Exturnal HDD Speed, Games, and Video

[Sabre]

I am currently going through a bit of a personal crisis. I hate it when I laze about playing games and watching TV as I feel I'm not doing anything and wasting my life, but when I do something I feel as though I'm wasting time that I should be spending enjoying myself. It's a vicious cycle that I don't know how to break out of.

So, I decided to combine the 2 to see if that helps. My plan was to record myself playing games on my PC and post them to the internet. However, I quickly noticed that videos over a few minutes went out of sync with the sound. I know it's possable as many people do it.

Long story short the only problem and thus solution had to do with my Mirror RAID. It has great read speed, but, acording to the internet at least, not enough speed to keep up with temp storage and writing the encoded data. The popular solution is a second HDD so that temp data is writen to 1 drive, the finished product is then saved to another. The problem is that I don't think a USB hard disk would have the speed to keep up.

[Guest FoXXX]

I am currently going through a bit of a personal crisis. I hate it when I laze about playing games and watching TV as I feel I'm not doing anything and wasting my life, but when I do something I feel as though I'm wasting time that I should be spending enjoying myself. It's a vicious cycle that I don't know how to break out of.

So, I decided to combine the 2 to see if that helps. My plan was to record myself playing games on my PC and post them to the internet. However, I quickly noticed that videos over a few minutes went out of sync with the sound. I know it's possable as many people do it.

Long story short the only problem and thus solution had to do with my Mirror RAID. It has great read speed, but, acording to the internet at least, not enough speed to keep up with temp storage and writing the encoded data. The popular solution is a second HDD so that temp data is writen to 1 drive, the finished product is then saved to another. The problem is that I don't think a USB hard disk would have the speed to keep up.

What program are you using to record?

Also, play SF, and you're not wasting your life enjoying yourself.

[Mr. Krystal]

I am currently going through a bit of a personal crisis. I hate it when I laze about playing games and watching TV as I feel I'm not doing anything and wasting my life, but when I do something I feel as though I'm wasting time that I should be spending enjoying myself. It's a vicious cycle that I don't know how to break out of.

So, I decided to combine the 2 to see if that helps. My plan was to record myself playing games on my PC and post them to the internet. However, I quickly noticed that videos over a few minutes went out of sync with the sound. I know it's possable as many people do it.

Long story short the only problem and thus solution had to do with my Mirror RAID. It has great read speed, but, acording to the internet at least, not enough speed to keep up with temp storage and writing the encoded data. The popular solution is a second HDD so that temp data is writen to 1 drive, the finished product is then saved to another. The problem is that I don't think a USB hard disk would have the speed to keep up.

You definitely need to get a secondary drive INSIDE the computer (cheap and easy to install). If it's just a syncing audio problem, you can always use a secondary laptop to record sound, and use the main computer for video.

[DZComposer]

If your computer has an external SATA port, you can get an external SATA drive....

[ThePointingMan]

Hmmm, I don't quite understand why people watch videos of other people playing video games, but then again, I don't like many videos, movies ect, of anything, Xept Fraser, like that show...

Anyways, A friend of mine had this problem with a music video thingy, It lagged on his comp, but when it was on youtube er wherever he put t, it played fine and synced up, I guess the program just lagged a bit when it played the vid, but the file was a ok.

[Sabre]

You definitely need to get a secondary drive INSIDE the computer (cheap and easy to install). If it's just a syncing audio problem, you can always use a secondary laptop to record sound, and use the main computer for video.

My worry is that it would bugger up my RAID given that the point of it is so you can add and removes discs willy nilly. I might add one when I upgrade my graphics in the new year.

I was also thinking it could be a software issue, and thus using 2 seperate programs, but if it is a writing problem then that is just spreading the problem around.

Hmmm, I don't quite understand why people watch videos of other people playing video games, but then again, I don't like many videos, movies ect, of anything, Xept Fraser, like that show...

Anyways, A friend of mine had this problem with a music video thingy, It lagged on his comp, but when it was on youtube er wherever he put t, it played fine and synced up, I guess the program just lagged a bit when it played the vid, but the file was a ok.

So he had a fast hard drive but a crap cpu?

Anyway, people watch games for 4 reasons. Speedruns, Gameplay tips, story (eg. maybe you hate mass effects gameplay but like the story, you can watch a vid of someone else doing the hard bit, while you kick back.) and the reason I watch, comentery.

The best known example is persona 4 endurence run on giant bomb (although not actually an endurence run because they play it in short half hour bursts rather then 3 hour+ of real endurence runs) in which the 2 hosts play persona 4. You can hear them discus battle stratagy, talk about day to day stuff during long stretches and taking the mic out of the cutscenes. 2 of my favourite scenes was

*ah choo

game- "You got a cold?"

Player- "No. I'm just allergic to arse holes!"

*character gets out of bed and comes down stairs for breakfast

game- "Oh, you finally came down."

player- "Yeah. I was sweating bullets for a while there."

[ThePointingMan]

"I guess the program just lagged a bit when it played the vid" shoulda worded that better, basically, the program he was using had a video player in it, where he could watch the video, while making it. The video player in the program didn't sync up, but the file that it made was synced. Now, I have no idea if this is really why it was messed up, but just taking a guess.

I was also thinking it could be a software issue, and thus using 2 seperate programs, but if it is a writing problem then that is just spreading the problem around.

Oh hey, thats pretty much what i was trying to say.

Anyway, people watch games for 4 reasons. Speedruns, Gameplay tips, story (eg. maybe you hate mass effects gameplay but like the story, you can watch a vid of someone else doing the hard bit, while you kick back.) and the reason I watch, commentary.

Hmmm, The only one I could see worth it, is the story one, if you don't like the game, and commentary at least makes a bit of sense to me. The Gameplay tips, As long as you don't mind loosing the first rounds, you can just figure em out yourself. Speedruns, why would you watch one? Unless your trying to find all the secret shortcuts, but then you haven't really found them, you just saw where they where, and went there... I dunno bout others, but having someone tell me how to play a game, just ticks me off, and then when they are telling you how to play a game in a video...GRRRRR..... Just no satisfaction. AND THAT'S HOW I THINK BOUT VIDEO OF VIDEO GAMES!

[DZComposer]

My worry is that it would bugger up my RAID given that the point of it is so you can add and removes discs willy nilly. I might add one when I upgrade my graphics in the new year.

Firstly, any RAID controller worth it's silicon chips will allow you to add disks outside the array. But, since you are likely using a RAID "controller" built into a motherboard, I would check that first. I'll just say it straight up: On-board RAID sucks, and sucks horribly. Did it mention that it sucks? Good. Because it does. If your data is important enough for you to want to use RAID in a fault-tolerant form, then get a real RAID controller.

Any particular reason why you are using RAID? You mentioned adding/removing discs "willy nilly," but a RAID1 setup like you have really doesn't do that. You're tied to the capacity of the mirror. If you add a larger drive, you will be tied to the capacity of the smaller one, and adding an extra drive to the array will not increase capacity, just another level of redundancy. If you were running RAID5, you could add drives and increase capacity. Plus, in any RAID level, replacing or adding a drive requires rebuilding the array, which can be time-consuming depending on how much data you're talking about.

I generally don't RAID a desktop machine unless it's super critical, can't be down for more than a couple of hours, data. But, I prefer that kind of data to be on a server, in which case I'd use RAID5, RAID6, or RAID15 (mirrored RAID5 arrays) depending on the situation. Plus servers have real RAID cards, not those atrocious hardware/software hybrids that gaming motherboards ship with that will fail you when you need them most.

With RAID1, I find that the extra drive's capacity is worth more than fault-tolerance in general-use computing, so I don't use it. And never never RAID0. That nearly doubles your failure potential (even though there are 2 drives, if one fails, you lose everything).

Now, with latency in recording audio/video, the storage array is not the only place where you can run into that. On-board soundcards (and many PCI ones, *i'm looking at you, Creative*) can have pretty serious latency in recording. Especially since they have no processor of their own and rely on the CPU, which is very busy during a game. Also, your video card is being used to render 3d and record video simultaneously, so there is latency to be expected there. Plus the CPU time, though a multi-core CPU should be better-able to handle it.

[Sabre]

Seems like I touched a nerve there. Reminds me when my boss used to rant about using computers to play games on. He saw that as a great evil.

Even though I do monthly backups, my raid acts as a sort of secondary safty net. raid is NEVER a replacment for backups because sods law predicts multiple serious failures will occure at some point.

My main reason for my RAID is increased read speeds. I play alot of games, which means alot of loading. Having a game load in a few seconds instead of a few minutes is great for me. Personally, I can't wait for those solid state hard drives (or whatever they call them these days) to come out.

Back on topic. CPU power is not a problem for me. On anything except for supreme commander my CPU doesn't even work up a sweat. My video card is my biggest weakness of my machine due to my philosaphyt of buying a weak/mid range card every year or 2 instead of spending £300 for a card that last a few months, I spend less then a third of that, and get to play the games I want for a fraction of the cost. The upgrade in the new year I'm going to spash out on because supreme commander 2 is out.

[DZComposer]

My main reason for my RAID is increased read speeds. I play alot of games, which means alot of loading. Having a game load in a few seconds instead of a few minutes is great for me. Personally, I can't wait for those solid state hard drives (or whatever they call them these days) to come out.

SSDs are already out. I have one in my netbook, but sadly the performance of them has been over-hyped, and the lower-end ones actually underperform the mechanical drives. High-quality SSDs in good capacities (>80GB) are very very expensive, though. Don't expect 1TB SSDs for a while, as the top capacities are around 250 gigs at like ten times the cost of a regular HDD in that capacity.

Even though I do monthly backups, my raid acts as a sort of secondary safty net. raid is NEVER a replacment for backups because sods law predicts multiple serious failures will occure at some point.

Good. Many people treat RAID1 as a replacement for backup, and when you lose your RAID array, you learn the hard way. Even in those RAID15 setups I mentioned, backups are made, both local and off-site.

[ThePointingMan]

Seems like I touched a nerve there.

Sounds painful.

I was wandering what a RAID is anyway, if it cuts load time that's great, an' I should get one.

Random access information drive?

Edit:redundant array of inexpensive disks.

[Sabre]

The gist of raids is that multiple draves are seen as 1. In my case, the data is copies across 2 drives, and so can pull from 2 drives at once potentially halfing the read speed.

Thats on paper, but the results are often less then that. If you are setting up a raid because you can, then don't.

SSDs are already out. I have one in my netbook, but sadly the performance of them has been over-hyped, and the lower-end ones actually underperform the mechanical drives. High-quality SSDs in good capacities (>80GB) are very very expensive, though. Don't expect 1TB SSDs for a while, as the top capacities are around 250 gigs at like ten times the cost of a regular HDD in that capacity.

Aww. Shame. I think it's a case of refinment though. Moores law will kick in soon enough.

[ThePointingMan]

I suppose with only one drive plugged in I shouldna need a RAID.

[DZComposer]

You can't RAID with only drive. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. You need at minimum two HDDs for RAID 0 or RAID 1. You need three for RAID 5. You need four for RAID 6.

Only real reason to RAID is to reduce the chance of downtime to drive failure. You can also get some marginal performance boosts as well, especially with RAID0, but RAID0 has no fault tolerance and requires at least two drives. If one fails, all data is lost.

[ThePointingMan]

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

Oops, that's what i meant to type when i typed redundant array of inexpensive disks...

HDD, that doesn't include disk and floppy drives then right, 'cause I got a disk and floppy drive along with my other 1.

[DZComposer]

Well, I guess you could theoretically RAID optical or floppy drives provided they are on the same interface, but why the hell would you want to? It's pointless, and would be more of a pain in the ass than just a single, as you'd have to have the right disk in each drive or the array would fail.

[Sabre]

I tried using different software, each having diffrent methods (Fraps even breaks up the clip every 4gb) but the problem persists. I have learned that the problem is in fact very simple, and so is the fix, but finding none profestional software to do it is difficult.

Turns out that that the loss of sync over time is due to ...the audio portion of the file being to long or short. The solution is the stretch it back into like. On high priced software this is a simple click and drag affair. It is also technically possable on free stuff like virtualdub and moviemaker, but they don't include as a simple option.

I'm going to try using vd to pull the audio off the file, stretch it in audasity and slap it back on in movie maker. Phew.

[ThePointingMan]

Hmmm, I don't quite understand why people watch videos of other people playing video games.

I completely take that back. Playing Blaz blue, it's nice to see peoples play, so then i figured, oh i guess that's not such a dumb idea after all, sure sounds lame though.