The Maxdata Quad – It’s a hard drive – Review

I don’t usually buy external hard drives unless they are very specialized.  I’ve been eyeing the Drobo Pro for a few years now, because it comes with special software that enables you to RAID drives of different speeds and sizes without loss of space.  I like the Maxell iVDR because it is hardened to go in the field and shoot with an HDV camera.  I’ve even started looking at these new hard drives that come in a shell that is supposed to work like an airplane’s black box, protecting the data within from impact, fire and water.  So, what do I make of Maxell’s offering, the Maxdata Quad?  Maxell sent me a free one to review, and I have some thoughts.

The drive in question.

Well, it’s a hard drive.  It plugs in with USB 2, Firewire 400 & 800 and eSATA 3G.  It runs at 7200 RPM and it’s a hefty 2TB.  So, it’s big, it’s fast enough for backing things up (but not really as a media drive, unless you’re using a laptop and not running things in full HD) and it has a lot of handy plugs.  It needs an external AC adapter, but okay, so far, so good.

Look at all the pretty plugs

I used it a couple of different ways.  First, when it arrived, it was formatted in FAT32, which I imagine is so Maxell could slap a “PC and Mac compatible” sticker on the box.  FAT32, for those of you who don’t know, is an archaic format developed by Microsoft in the good old days of XP to be Mac and PC compatible.  It’s fine, unless you need to make files bigger than 2GB.  Then it’s useless.  FAT32 literally can’t handle files over 2GB so if you try putting your video outputs there, it won’t let you.

Maxdata Quad (at right) beside two home made drives. The middle drive is 300GB at 10K RPM and the leftmost drive is 2TB at 7200 RPM

So, as a media drive, this thing is useless.  I needed to copy some media onto it and it just couldn’t handle it.  I had to reformat it, which isn’t a big deal, but if I didn’t know what I was doing, I’d be in a pickle.  I made this thing NTFS, though since I run Macdrive software on my HP Z800, I could have made it a Mac formatted disk just as easily.

As an NTFS disk, I plugged it in first as Firewire, which worked okay although the computer lost sight of it a couple times, then as USB, which hasn’t had any issues.  Honestly, I wish it were USB 3 because I have the card and it’s just as good as Firewire, which is not that useful anymore given the advent of thunderbolt.  Of course, neither of these plugs mean much with an eSATA port on the box.  With a spare eSATA cable from my RAID controller I plugged it in and whoosh!  Nice and fast.  As fast as an internal drive of the same speed.  I’ve been transcoding my work library from Quicktime to MP4 so I loaded the Quicktimes on the Maxell and made the transfers to my internal storage.  So far the only problem with any of this is that quicktime crashes if I tell it to convert too many files at once.

Maxdata looking like a Cylon

Maxdata drive front, no light

So, the drive is good.  Thumbs up.  The only question I ever have about an external drive is this: when the bus in the box dies, and it will one day, can I extract the drive and put it in another enclosure?  Lots of external drives fall down here.  If the bus dies and you can’t get the drive out and into another box, then you have a working hard drive but no workable way to get the data off it.  It’s like a Dalek in one of those Dalek pods with the batteries flat.

A Dalek, inside its Dalek exoskeleton thing. What happens to the Dalek when its exoskeleton runs out of juice? How will it get out?

Sadly, without having to pay Maxell for the privilege of ripping apart its drive with a screwdriver, I can’t tell for sure if this is an issue here.

The drive goes for $326 (retail) according to Maxell.  I’m sure if it’s made as well as the other Maxell products I’ve used it’s fine.  Still, $326 is a little steep unless you’ve got your back up against the wall.  For $129 at Newegg, you could get a comperable 2TB internal drive (I won’t say which one) and put it in a $30 box with all the same plugs as the Maxell (minus the Firewire) and of course, an internal drive in an external box can be unplugged from the box and put into the computer or another box later.  So the choice of buying a drive like this is a personal one.  If you don’t feel comfortable taking things apart, or you just can’t be bothered, it’s probably worth the extra money to buy this drive.  For the advanced user, it’s main strength is the multiple ports on the back.  That being the case, I’d be tempted to put in a 10,000 RPM drive and use it for full HD media.  Of course, I don’t know if I can do that, because I’d have to pay Maxell for the drive they sent me in order to open the box.

As for the Mac and PC compatibility issues, I think it’s a wash.  There is no point to keeping anything FAT32 these days.  Just reformat to NTFS or whatever you want and leave it at that.  A lot of the need to put things on a drive and go between Mac and PC is media and media files are too big to go on this thing if it’s FAT32, despite its overall capacity.

Drive makers need to understand they are competing with cloud storage, so their drives need to work for the kinds of things people send around better than the cloud does.  Cloud storage has some legal issues coming down the pike (see below) it takes more time than loading things onto a drive, good cloud storage is expensive and some cloud storage isn’t that secure.

In light of these issues, portable hard drives can make a case for themselves, provided that they take advantae of what makes them special.  I’ve already mentioned the “black box” hard drives that are damage resistant.  Then there is network operable stuff like Drobo.  If you aren’t either of those ultra-specialized drive makers, you have some challenges, but here’s the solution:

Portable drives need to be

a.) fast – at least 7200 RPM

b.) flexible – you should be able to take the drive out of the box if you want and there should be a lot of ports on it, like this one.

c.) in an ideal world, the drive should come with a software package that adds the value of making it compatible with multiple platforms without needing some special format or software installed on the drive itself.

I know someone who uses Dropbox to send things between two computers in his own house.  Crazy.  Cloud storage runs into some of its unique problems.  If Maxell bundled software that enabled Mac to PC and PC to Mac disk reading, then the drive could be formatted in some sane format and there would be a lot of added value to the product.  I’m talking about a disc with software, not something loaded onto the drive.  Drives should be malleable.  I don’t like being told it has to be formatted one way or another.  They could even keep the PC and Mac compatible sticker on the box and mean it.  As it stands, for my purposes, it’s an expensive backup drive.   If you’re not a tinkerer though and you need a massive bucket of storage (and you don’t have files bigger than 2GB) go for it.

By The Book

When I direct, I am fastidious. Nothing gets past me. I make sure that if I can’t take camera and sound notes, there’s someone who will. I try to plan things out in as much detail as possible, but stay prepared for the plan to go awry and have some way of keeping track of the way things changed. It’s not what you imagine when you think of the glamorous world of film making, but neither is the crafts services table. Maybe it’s my time at NYU that made me this way, though probably not given the fly by the seat of my pants approach I used then. Maybe it’s the time I spent as a PA for Warner Brothers, though I had little responsibility then. I think, if anything, my attitude came from time I spent with Thor The Barbarian, a dear friend of mine who produced three seasons of great independent TV in New York, starting in 2000. We knew things never went as planned, and that the ability to improvise, to talk you way past disagreeable people and to keep it together was essential. We didn’t overload our crew with too many responsibilities, so no one ever cut corners and our editing staff (three FCP editors, including me) was never overburdened.

Not so however, when I’m only the editor. Often, I feel like a maid, sent in to clean up the mess left by the director. Take, for example, this anonymous batch of footage. It’s supposed to sync up, but someone recorded it on one camera at one speed and the other camera at another speed. The end result is two clips of the same action with the same actors at the same time that cannot sync up. What a waste.

Two shots of the same subject shot at the same time but do not sync.

I think much of the problem with film these days is that people think that because anyone can afford editing software and a camera, that anyone knows what they need to know in order to be a director or editor. Not so. Jack Warner once said “I don’t get what the big deal is about writing. It’s just putting one word after another.” That attitude is not seen as helpful in any quarter of the film industry, and yet people feel exactly that way about every other job in film.

There are things that are a certain way because they work a certain way and when someone does them differently, it tells you something about their background. If an actor prints his or her CV on the back of their headshot rather than stapling it, it means they don’t work very much, otherwise they’d need to update the CV often and therefore need to staple it to the back of the photo. If a sculptor has long hair, it tells you either he or she doesn’t work with stone very much, because stone dust collects in hair.

A clapper board (or slate) is used to do several things. First of all, it tells the editor what shot is which, where to look for sound (if recorded separately) if they should look for sound at all (if the shot is silent, or MOS, the clapper loader puts their index finger between the sticks of the slate when they hold it in the shot) if there are multiple cameras it should say what reels the shot is being recorded to, sometimes it will even have the timecode displayed on it.

Its most obvious function though, is to synchronize the sound between shots and depending on the production, separately recorded sound. This is not complicated to figure out. If you’re the editor, the sound of the clapper board has to line up with the first frame when the sticks come together. That means if the sticks are blurry or obscured in any way, it won’t work because you could be a frame out in either direction (or more) without knowing it. It means the clapper needs to be near the microphones or at least miced in the same way as everything else, so there’s no lag between the image and the sound reaching the microphone.

The most important thing though, is that the clapper’s top stick falls on the bottom one. This is to keep the sticks from blurring when they come together. Some people who don’t know what they are doing will lift the clapper up to the top stick, blurring not just the moment they sticks meet but also all the information on the slate. Some people clap their hands together, which in an emergency can work, but needs to be done the same way as the clapper is operated, not by clapping like you’ve just seen a Broadway show. Finally, there is the snapping of fingers, which, like the others, is equally stupid and useless. All of these are the hallmarks of the amateur film maker and sadly, some of the directors I’ve had to pick up after. Honestly, I’ve had an easier time doing honeywagon duty on a farm.

It’s important people know how to do these things properly, not to make me happy, but because it makes the film work.  I may have to forgo the use of certain shots because someone decided to cut corners.  It certainly takes more time in postproduction to get things to work when a director pulls this kind of act, and in the end, it’s not up to the director what the film looks like.  It’s the editor’s choice.

Application Lock Issues with Sataraid5 Manager

http://modelus.com/Blog/post/2009/12/03/SATARAID5-Manager-could-not-acquire-application-lock-in-Windows-7-Solved.aspx If you have said error, try this. It worked for me.

FYI, how to do a clean reboot in Windows 7

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/331796

Microsoft & Apple Both Have Awful Tech Support

In the past I have written angrily about how shabbily Apple customer service treated me, particularly their technical service division. Apple really is awful when it comes to these things. It took them seven months to finally admit that my old iPod had a problem that required replacement when I’d told them from day one this was the case. They took $150 from me to fix my old workstation, and did nothing to it, telling me I should just go buy a new workstation instead. Apple is run like the mafia. They are evil, their “geniuses” often know less about their products than I do and their hardware is designed so you can’t fix it yourself when it does, inevitably, break.

But that doesn’t let Microsoft off the hook. I got the upgrade for Windows 7 Ultimate yesterday from a lovely and helpful saleswoman on the phone. Great job, Microsoft. Then I installed it and the wireless wouldn’t connect to the internet. This link (http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpronetworking/thread/c0c52150-098c-4c5f-b2f9-8b7170b6f69f) represents the solution to the problem. It took a while to find though, even with the mighty Google in my corner. In that time, I spent two hours and forty five minutes on the phone with Microsoft’s Indian Tech Support Gurus who passed me around like a spliff, everyone forgetting what I told them (“What is the problem?” “I can’t connect to the internet.” “You cannot activate Windows?” “I cannot connect to the internet.” “You cannot format a hard drive?”). Microsoft, seriously, get your shit together. This is appalling.

Post Setup

I’m gearing up for a couple new editing gigs.  One is a sizzle I’m being brought in on, one is a reel for a client.  I’m also working on Pickman’s Model when there is time, since it’s the short I directed myself and is therefore closer to my heart but work comes first.

Several moving parts: first, the media for the sizzle is a combination of disorganized and broken.  Some files don’t open at all, others are encoded in an arcane quicktime format.  It’s been a good week of just putting things into the system.  I haven’t gotten the footage for the reel yet but I think it’ll be easier to handle.  Also, I’ve been offered an animator to do the graphics.

Meanwhile, I just ordered the upgrade for my Avid and I’m going to upgrade the whole OS to Windows 7.  The new system should make better use of the 8 processors on my workstation (FYI an i7 only has 4, but runs them in an unstable way to make them behave like 8, which is not as good as the chipset I’m running) and with the ability to run exports and the like in the background, the Avid software itself should run smoother.  I understand Boris Effects will no longer work, but I don’t really use it much, so I should be fine.  Besides, I can always get the new version later.

The question is when should I run the upgrade to the Avid and when should I upgrade the OS?  When the software comes I’ll call Microsoft and we’ll take it from there.

Digital v Classical Art

The After Effects training continues, meanwhile I’m working in oil paint again.  It’s interesting, observing the differences and the similarities.  On the face of it, working in the computer is more detailed, demanding and precise but honestly, I find oils fit that description much better.  With a computer, it does what you tell it to do.  Brushes, paints and in the case of the painting I’m working on right now, Japan Dryer all misbehave and the process requires just as much if not more work.

I will never curse cut and paste.

“Fix it in post”

I hate those four words.

Those four words are the bane of my professional existence.  Those four words are the mating call of the lazy cameraman, the dog whistle of the unskilled sound recordist, the battle cry of the hopeless producer.  Those four words are what is wrong with post production.  Post production shouldn’t be about fixing footage that was screwed up on set.  Post production should be about telling stories with the excellently produced footage handed to the post crew by the production crew.  In some cases, those four words can even translate as “The guy who shot this really doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

I just did some work on a film.  A narrative.  It was shot on a Canon 5D Mark II in 1080p with audio recorded separately.   I won’t get much into the specifics of the project here, though I think it’s pretty cool and it’s being finished by a sound designer right now and I can’t wait to see what it looks like in the end.  Tragically, Plural Eyes had trouble synchronizing the audio in places and that made things a bit complicated when editing.

This however pales in comparison to what not having a script supervisor does.  I’ve seen it a lot in recent work of mine, both reality and narrative.  When you don’t have a script supervisor and your director and camera ops don’t notice the inconsistencies you wind up with some major continuity errors that make clips unusable.

About half of the shots on this recent project were rendered useless because of continuity errors.

When there are these sorts of errors, most of the time no one has noticed on set so no one utters those damnable four words until the footage has been screened and the line producer has told the director that if he or she intends to reshoot, they should consider paying for it with their own credit card.

The time it would take to go through a film and add or remove a Hawaiian shirt from an an actor and the expense of it make reshooting the cheaper alternative.  Not only that, but even with say, the budgets and money slung around ILM, you’ll still wind up with some pretty appalling looking fixes.  Oh, you say you want to know what these sorts of fixes look like even when you spend millions on them?  Have a look at this clip, 45 seconds in:

Star Wars Re-Edited

The scene you just saw was filmed when Jabba was just a humanoid like Han.  Short, fat, wearing furs and leather.  It added nothing to the film so the scene was cut from the film.  Once Jabba was around in the third film this scene had to be Ret Conned because Jabba could no longer be circled by a person without climbing all over him, or floating like an animated South Park character.

When Lucasfilm decided to add this scene to the “deluxe” versions of the film, the “mistake” had to be fixed in post.  You just could not reshoot it.  This was then a giant continuity error, something there really is no fix for and no way to prepare for when shooting.

When a continuity error is this bad, saying those four words is like a little child asking a parent to fix the pet that just died.  Some people think a lone editor can pull off the same results as ILM.  Sorry, I’m a magician, not a wizard.

I’m preparing to shoot a narrative short of my own, my first in a while, and it made me think long and hard about the importance of a continuity person.  In post production we can do a lot to overcome continuity errors.  We can flip negatives or resize the frame a bit to cut out a mistake but in the final analysis, the best thing is for the director to get it right on set.  This is why I’m so in favor of people learning to shoot on 16mm film.  Film teaches you not to mess around on set.  Film teaches you that it is expensive to get things wrong.  Film teaches you to get it right on set because when all you have is a razor blade, some tape and a wax pencil, there’s no fixing it in post.

Unless you’re George Lucas.

The Vicissitudes Of Media

I had a really unpleasant surprise this week when my computer, while in the midst of prepping media for an editing gig, decided to stop seeing one of two drives in a striped RAID configuration.  To fix this I had to unplug the hard drives in the RAID, plug them in with different cables (just in case) copy off the data to a safe, albeit slow hard drive and reformat the media drives, plug them in again with fresh cables, copy the media back and prep a second RAID just in case the first one decided to off itself again.  This has been going on now for nearly 3 days.

What a nightmare.  I have a new 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black HDD that I just formatted and put into Rosewill RX358 V2 enclosure in case I need the extra space again, only this time I did the smart thing and got a drive with some speed.  This one is 7200rpm whereas the other drive, which is still going after a day and a half (with about 8 hours left it says)  is as slow as slow can be and is infuriating me and making my clients uncomfortable.  I really hate USB 2.0 as well.  It’s too slow for me.  I want a USB 3 card but what’s the point when most devices still don’t use the format?  The nice thing about the Rosewill drives is they come with a PCI slot cover with a SATA cable attached so I could run it to the motherboard (I still have two SATA slots left) instead of running it to USB, but to install that I’d have to pull an existing PCI card because I’m using every slot.  I think there’s one slot left but the video card in my machine is so big that it takes up the slot.  What I feel like I need is another 3 PCI slots!  In the meantime, I am using both my RAID cards so I at least I can feel like I’m getting my money’s worth there.

But let me get back to the inciting incident.  What happened?  I was using Plural Eyes to sync up some media, I was ingesting new video into Avid Media Composer from a firewire Mac Drive and I was doing nothing else.  Suddenly one of the two drives in my striped RAID went down.  It still showed up on the RAID software, but was grayed out.  I suppose the Mac drive might have confused my computer or something in as much as I need to use third party software just to look at it, but in the end I couldn’t take the chance that it was a one time snafoo.  I didn’t have a spare RAID with the space for the media I was working with so I had no choice but to copy it to the slow external drive.  Had I known that freeing up the space on what I now have as a second RAID wouldn’t take more than a few hours, I’d have done that and copied everything over that way.  It would have been a lot faster, but given the amount of time it took to set up those drives and the amount of time it takes to copy nearly 1TB of data, I don’t know if it’d have made a meaningful difference in the time it took to set up.  Anyway, the damn USB drive is transferring data at 6.39 MB/sec and has 174 GB to do.  That’s 178176 MB.  That’s a lot of seconds.

Or about 8 hours.  Take your pick.

Anyway, I have regrouped the drives as a new RAID, reformatted them and checked for errors.  No errors.  So they’re getting copied to.  The data is safe.  I’m just angry that it took so long to fix something on a time sensitive project that was already taking forever because of having to sync up the sound to the picture.  Ugh.

What happened to Chrome?!

I have sung the praises of Google for years.  I was one of the first people to download Google Earth and I’ve been thoroughly impressed by every product they have produced except for Google+ (which I think is a little desperate.)  My favorite googlism is Chrome though.  Well, it broke on me.  Here’s the picture of my disappointment.