Optimal Storage Configuration for Video Editing

[Nervly]

Hey, everyone!

 

My job consists of mostly video editing and some motion graphics. I mainly use Premiere and After Effects for this end. I usually work with either 1080p60 or 2160p30 footage, and sporadically 4k at 120fps too. 

 

My current setup is as follows:

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700x

- RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB (2x8GB) 3200Mhz CL14

- GPU: NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti

- MOBO: Gigabyte X570 AORUS ELITE

 

- SSD #1: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB

- SSD #2: Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 1TB

- HDD: Western Digital Blue 1TB 7200RPM

 

- CPU Cooler: ADM Wraith Prism Stock Cooler

- Case: Kolink Observatory w/ Stock Case Fans

 

(including my case and cooling setup because this case has godawful temperatures at load and even too high for idle due to front tempered glass and likely terrible case fans, case is also constantly super loud even at idle, so am also accepting suggestions for a good balance between airflow and silence, having looked at cases such as Fractal Define R6, Fractal Torrent and Lian Li Lancool 215)

 

I'm about to completely format my computer for a fresh start and I'd like to organize and optimize my storage as best as possible for my current workload.

Up until now, I've been using my 970 Evo Plus to store pretty much everything - from project files, to scratch disk, to footage, etc. However, it is of my understanding that this is not good practice. 

I find myself quickly running out of space on my 970 EVO Plus due to all the videos and projects that build up in my drive after I'm done with them. I've had issues before to where I needed to export something to ProRes so Premiere could handle it significantly more easily, but didn't have enough free space as those files become huge, sometimes up to 250GB.

I'm also never really sure if I should delete stuff after I'm done with the final export since I fear I might need 'em in the future. I've considered looking into getting a 4TB HDD to store all my finished projects, but I'm unsure if, for that end, I should get a 5400RPM (which are the more affordable ones at 99€) or go for exclusively 7200RPM which ups the price by 70€, and I also wanted to know if I can optimize what I currently have to a point where I don't actually need to acquire new storage. G-Drives and RAID stuff is all out of the question as I don't currently have the budget for it due to other responsibilities.

 

Upon formatting my computer, I was thinking of using the 850 EVO for OS and programs. Considered creating a smaller partition (maybe 128GB?) for the OS alone and keep the other partition for just software, mostly because I'd like to have it tidy and organized.

As for the rest, I'm at a complete loss. I'm not sure what I should store in the HDD and in the M.2, should the footage be all in the M.2? Should the Scratch Disks stay in the HDD or do they go in the M.2 as well? Should I delete the projects I'm done with or move them to the HDD? And should I move the footage I used in those projects from the M.2 to the HDD as well or do I just delete all of it? But then what if I need to revisit that footage in the future for whatever reason? I've tried searching around but nothing of what I find really clears up my mind on these questions. 

 

Also, what do you think is the best practice when it comes to resources used such as audio files, images, etc.? As in, should I keep all music and graphics I use in one project within that project's folder, and then if I ever re-use them in a different project, duplicate them into that new project's folder, so everything is always together (which is good if I ever have to move stuff between drives or external disks)? Or is it better to have one single "global" folder for all assets and just have projects grab stuff from it? Though, in that situation, I'd more easily encounter MEDIA OFFLINE issues, but it also takes up a bit less storage.

 

I'd like to hear your advice and thoughts on these things, maybe even your own workflows within the subject.

All of what I know about video editing is self-taught and understanding storage hasn't been my forte when it comes to postproduction, so I apologize if this is a dumb question.

 

Also, as an extra question, which is not related to storage but thought I'd ask here as well:

I've been wanting to upgrade my hardware. Not sure if now or in the near future, but I've been eyeing the 5950x which is currently on a crazy sale at a local store, from 885€ down to 570€, until the end of May. I know I want to upgrade to 32GB of RAM and I'll likely be making that jump within the next week but am wondering if it's worth jumping to the 5950x as well. Mostly looking for better performance while skimming and watching the preview video in Premiere without it lagging too much, as currently even with 1/4 or 1/8 resolution and FX off it still gets frustratingly stuttery a lot of the times. Exporting my files to ProRes first usually helps significantly but I'll still have issues occasionally.

 

Thank you for your attention!

[Aaron_T]

@Nervly

There is a lot to unpack here, but I have a few thoughts.

 

1. Speed for any potential HDD you get as an archive is less important than reliability and capacity. You didn't mention what country you were in, but I'd look for an online retailer with an 8 to 10 TB Toshiba NAS drive for a good price. They tend to be some of the best price to reliability.

2. Speed of the storage you use as scratch space is going to be one of the biggest factors in the performance of your video editing software. Either use the 970 you have for your scratch space, or get a new PCIe gen 4 drive as scratch for better performance. You could also get another 970 and RAID them, but then you're missing out on the generally improved IOPS from the 4th gen PCIe SSDs.

 

3. Using your 850 EVO for OS seems perfectly reasonable. You'd get more use out of the 970 as a dedicated scratch drive.

 

4. Project folder structures are largely a personal preference. From a performance standpoint, as long as everything is on your fastest storage that's all that matter.

5. The 5950x would obviously be better performance, but from the things you talked about, it sounds like you'd notice (or appreciate) faster storage more first.

 

EDIT:

One more thing. You mentioned your 970 evo gets full a lot. This will also have a severe negative effect on it's performance. Once an SSD gets to around 70% capacity it's performance drops a lot. So having a large HDD to move stuff off to might be the most immediately noticeable benefit for you.

[Nervly]

1 hour ago, AaronThomas said:

@Nervly

There is a lot to unpack here, but I have a few thoughts.

 

1. Speed for any potential HDD you get as an archive is less important than reliability and capacity. You didn't mention what country you were in, but I'd look for an online retailer with an 8 to 10 TB Toshiba NAS drive for a good price. They tend to be some of the best price to reliability.

2. Speed of the storage you use as scratch space is going to be one of the biggest factors in the performance of your video editing software. Either use the 970 you have for your scratch space, or get a new PCIe gen 4 drive as scratch for better performance. You could also get another 970 and RAID them, but then you're missing out on the generally improved IOPS from the 4th gen PCIe SSDs.

 

3. Using your 850 EVO for OS seems perfectly reasonable. You'd get more use out of the 970 as a dedicated scratch drive.

 

4. Project folder structures are largely a personal preference. From a performance standpoint, as long as everything is on your fastest storage that's all that matter.

5. The 5950x would obviously be better performance, but from the things you talked about, it sounds like you'd notice (or appreciate) faster storage more first.

 

EDIT:

One more thing. You mentioned your 970 evo gets full a lot. This will also have a severe negative effect on it's performance. Once an SSD gets to around 70% capacity it's performance drops a lot. So having a large HDD to move stuff off to might be the most immediately noticeable benefit for you.

Thank you so much for your reply!

 

1. I'm in Portugal!

 

2. Ohh, this is great to know! I wasn't aware scratch space had so much influence in performance. Is it more important to have a faster SSD for scratch than for the video files I'm working on then? Up to this point, I've been using my 970 for scratch, alongside footage and project files. I'm looking at a Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 500GB SSD M.2 at a seemingly really good price, 60€ down from 110€. I initially immediately thought it to be a good jump in performance, especially being Gen4, but looking at its specs versus the 970, it raised some questions:

 

- Gigabyte Aorus READ Speed: Up to 5000MB/s & 400.000 IOPS | WRITE Speed: Up to 2500MB/s & 550.000 IOPS 

- Samsung 970 READ Speed: Up to 3500MB/s & 600.000 IOPS | WRITE Speed: Up to 3300MB/s & 550.000 IOPS

 

My questions are:

 

a. Does scratch space favor READ or WRITE speeds? Since Premiere is grabbing info from scratch files, I'm assuming READ? In which case the Gigabyte is better. Is this correct?

b. Other than Gigabyte's READ speed, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus seems to excel at everything else, although it isn't a Gen4 SSD. Are there any other factors at play I'm missing? 

c. If this Gigabyte Gen4 SSD isn't a good choice, what specs would I want to look for in a Gen4 SSD to outperform the 970 for scratch space?

 

Thank you!

[Aaron_T]

22 minutes ago, Nervly said:

Thank you so much for your reply!

 

1. I'm in Portugal!

 

2. Ohh, this is great to know! I wasn't aware scratch space had so much influence in performance. Is it more important to have a faster SSD for scratch than for the video files I'm working on then? Up to this point, I've been using my 970 for scratch, alongside footage and project files. I'm looking at a Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 500GB SSD M.2 at a seemingly really good price, 60€ down from 110€. I initially immediately thought it to be a good jump in performance, especially being Gen4, but looking at its specs versus the 970, it raised some questions:

 

- Gigabyte Aorus READ Speed: Up to 5000MB/s & 400.000 IOPS | WRITE Speed: Up to 2500MB/s & 550.000 IOPS 

- Samsung 970 READ Speed: Up to 3500MB/s & 600.000 IOPS | WRITE Speed: Up to 3300MB/s & 550.000 IOPS

 

My questions are:

 

a. Does scratch space favor READ or WRITE speeds? Since Premiere is grabbing info from scratch files, I'm assuming READ? In which case the Gigabyte is better. Is this correct?

b. Other than Gigabyte's READ speed, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus seems to excel at everything else, although it isn't a Gen4 SSD. Are there any other factors at play I'm missing? 

c. If this Gigabyte Gen4 SSD isn't a good choice, what specs would I want to look for in a Gen4 SSD to outperform the 970 for scratch space?

 

Thank you!

 

#2. In your particular case, you'd want all files (all disk IO) going to your fastest drive.

 

#3 (also relates to 'b' and 'c'). Something that is not immediately obvious is that 500gb gen 4 drives tend to be a fair bit lower performance than 1tb or 2tb models. The number of NAND memory chips on the smaller capacity models is restrictive to performance. If you get a 500gb class model, then I'd get something like a Samsung 980 pro or a WD Black SN850 as those two series of drives are the performance leaders. However, if you go up to 1tb then you can get good performance out of a cheaper drive like the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, or the Crucial P5 Plus. But if this is cost prohibitive, then I'd stick with the 970 you have, and just move all the data you are not working on to a HDD for storage so your 970 can perform it's best.

 

a. Depends on what you're doing. Jumping around in your preview is going to be read heavy on the SSD and RAM, saving edits is write heavy, exporting is also write heavy(but may not be a bottleneck if you're rendering is very complicated and takes a lot of CPU/GPU horsepower). Likely you won't notice a difference in your workflow performance because of read vs write performance for any top of the line gen 4 ssd.

 

[Nervly]

1 hour ago, AaronThomas said:

 

#2. In your particular case, you'd want all files (all disk IO) going to your fastest drive.

 

#3 (also relates to 'b' and 'c'). Something that is not immediately obvious is that 500gb gen 4 drives tend to be a fair bit lower performance than 1tb or 2tb models. The number of NAND memory chips on the smaller capacity models is restrictive to performance. If you get a 500gb class model, then I'd get something like a Samsung 980 pro or a WD Black SN850 as those two series of drives are the performance leaders. However, if you go up to 1tb then you can get good performance out of a cheaper drive like the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, or the Crucial P5 Plus. But if this is cost prohibitive, then I'd stick with the 970 you have, and just move all the data you are not working on to a HDD for storage so your 970 can perform it's best.

 

a. Depends on what you're doing. Jumping around in your preview is going to be read heavy on the SSD and RAM, saving edits is write heavy, exporting is also write heavy(but may not be a bottleneck if you're rendering is very complicated and takes a lot of CPU/GPU horsepower). Likely you won't notice a difference in your workflow performance because of read vs write performance for any top of the line gen 4 ssd.

 

Thank you so much for your help, very clear and informative!

Super appreciate it! ^^