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Multiple Computers over Thunderbolt (Live Edit)
Hi everyone, not sure if this is the best forum, so let me know if it would be better somewhere else.
I’m currently looking at possible workflows with laptops, offering live capture and edit on jobs. (Particularly useful on music videos etc).
We currently do this with a single station, transferring CF cards through the reader and importing to Premiere.
The only thing is this takes too much time, you really need one station logging and labelling, and another doing the live edit.
With the advent of Thunderbolt this makes me think it might be possible to have 2 machines connected to a single Thunderbolt device, backing up that drive as you go along.
Anyone got any ideas/experiences? Ethernet connection maybe, with sharing turned on? Issues with permissions?
Many thanks in advance
Dan
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3 Replies
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If something like you’re asking for (a dual connection Thunderbolt enclosure) exists, it would most likely be quite expensive. At the moment, the Thunderbolt ecosystem is sparse; many of the “annouced” product lines have yet to come to market.
You could do what you want with a single Thunderbolt/FW800/eSATA disk array and a small gigabit ethernet switch. You could even save costs and use a cross-over gigabit ethernet cable to connect the two machines directly – you’d simply have to assign them IP addresses manually as if they were on the same network.
The machine doing the ingest and logging doesn’t need the kind of speedy access to the disks that the editing station needs so GbE should be more than adequate.
As for directory/folder permissions, I’d use Sandbox 2 – it’s free.
https://mikey-san.net/sandbox/You could also just opt for installing OSX server on the editing machine and use XSAN, but in the past we’ve used Sandbox 2 to great success for a setup similar to what you’re describing without any of the server/processor overhead.
The only caveat is finding a way to live-update the list of available clips in the editing app – I’m not saying it can’t be done, I just don’t know enough about Premiere’s innards to know how that might work.
Sounds like a fun challenge though. I wish you the best of luck – and suggest you wait an see what other ideas are presented here. Lots of ways to skin a cat!
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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger -
Some great ideas, thankyou Petros.
Will certainly look into all options.
(The new lacie Thunderbolt drive actually has dual TB ports, whether that would allow 2 laptops connected I’m not so sure – https://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549).
I’ll let everyone know what works/doesn’t. If anyone has other ideas let me know!
Dan
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(The new lacie Thunderbolt drive actually has dual TB ports, whether that would allow 2 laptops connected I’m not so sure – https://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10549).
I believe that’s so units can be daisy-chained.
Still it’s all worth exploring. Let us know what you end up doing – I’m sure more and more people will be interested in this type of compact setup. 😉
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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger
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