Recommended storage please - issue with multi cam editing lagging.

Hey there - I am hoping someone can help.

I have been doing multi-cam recordings and editing for my own content. It’s looking great and am loving it.

I am using a ninja V to capture and record on an angel-bird SSD.

My Mac is a decent spec i9 with 32gb of ram and my current HDD is a Lacie D2 thunderbolt 3.

When I try to edit in multicam view it all goes to pot..... it’s actually impossible. I have optimized the media etc but still nothing works.

....except then I tried editing from the ssd direct and the whole issue disappears so I am assuming this is a read write issue with the lacie?

Using the ssd is impractical as the space will get eaten and I need them for recording.... so I need a good solution to store and edit from in the office.

Any ideas?

Hi, what Material / codecs are you using ? and how many Angles ? is there any 4k content ? this can mess up Multicam a lot and challenge the computer. maybe make proxies if you have 4k and compressed material. i guess you record prores on the ninja. thats fine. prores is the best for Multicam.

On multicam there are 2 Challenges : decompress codecs strain the cpu/gpu and the data rates strain the hard disk.. you wrote you did optimize, so that should be ok. did you make a speed test with the lache?
I think it will be am matter of angles If it works on the ssd and the lache is too slow. Do you have a spare ssd? Consider making proxies and put them on a spare ssd. So you have small file sizes on a fast drive. do your edit and then relink to optimized . i do this often with multicam ,( especiayl with 4k content ). works fine

And concerning you original question for a fast storage.. i found the Areca drives very good and reliable. worksfine in Raid 5 with ( 8Bay) vial thunderbolt. its my workhorse

I did a lot of testing and found them very good. One issue is the constant speed. Blackmagic Spendetest only gives you a average number on speed. If you try the Aja tool and expand the graphics you can see the up and downs of the data rates. there can be low peaks the are simply not enough for the multicam.

Lamby22 wrote: ..I am using a ninja V to capture and record on an angel-bird SSD.

My team has several Ninja Vs we use for ProRes recording from various cameras, and they work well.

Lamby22 wrote: ...

My Mac is a decent spec i9 with 32gb of ram and my current HDD is a Lacie D2 thunderbolt 3.

If by chance that is not a real Mac and IF you are not recording ProRes, the Quick Sync accelerator may not be working so decoding multicam H264 could be slow.
If it is a real Mac and if you recorded ProRes, it should be mostly OK. The D2 is only a single-drive but it's fairly fast. Each 4k/24 or 4k/30 ProRes 422 stream is about 60 megabytes/sec, so two streams could be close to the limit of that drive, esp if it contains any other item like libraries or cache.

Lamby22 wrote: .When I try to edit in multicam view it all goes to pot..... it’s actually impossible. I have optimized the media etc but still nothing works.

The fact you say "optimized" implies you are not recording ProRes. We need to know the exact codec you are trying to edit. Play it in Quicktime Player, do a CMD+I and post that info. There are some 4k codecs which are very sluggish to decode such as Panasonic's 4k 10-bit 4:2:2 All-I.

Lamby22 wrote: .....except then I tried editing from the ssd direct and the whole issue disappears so I am assuming this is a read write issue with the lacie?

Interesting -- that implies it may be ProRes and it's simply a drive bandwidth issue. But if it's ProRes it won't let you optimize it because it's already "optimized" from FCPX standpoint.

Lamby22 wrote: ...Using the ssd is impractical as the space will get eaten and I need them for recording.... so I need a good solution to store and edit from in the office...

Although the AngleBird SSD cartridge is small and neat, you can use any 2.5" SATA SSD. I think Atomos supplies "caddies" to mount these so they fit better. One option is getting (say) a 512GB or 1TB SATA SSD, putting it in the caddy, then you have a 2nd capture drive which can be left plugged into your computer.

Or you could just get a 2TB USB-C SSD. My favorite one is the Helix 2TB, which does about 1,000 megabytes/sec and (unlike most of the others) does not slow down from thermal limiting when under sustained writing: www.amazon.com/dp/B07YCR1S3K

It's good to have your library and FCPX cache on a separate drive than the media.

Make sure the FCPX viewer is set to "better performance" not "better quality".

Hello and thanks for the reply. For clarity I am using Pro Res 422 4K @30 FPS

When I say optimized media that is that I checked that box when importing the files into FCPX. I read that helps, unfortunately not in this case.

Hey thanks - I am using 4K 30fps in Pro Res 422. There are two angles.

Looking yesterday I did some disk testing and the D2 seems really slow in comparison to its specs. Using the disk test it is right in the boundaries of usable for this application so I need a different solution.

I found the LaCie 6big yesterday and this seems good compared to what I have. They seem expensive BUT I may be able to then have a solution as to where I keep all my footage and am able to swap out disks as they get full......

The only worry is that a few places show this model as discontinued.