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Xraid directly connected + OSX Server
Hi All —
I’m working to set up an FCP HD cutting room in a barn in the middle of the woods.
We’re pretty much set on a MacPro directly Fibre’d to an Xraid for the editing. That all seems fine and straightforward.
But we’d also like to have another computer for the assistant. Apple has told us we can just run OSX Server off the MacPro and have the assistant access the Xraid through that.
Has anyone done this sort of thing before? My worry would be that having the MacPro running both Final Cut (for me) and OSX Server (for the assistant and everone else) would create some nasty bottlenecks. Or is it smooth sailing? (BTW, the assistant wouldn’t nessacarily be digitizing — that I think will be done solely on the Mac Pro).
Thanks in advance — I always appreciate your guy’s insight.
geoff
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7 Replies
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Perhaps this will help you:
https://www.apple.com/finalcutserver/
Is your assistant going to be editing? What format are you working in?
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Hi —
We’re working with 720p, some of it uncompressed for compositing, but most probably knocked down to HDV for offlining.
FCP Server is _exactly_ what we need, but we’re going to up and running in June and don’t want to change file systems mid-stream.
Also — another little bit of clarification — we’re getting an 8 core machine, if that makes any difference.
gg
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As Final cut server hasn’t been released yet, this is all speculation-
To digitise on another machine you will need some type of shared storage system.
You are right in saying that running FCS on your edit machine and getting that to share out the material via ethernet will slow everything down. It will always happen at the wrong time too – you will be pulling two streams off the XSR and sharing one out.There might be a workaround though
The XSR has two controllers with a fibre connection each. Route one half of the XSR to your edit and the other half to the assistant machine. Buy yourself a GigE switch and then transfer the material over to the edit side. Thats what I was doing here https://peterwiggins.com/content/view/31/33/ A digitise/edit station and a graphics station.
The alternative is to buy a fibre channel switch and run some San software such as MetaSan. This is obviously a more expensive solution. You could look at ‘SAN in a can’ solutions too like Terrribleblock, sorry Terrablock.
FC Server looks great, but you do need the hardware behind it. It was designed to sit on top of a shared solution. However if you do get it working as somebody has suggested, then please let us all know.
No doubt Mark will chip in here too 🙂
Peter
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[gruetz60] “We’re working with 720p, some of it uncompressed for compositing, but most probably knocked down to HDV for offlining.”
Whew, HDV for offline? Why not DVCPRO HD or other? HDV conform times are horrendous.
Jeremy
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[Peter Wiggins] “FC Server looks great, but you do need the hardware behind it. It was designed to sit on top of a shared solution.”
Very true.
GG, if you really only have two machines (one capture/edit and one edit) It’s probably cheapest to get a cheap storage option for the second machine and duplicate any media that you capture to the big machine. That way you can swap XMLs. If you need three or more machines, a more robust setup is needed.
Jeremy
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This is the better solution.
If your second machine is also a MacPro, that is.
If you choose to use an iMac as the second system, connect both ‘halves’ of the XSR to the MacPro and connect the MacPro and the iMac directly to each other via GigE. And enable jumbo frames. Directly, don’t go through a switch.
GigE and the MacPro would be plenty fast to edit and serve files to the assistant. We have three G5s (all dual) connected to individual XSRs. Editors routinely mount the other FCPs XSRs and edit off them. Everyone captures to their own, however.
Also look at solutions from Small Tree. Especially BlazeFS.
Neil
FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL. -
Thanks all.
(And JG, I’ll have to investigate the offline formats — thanks for the heads up about HDV!)
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