#Hard Drives, etc.
13 messages in this thread
Mark:
Thanks for your response. I had heard something about the Thermal
Recalibration issue regarding the Baracuda, but I thought that Seagate had
resolved it. Maybe I was led astray by another Dweeb in sales. They seem to
be everywhere. I'll check out the Micropolis.
Since I'm new to some of this higher-end stuff, a few of the acronyms I've seen
in the forum messages are still a mystery. What are the PVR and PAR devices?
Alan
Alan,
The Personal Animation Recorder(PAR) is a Gift of the Gods! The Perception
Video Recorder (PVR) is the follow-on gift!
The PAR is a ISA bus board that take the place of a framebuffer. I used to use
a Matrox Illuminator Pro framebuffer to record individual Targa (TGA) frames to
video tape. This required an expensive Video Tape Recorder (VTR) that was
"frame accurate" meaning you could position the tape to individual frames. This
tends to wear out those $5000 or more pieces of equipment fast. The VTR
rewound, recorded, and stopped for each individual picture. For 30 seconds of
video this means the VTR rewinds 900 times.
The PAR records the TGA's that 3DS renders to a dedicated hard drive for it.
Most people have a Micropolis 2217A 1.7gig IDE hard drive, the largest
possible. The PAR assembles those frames into a "sequence". The sequence can
then be played back at real time, 30 frames per second. Wow! This
revolutionized the way computer animation was done. After looking at the
completed sequence, its a simple matter of hitting record on a consumer VCR,
and play on the PAR software, and voila! your animation is on a VCR tape, ready
to play! The PAR outputs in a variety of formats life SVHS and Beta. I use SVHS
for my purposes.
Next In:sync developed Razor Pro which allowed PAR seqences to be strung
together with cross fades and sound files (.wav) to produced finished videos.
Non-linear editing had come to the PC. Long live Razor! I have Adobe Premiere
alos but its on the shelf because of software bugs right now. Razor is rock
solid.
The PVR builds on the PAR by improving quality to the point where Beta SP and
D1 quality video is possible. Plus the PVR has its own SCSI interface allowing
up to 7 SCSI-2 hard drives to be attached. You could conceivably have 56 gigs
(7 Micropolis 9 gig A/V drives) online, about 2 hours worth of video. The PVR
will replace the PAR so only get a PVR now if you buy new. However some good
deals on used PARs will come.
I can give a name of a distributor I trust if your interested.
Without the PAR its nearly impossible to do 3DS to tape in a reasonable amount
of time. I take that back, it IS impossible to do 3DS without the PAR or PVR. I
can't imagine going back to the Illuminator Pro or to a Targa 2000 board. The
PAR is just too fun!
Drop me a note! Bye!
Mark:
Yes, I would like the name of your trusted distributor. What are good prices
for Razor Pro, a used PAR, or a new PVR? Do you know when the PVR will be
available?
Why do most people use the Micropolis 1.76GB IDE as their dedicated drive for
the PAR recording?
Alan
P.S. The last two times I sent you a message a new thread was started instead
of appending to the old one. I'm not sure what's going on, but I'll see if I
can prevent it from happening again.
Mark – don't sell the Targa 2000 short. I have used both, and I honestly can't
solidly recommend one over the other. Each product appeals to people that have
a particular approach to their work. Trying to decide on which is better is
like trying to decide which rendering solution is better – a faster box with
lots of horsepower, or a lot of inexpensive boxes that are individually less
expensive, but together give one the same processing power? It alls depends on
how you work, and which qualities are important to you!
The T2000 works with hard drives that are recognized by your operating system.
This saves you the cost of additional drives that are dedicated exclusively to
your video tasks, but also leads to some administrative overhead on your part
(frequent defrags to keep your throughput levels up), but this also makes data
backup an easy task. Currently, with the PVR, files must be moved from the
dedicated HDs to a system HD before they can be backed up to tape (If I am
mistaken, someone please speak up!).
The T2000 PCI is more compact than the PVR with the AD-2500 daughtercard, and
works with Adobe Photoshop 4.0 (you don't need the 4.0a version). The PVR is
tightly integrated to Razor Pro, and now Speed Razor, from in:sync.
Which is right for you? That is a call only you can make after exploring the
various options with your dealer.
Dennis,
I've been out of the loop with the Targa boards. When I got into this stuff,
the PAR was brand new and everyone was still using framebuffers like the Matrox
Illuminator Pro that I still have gathering dust. Are you saying the T2000 is
now PAR-like? I have Premiere and its horrible with the PAR the way you have to
convert files. Plus my Premiere dosen't work with the ATI Mach64 card that I
use. Thats OK, I'm going to order a Matrox Millenium this week.
Please drop me a note.
Mark
>>Are you saying the T2000 is now PAR-like?<<
I am not really certain what you are asking here. If you mean "Does the T2000
capture video real-time and compress to the HD?" – the answer is yes. It
accesses system HDs, not dedicated ones, and writes directly to AVI files. The
sound input is unbalanced, so you need to add some special connectors to get
clean sound. Hopefully, TrueVision will clean this up soon.
Regarding the Milleneum – good choice. Wish I had one in my system.
Dennis,
Thanks for the info.
Typically I record the video and audio separately using the PAR VCR control.
This syncs the audio to the video correctly. I then have a 16 bit, 44.1 Khz wav
file and an ANI file that are associated. Plug into Razor Pro and voila!,
instant movie with voice, music, sound effects, transitions, etc.
I guess I'm unsure of the advantages of the T2000. I will be going to MAX with
a 4 or 6-plex DEC Alpha machine for monster rendering. I'm switching my video
cameras to Beta SP from Hi-8 Canon L1. From my research the PVR will be great
in this realm. Capture at Beta or higher quality to an array of SCSI-2 hard
drives. I'm going to start with 3 9gig Micropolis A/V drives.
Please send me some more info when you get a chance.
Mark
Mark,
PMJI, but could you give me some (very) ball-park prices for Alpha motherboards
featuring the fastest processors. I'm interested in single and multi-proc
boards – I've heard around $3k for a single 300mhz m/board. You can e-mail me
if you like but I don't think a vague ballpark should raise anyone's ire <G>.
I'm thinking in terms of upgrading my workstations and have a multi-proc render
server in the future.
Martin,
Your in the ballpark. I can get an 8-plex board for around 7 times that amount.
I found a supplier for the highend Intergraph OpenGL boards too.
Drop me a note.
Mark
You can back-up directly from the par, no problem. It is just that the back-up
sub-system has to be local, that is it has to be hooked up to the same computer
as the PAR, not across the net.
Zac (AZ-TECH)
Berkeley
-Zac Rymland (AZ-TECH)
Zac:
FWIW, I often do backups of my PAR drive via Pathworks to a DEC ALPHA running
OpenVMS and via a NOVELL network with software from Cheyenne to an Exabyte
8500. Across the net backups of the PAR drive are possible but I must say that
I always restore to a hard drive first and then copy the files back to the PAR.
– Bob Ritger
I was aware of this fact regarding the PAR, since DOS sees the PAR drive as
another (albeit special) system drive. But the PVR isn't seen the same way.
I have a friend with an HP SureStore 2000 2Gb tape backup. The SCSI driver
that is initiated on bootup appears to see both the SCSI card that drive the
tape and the PVR. But the tape backup software (Colorado) doesn't see the PVR
drives.
Does anyone know of a backup software that will see the PVR drives and use the
SureStore tape?
>>Does anyone know of a backup software that will see the PVR drives and use
the SureStore tape?<<
If any software could do this it would be CP-BACKUP by Central Point, it comes
with PC TOOLS (the latest version, 9.0 it think).
It works for me, but I just have the PAR.
Zac (AZ-TECH)
Berkeley
-Zac Rymland (AZ-TECH)