Okay to stream USB 2?

[dpcon]

My FW 800 died so I'm out my VI strings (and tons of other stuff.) My drive will be replaced with warrenty but I can't wait even one day so a friend is going to loan me a USB 2 external.

Will that work okay for modest streaming or even beyond that?

Thanks

[Paul]

Hi,

That should be fine, I´m having no troubles with USB 2 and the VIs when I´m on the road!

Best,

Paul

[dpcon]

Thanks!

[JWL]

Hah! Paul beat me to it. LOL!

USB 2.0 400 Mbit/sec
FW800 480 Mbit/sec

Unless you were already hitting your FW800 pretty hard, you should be fine.

[SyQuEsT]

I work on 2 X 320 gigs on USB 2.0, here.

Very useful if you want moving your setup from a computer to another.

[dpcon]

@JWL said:

Hah! Paul beat me to it. LOL!

USB 2.0 400 Mbit/sec
FW800 480 Mbit/sec

Unless you were already hitting your FW800 pretty hard, you should be fine.

Thanks JWL and SyQuEst.

I tend to hit it very hard actually so I will adjust.

Here's an interesting point: I'm orchestrating/mocking up a number of cues on a project. My FW dies so no more VI in DP. The composer is calling regularly so I have to load an unload cues in a hurry to talk about several in the course of discussion. With no VI loaded I can change to a different sequence in seconds which is just not possible with a huge pallette of VI in DP.

So I'm now convinced I must run VI outside of DP on Plogue Bidule and forget about running things inside DP.
Anyone else come to this conclusion?

[JWL]

@dpcon said:

Here's an interesting point: I'm orchestrating/mocking up a number of cues on a project. My FW dies so no more VI in DP. The composer is calling regularly so I have to load an unload cues in a hurry to talk about several in the course of discussion. With no VI loaded I can change to a different sequence in seconds which is just not possible with a huge pallette of VI in DP.

So I'm now convinced I must run VI outside of DP on Plogue Bidule and forget about running things inside DP.
Anyone else come to this conclusion?

Not really-- there's no reason to limit yourself to running the VIs outside of DP only, unless I've misunderstood your point.

The solution to drives potentially failing is to back up EVERYTHING on redundancy drives. For critical projects, I'd have layers of redundancies ready to go, always being updated at every step. I'd also have a second computer on hand just in case.

I would have my VI library backed up on respective drives, DP application and project files, VI custom patches and all VI-related utilities backed up, all audio and video backed up accordingly.

Load times? How crucial is it that you complete your edits in the director's presence? Consider making rough mixes for him, which can be loaded quite quickly and easily. Any fixes might be done with just a piano patch on the fly. Those would be for notes only, but if the load times will be a problem, then catching all the keyswitches for these changes is an eternity by comparison.

VI is not terribly quick work-- it's very detailed and more time consuming than lesser libraries, as you know. Of course, the faster the better in terms of workflow. But there's not much you can do with drives failing, however rare that might be (once is too much!!).

Even if you were running VI in Plogue, if the FW drive failed, VI would have to be reloaded anyway, regardless of the host app.

[dpcon]

Thanks JWL I agree with stout backup.

My point about lots of VI within DP is that everytime you change to another sequence it has to reload the pallette and this takes time as you know. Too much time when someone is waiting to go over several things on several sequences. Hence running DP without Large VI's running seems the only way to go. If they just sit in the background in Plogue you can fly thorugh numerous DP sequences each with it's own QTime reel from the film.

[JWL]

@dpcon said:

Thanks JWL I agree with stout backup.

My point about lots of VI within DP is that everytime you change to another sequence it has to reload the pallette and this takes time as you know. Too much time when someone is waiting to go over several things on several sequences. Hence running DP without Large VI's running seems the only way to go. If they just sit in the background in Plogue you can fly thorugh numerous DP sequences each with it's own QTime reel from the film.

Understood.

For me, when the situation is "impression-critical", I would eliminate all elements that may create any sort of discomfort for my employer.

If wait time is the crucial factor, I would do all my cues and variants then run them out to a DVD and just use that for the earliest consulting sessions. Unless the director will speak in VSL terms, it may be impractical or unnecessary to even have VI and DP running during these consultations. Notes and comments could be discussed and fixes can be made in your own time.

I suppose you could leave Plogue running in the background with VI loaded, but that would imply that you would have time to twiddle with its settings and do edits during the consultation. **This seems to defeat the purpose of saving wait time when other projects are loading. Plus, if anything happened on the spot with VI or Plogue, you're against the wall again.

As your consultations narrow down the options for how the cues work best, the need to do major edits decreases. In this case, having VI loaded may not be as risky. It's sort of hard to tell all that you might need during these consultations, but if you don't really *need* the full DP-VI project loaded up I would say don't bother.

A savvy director who cherishes his time will appreciate the DVD mockups. If he really wants to get his hands wet with part of the editing process, he'll be a patient fellow as the edits are done on the fly.

There's no predicting what edits he'll ask for-- some directors want instant gratification and a finished product with each experiment. This is what makes VI a little impractical in terms of how instantaneously such edits can be effected on the spot. There's no arguing with the results, but how quickly those results can be turned out with satisfaction remains Die Ewige Frage (the eternal question).

[dpcon]

@JWL said:

For me, when the situation is "impression-critical", I would eliminate all elements that may create any sort of discomfort for my employer.

Bingo. An economical statement in more ways than one.
[:)]

[anlumo]

@JWL said:

USB 2.0 400 Mbit/sec
FW800 480 Mbit/sec

Unless you were already hitting your FW800 pretty hard, you should be fine.

Hi,

Sorry for relpying so long after this was posted, but I've just registered here and stumbled across this posting [:)]

USB 2.0 has 480MBit/s burst, while FW800 has 800MBit/s streaming (that's why it's called FW800 in the first place, the official name is IEEE1394b). That said, most consumer hard drives can't reach that speed anyways nowadays, so there shouldn't be *that* much of a difference.

("burst" means that it's the maximum that can be reached for a short time, while "streaming" means that this speed can be achieved for longer periods of time.)

[cm]

welcome a* - great to see you here on this forum. this reminds me i haven't looked into the amoc groups since a very long time ...

thank's for correcting the values - but we should add, that all this are theoretical numbers and _never_ reached in practice. someone mentioned already that data throughput (at least for sample streaming, which behaves again different from eg. video-streaming) on a FW-connection is in fact better than using USB when we approach certain limits.

christian