want a larger drive for 4K raw... a RAID array of HDDs is a viable alternative to some SSDs in my opinion. They can get pretty speedy and will be 8TB+

[M Carter]

There's way more to this than the drive brand. How is it connected? An SSD in a $15 USB 3.0 enclosure is pretty dang fast on my cylinder Mac Pro, unimpressive on my tower (which is USB 2). 

You also have to research what the software wants - Adobe's techs recommend the following to maximize After Effects, for instance (AE is where I personally need speed) - 

• Application and system files on your boot drive;
• Scratch disk on a separate and very fast drive (internal SSD on PCI for instance);
• Footage on a very fast drive (external RAID 0 for instance on a fast buss like Tbolt2 - but then, spinning-drive raid may not need TB2 while an SSD raid might use the extra speed - but enough SSD raid space for three or 4 4K projects in production at any given time, and the associated graphics and audio and so on may be wildly expensive);
• Graphic card that works with AE;
• Fastest processor you can get.
• Two of their techs specifically told me that even 12-16GB of RAM was fine for that time, do the drives and graphic card first.

So there's three separate drives/busses (for AE anyway) - and the scratch drive is really where max speed is needed. And I generally have anywhere from one to three terrabytes of active work (not completed and ready to archive) at any given time, so a spinning drive raid (and a big disk to back it up on at night) is the most cost-effective thing for me.

FCPX is crazy-efficient on a mac system - even on a 2009 Mac Pro it'll edit 4K smoothly with an internal spinning raid, on my newer cylinder I can edit files that are on a networked raid (gigabit, but that's gotten stupid cheap now, $15 for a switch). Resolve is another story, and if you can't afford a mega system you may have to work at proxy resolutions and so on.

You really need to figure out where you need speed, research the best solutions for each software, figure out where the best value is if you can't afford the best, and THEN figure out what configuration works best for, say Resolve and Premiere (and also any 3D or effects software you might use regularly).

[Dan Wake]

2 hours ago, sondreg said:

It still depends on what codec you are shooting with. 16GB of ram has sufficed for me personally, more will probably help but no less. With 4K H265 I use a standard HDD, a not so ideal i7-3770 processor (4 physical cores) and an AMD Fury X, also not "ideal" per sè, playback is fine, but any adjustments kill the playback speed. I don't think disk speeds matter that much for playback.

il you are on mac try this to find out. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blackmagic-disk-speed-test/id425264550?mt=12

imho is the mechanical HDD the problem. 

 

example:

 

 

another example.

 

this is  2 x 1TB Seagate Barracuda's in Raid 0

http://www.tonymacx86.com/attachments/diskspeedtest-png.164483/

source http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/post-your-ssd-benchmarks-using-blackmagic-disk-speed-test.79217/page-24

 

[Dan Wake]

how many hours of footage can I put into a 8TB HDD (mechanical, for example western digital black)? I wish to build a 8TB RAID 5 NAS.  I opened my mind about this problem I can't go far with SSD storage.

 

about the bandwith that takes 4K 24p is it 324MB/s?

i saw this post ut it is 2006 http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?70671-4K-RAW-data-rates

 

thx!

[Dan Wake]

guys which is it the max speed that you can reach with classic HDD (no SSD) in raid?

 thx

[M Carter]

On June 6, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Dan Wake said:

how many hours of footage can I put into a 8TB HDD (mechanical, for example western digital black)? I wish to build a 8TB RAID 5 NAS.  I opened my mind about this problem I can't go far with SSD storage.

Depends on the footage - SD interlaced? 4K? Raw? Most manufacturers list average file sizes or card capacities in their owners manuals. There's more than one kind of "footage". 

(Whether a spinning disk or an SSD, 8TB is 8 TB - formatting the drive will take some space though).

7 hours ago, Dan Wake said:

guys which is it the max speed that you can reach with classic HDD (no SSD) in raid?

 thx

Again - how many drives in the array, and what flavor of RAID (0, 1, etc)? What spindle speed (RPM)? What size drives and how many? What's the buss (internal, firewire, USB 2 or 3, Thunderbolt 1 or 2?) and what else is on it? Soft or hard RAID? Manufacturer's claimed speeds or real-world tested speeds?

I think you need to read up a bit more on these technologies - they're not as general as you think. Though you should quickly be able to find some general benchmark numbers.

[Dan Wake]

9 hours ago, M Carter said:

Depends on the footage - SD interlaced? 4K? Raw? Most manufacturers list average file sizes or card capacities in their owners manuals. There's more than one kind of "footage". 

(Whether a spinning disk or an SSD, 8TB is 8 TB - formatting the drive will take some space though).

Again - how many drives in the array, and what flavor of RAID (0, 1, etc)? What spindle speed (RPM)? What size drives and how many? What's the buss (internal, firewire, USB 2 or 3, Thunderbolt 1 or 2?) and what else is on it? Soft or hard RAID? Manufacturer's claimed speeds or real-world tested speeds?

I think you need to read up a bit more on these technologies - they're not as general as you think. Though you should quickly be able to find some general benchmark numbers.

I wish to work in 4K raw video 12/16bit 25p. if possible even 6K at the same bit depth and fps.  someone suggested me to use RAID5 is it ok? the PC motherboard is an Asus X99-A/USB 3.1 2011-v3. I can choose between to connect the HDDs' inside the case or external with a thunderbid NAS, for thunderbid I need to buy this add-on for the motherboard: https://www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessories/ThunderboltEX_II/

I do not know which brand/model of HDD I should look for, maybe western digital black? If you can give me any advice on which tool to buy I would be really grateful. 

 

[Dan Wake]

thunderbolt 2 is enough?  it's bi-directional transfer speeds up to 20Gbit/s 

[M Carter]

I think if you want to edit 4K raw at 25p with no rendering... man, you're gonna need SSDs in a RAID with a fast interface... if that will even do it.

I've got the newest Mac Pro cylinder - I get read/write speeds to the internal SSD of about 700-1000 MB/s; on a hardware RAID 0 with 2x 7000RPM spinning disks via Thunderbolt 2, I get 250-280 MB/s - that might be the same with thunderbolt 1 - it may be the best 2 spinning drives can do. I get just shy of the RAID speeds on a single SSD via USB 3. 

I'd ask at the Creative Cow forums - there are a lot more guys who do PCs builds and networking for big production houses there.

[MattH]

 

The resolution of QHD is 8,294,400 (3840*2160)

In the case of a raw frame on a native 4k sensor this is precisely how many photosites there are and precisely how many samples there are.

 

Lets presume you mean 12 bit raw. 

 

So 8294400*12 = 99,532,800 bits per frame

 

8 bits in a byte so 99,532,800 bits =12,441,600 bytes

 

1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes

1 megabyte = 1024 kilobytes which = 1,048,576 bytes

 

Therfeore a QHD 12 bit raw frame takes 11.865234375 MB per frame.

(99,532,800/1,048,576)

 

If the frame rate is 60 fps the bitrate is 711.9140625 MB per second

If the frame rate is 30 fps the bitrate is 355.95703125 MB per second.

If the frame rate is 24 fps the bitrate is 284.765625 MB per second.

 

So for 24 and 30 fps the roughly 500 MB per second of the drive is good enough even as recording media.

 

Its worth noting that even if you are editing 60fps, you will never be literally playing directly off the SSD. The data will first be copied to ram. Once its in ram the ram will have no problem giving the data in real time.