Separate video drive vs. session's Video Files folder

[Preston Edmondson]

Hiya,

It's been common wisdom for a very long time to keep separate drives for video and audio playback. I've kept a separate video drive since the SCSI days, and I well understand the reasons that has been the standard way of working for so long.

However my experience over the past year (since upgrading to v12 and Sierra) has been that I get better performance playing from a single session folder on a single USB3 SSD, than I do when separating audio and video out among multiple drives. Pro Tools seems more responsive and snappy doing it this way (to me).

What is Avid's current official advisement on separate video drives? Is this just more of a workflow preference nowadays than something which is necessary? Is it in fact true that performance is improved using a single session folder for playback, or am I just imagining the improvement?

[MIKEROPHONICS]

I suspect you are imagining it - but having said that I have been running this way for years with no issues. I do it for file management and back up ease.
I use an AJA IOXT and have few problems


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[Reckless Erik]

Separate video drives have not been in use here for years now. We haven't found any real drop in performance and having everything in the same place is a big plus.

[MIKEROPHONICS]

Especially with the ram cache


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[MusoPro]

Actually I still do, not for speed but it makes things a lot less messy for me. I am constantly updating video versions during mixing. Each client has their own video folder with folders for each project....not only that but working with DnX files can get take up disk space super fast....I usually trash the video files at some point and backup just the Pro Tools session....the client 99.99% of the time has the video if I ever need it for possible broadcast changes.

Works for me.


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[Rich Breen]

One thing to add to the equation; Studios are starting to ask that any drive with picture needs to be encrypted, and needs to be in a secure vault when not in use. Also, when a picture drive is on the system, the system needs to be unplugged from the network - for me, since I'd rather not have audio on an encrypted drive, that means separate picture drives. As far as performance, I've never really noticed a significant hit from having picture on the audio drive as long as disk caching is being used.