Storage Setup for Premiere Pro & After Effects

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  [Deactivated] on 12/09/2021 - 10:34

  +1

  Is performance of your scratch disk that important anymore though?

  Just create proxies for editing, and only use the original media for colour grading and the final render.

  • 

    archieduh on 12/09/2021 - 10:47

    Thanks but even with proxies having a separate drive has advantages right?
    So my question is my friend has 3 drives and how should those be used (and down the line should we add more drives, though we may know that my our own experience as well).

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  TheBird on 12/09/2021 - 12:10

  +1

  This is all for PP. Avid and Resolve act differently to PP. I believe AE uses the same engine as PP.

  What kind of files are you going to be editing and how varied are the media files going to be? When I was an editor, I'd get dumped with a wide variety of media files. When dealing with media types that aren't friendly to a systems performance, a proxy workflow is important.

  Unless you're dealing with a lot of high bit rate (normally very high bitrate, raw format media files), the difference between a SSD and a M.2 drive isn't as much as you'd think. Then again, if you're editing large raw files, you wouldn't be editing your source drive being so small. There are very few media formats that stresses a recent mechanical drive with good performance and the chances of a layperson coming across any of those is remote.

  The responsiveness of your scratch/cache drive is important but I don't think you're going to feel much difference betwen a M.2 and a SSD. It'll be idling most of the time, even if you're an excessively aggressive shuttler, like me.

  Project files are your source files.

  Most of this is often just theoretical. When editing, your performance is dependent on a few things. Your media, your workflow (and workflow requirements) and your hardware bottlenecks. The bottlenecks are a big part of it. There's no point in getting your hard drive setup perfect if your CPU/Ram/Video card is causing a performance bottleneck. For PP, most bottlenecks I see in clients machines come from the workflow bottlenecking the CPU. The HDD isn't often an issue.

  So my question is my friend has 3 drives and how should those be used (and down the line should we add more drives, though we may know that my our own experience as well).

  Simple answer that fits most circumstances: Keep the OS/Program on one drive. Separate scratch drive is possible. Media drive separate. Added drives are usually extra media drives. Most media drives are usually mechanical drives, but you do commonly see those drives in a Raid 0 configuration. It allows you more space with decent combined thoroughput with a better space/$$$ ratio.

  even with proxies having a separate drive has advantages right?

  Usually, yes. It really depends on what you're editing. Take for instance, you're editing low bitrate 1080p h264 files you're not going to see any performance uptick from a separate drive. Lets say 1080p/4k cineform codec (a codec which scales well with decent graphics hardware on PP), you should see some improvement. When you take things into the 4k or higher with high bitrate files, or say DNx/Prores, Red or most raw media, depending on what's causing your performance issues, split drives may have an advantage. It's rare to see a project needing more than 500MB/s thoroughput, though hard drive seek times on a SSD/M.2 can improve how responsive it feels to an editor when you're pushing things hard.

  I always split my drives, but I worked with a wide variety of media.

  • 

    archieduh on 12/09/2021 - 13:04

    Wow. Thank you so much for the detailed response. Much appreciated.
    We are gonna start with 4k HEVC and H.264 from mirrorless cameras and also use ProRes Atomos recorder files. The aim is to upgrade to a better camera and raw capabilities next year.

    Totally agree on the CPU, that's what I have seen in bunch of other videos and even in past editing H.264.

    Once again thanks for your detailed response.

    • 

      TheBird on 12/09/2021 - 14:14

      +1

      4k HEVC

      This has got to be the worst possible resolution/codec combination for editing I have ever seen. It's bad enough to export, but I've never ever heard of a good story when anyone tries to work with HEVC/265. I haven't used PP for a couple of years, but at least a couple years ago, HEVC always caused a CPU bottleneck, even at the top end. It'll go better on systems that scale better with more cores (like Avid or Resolve), but on PP, I've always found it to be a non-starter.

      Those Atomos recorders are great, particularly with their ProRes output. I've love to see them gain Cineform as a codec. With that ProRes, it's going to be your hard drive setup that represents most of the bottle neck and it really removes the need for a proxy workflow, even on older machines.

      And you're welcome.

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  archieduh on 12/09/2021 - 16:03

  With that ProRes, it's going to be your hard drive setup that represents most of the bottle neck

  Sorry a bit confused with this statement. Just checked the ProRes data rate, it still is way less than SATA SSD max read rate. And with a 3 disk config, will I still hit the bottleneck?