Buy an SSD hard drive and VJ with your hair on fire!

[Tschoepler]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive
see paragraph "disadvantages".

[the_psychologist]

I bought an OCZ Agility II 64GB specifically for VJing. Instead of putting it inside my case, I bought a Patriot Convoy drive bay and used one bay for the SSD @ SATA II speeds (no Convoy for SATA III yet). I used it last night for the first time with all my clips on the SSD and Win 7 and all apps running on a 7200RPM HD.

My method of VJing is to create as I go, starting from an empty (but highly MIDI mapped) comp, so speed is critical.

-Makes clip thumbnails viable in the file browser, where the app used to freeze for seconds while thumbnails were built. Nice to be able to quickly choose based on thumbnails now.

-No stutter when clips end and go into reverse. There used to be a small hitch when looping this way.

-Clips are super fast when triggered, and I can play with speed, direction, random frame, stop/start/restart with no slowdown. These controls alone are enough to do wild sets :-]

-No freeze when dropping new clips into the deck.

The only freezes come when triggering clips that are NOT encoded for Resolume, and it's a short freeze (1 sec?). I have been converting everything to PicVideo M-JPEG codec, but I still have some that are "bad" codecs. I'm sure DXV would also be fast, but the filesizes are just too big for me.

This SSD was $100 after rebate, so it was well worth it. For those who are curious, buy a smaller, highly-rated SSD and see how it works for you. If 64GB seems too small, just keep all your "stabs" (rapidly-triggered) clips on the SSD and longer stuff on another drive. Sometimes it's good to have storage limits, as it makes you more selective with your material.

[Joris]

If 64GB seems too small, just keep all your "stabs" (rapidly-triggered) clips on the SSD and longer stuff on another drive. Sometimes it's good to have storage limits, as it makes you more selective with your material.

Good tip, and welcome to the club of happy SSD campers

Joris

[Tecno`]

Any idea what is the best SSD 80 - 120GB for the money at the moment?

Thanks,

Tim

[Tschoepler]

I bought an OCZ Vertex 2. It's at least the top seller at the moment and the reviews were good, too.

[yugpmoc]

I've been using a ssd for about 6 months. I still keep a few dvd players running premade stuff on the crosspoint switch for emergencies, but my crashes and reboots have dropped from once an hour to once or twice in an 8 hour show. And generally those are because I'm doing something stupid that I never would have tried before. SSDs rock. Two of them stripped are going in my new box.

What I'm trying to figure out without spending thousands to buy then return things until I get something that works. Is video in. I want 4-6 live video feeds on separate layers so I can play with them, both from cameras and from my backup stream. I'm looking at some sort of Matrox MXO or a Blackmagic something. Are there other options? What's working for who now?

[Tecno`]

Has anyone here tried a PCI E SSD card like the Revo?
How would this compare to the Vertex 2 or the new Vertex 3?

I take it using two Graphics cards and an SSD on PCI E would all be fine as PCI E doesn't share the same bus?

Thanks,

Tim

[fenniless]

I have 2 Intel SSD set up in a RAID... I can VJ with everyones hair on fire!

i have heard that they dont have a very long lifespan, so make sure that what ever you have on the SSD you also have somewhere else. BACKUP BACKUP!

If you use a laptop, make sure you get an SSD that can fit all your loops on it along with the OS!

[the_psychologist]

Just wanted to report that my attempted upgrade to the Crucial c300 was a disaster. I thought I would swap (1) 128GB c300 for the (2) 60gb Agility 2s I have been using, but NONONO! Resolume began freezing as soon as I did any speed ramping/reverse/etc. using clips playing from the c300. No matter what I tried (I tried many solutions listed on the Crucial forums), I could not get this problem to stop. Sometimes the whole application would freeze for 60 seconds or more, and the main output would also be frozen! The worst problem you could have as a VJ! I ended up RMA-ing the c300 and reinstalling my OCZs. I had to run clips off the mechanical 7200RPM drive for one show, and the poor thing could not handle 2x720p layers being rapidly controlled = frame drops.

After all this, now one of my OCZ drives has drastically lower write speeds than the other, and I am supposed to "safe erase" it using the OCZ Toolbox. But the safe erase failed!

In other words, do NOT put all your eggs in an SSD basket. They are still very questionable when it comes to rated performance, mobo compatibility, etc., and could die much sooner than a mechanical drive.

For me, the responsiveness of an SSD is critical, but now I'm scared of random freezes. I'm wondering if running my 720p clips off of one or two 10,000RPM drives would provide enough performance for my setup?

Not fun :-[

[Alvis_Cortex]

I used it last night for the first time with all my clips on the SSD and Win 7 and all apps running on a 7200RPM HD.

I am upgrading my late 2008 MBP as I noticed my current hard drive is dying and I need better performance from my laptop when VJing, so to replace my Hitachi 5400 rpm 320 Gb I have just ordered a 'WD Scorpio Black 7200rpm 320 GB' for my system and using Opticbay I will replace my DVD drive with a 'SSD Vertex 2 120GB' to keep my video files for VJing,
My question here is as I have enough room in my SSD should I install my OS (and maybe Arena) in the SSD as well? or should I do the same "the_psychologist" did, keeping my OS in the 7200 drive?

Thank you