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Final Cut Pro off of a Windows file server
I am finalizing some upgrade plans for our Final Cut suites at my company where we are the only Macs in the building. Up till now our Macs just ran off individual storage units – those being Medea RTR’s.
I have planned to continue using these units for individual storage with forthcoming MacPros, but our IT guy keeps suggesting that we just start editing off of a big Windows file server he has in our server room via a gigabit switch.
So far I’ve taken a thanks-but-no-thanks approach to this idea because I just can’t imagine it working right. I don’t know about the pure speed factor.. But we will be doing SD uncompressed 99.9% of the time and we only have CAT5 running to the suites. Even with the MacPro’s gig-E, I don’t think it will be fast enough. Most of our stuff is 30 second spots, but it typically involves many layers of compositing.
But I’d imagine there’d be other issues besides speed, such as filesystem issues. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking that once Final Cut on one machine captures to a file server running Windows, things will get all messed up since it doesn’t add any file extension to the file it creates. In my experience, subsequent attempts to access those files from the Windows server by a Final Cut station fail because it doesn’t know how to deal with it, unless you manually rename it with a .MOV extension.
Whenever we get into these discussions, I tend to be at a loss for succinct and concrete examples of why this is not practical… especially when discussing with someone that is not familiar with Macs. I’m wondering if someone would want to share with me some specific reasons or examples why FCP off of a Windows fileserver is a no-go.
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11 Replies
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Gigabit ethernet is theoretically fast enough for uncompressed SD but even if your switch supports QOS and the FCP Macs have highest priority, there will be times when network chatter might make playback unreliable.
I have my G5 connected to various Windows PC’s and a NAS. I use the NAS for file backups. At this stage I have not been able to get the G5 to write files bigger than 2 gig to a Windows machine so the thought of using a WIndows server to feed multiple FCPs would seem to me likely to fail the reliability test and also bomb out making big long render or capture files.
Your IT guy might be able to get them talking better than I but file transfers for me between NSA & Windows PCs always seems slower than real time playback of SD Uncompressed.
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[Fongaboo] “want to share with me some specific reasons or examples why FCP off of a Windows fileserver is a no-go.”
How about because it’s not designed for that and you’re just asking for headache?
Reason # 2. “someone not familiar with Mac’s” That’s your IT guy, and he wants to keep your FCPs up and running?
Reason #3. Video is a much different animal than typical IT traffic (email, small files etc.).
I could go on, but this is a very BAD idea.
Mark
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OK I didn’t mean to make it sound that bad.. We’re not talking an email server.. Or someone who doesn’t know the rigors of digital video. The rest of our station runs off of Windows-based editing stations and networked video servers. But they are wired with fiber and they only juggle SD in the DV codec.
Our creative department is the only one running Mac and we are the only ones moving more than DV bandwidth.
Basically, I should reframe the argument as: “Why buy an Apple XSAN when we have a perfectly comparable Dell RAID server in the back? OSX is supposed to have support for Windows File Sharing now, so why not?”
To which, I kinda go “uhhhh…”
We’re mostly talking platform wars in a sense..
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[Fongaboo] “Basically, I should reframe the argument as: “Why buy an Apple XSAN when we have a perfectly comparable Dell RAID server in the back? OSX is supposed to have support for Windows File Sharing now, so why not?”
“To which I would reply, “Then don’t. Switch to Avid. It’s quite happy on the PC.”
If you’re even asking this question, then you don’t know the world of hurt you’d be in for trying to run FCP off of a windows box. You can either take my word for it or do the requisite research to arrive at the same conclusion: This is a bad idea.
Mark
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OK if you go back and read… I am not asking this question. The part in quotes is my IT person. I already know it is a world of unknown pain.
I am just asking for help in making this case. And I can’t reply with snooty retorts as much as I might want to. I need to be able to say this won’t work right because of X, Y and Z.
I am just an editor that’s lucky enough to be given some input into the decisions being made. And no I won’t tell them to switch over to Avid, because they might actually do it. 😛
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1- Tell him how much bandwidth you need. It sounds like you need much more than he’s offering you. Make sure you spec it out for the fattest bandwidth you’re likely to use in the near future.
2- There are other shared storage solutions besides XSan on XRaid. I suspect you can find a fiber SAN for a more reasonable price. Do a search here & on the Kona forum back 12-18 months & you’ll find at least 2 or 3 other solutions.
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
Hi
what your IT gut needs to do is talk to a certified FCP engineer. Someone who has been around the block a couple of times getting FCP to run in a multi user envirionment.
this is not a discussion you should be having unless you just want to have inforamtion overload. configuring a multi user san environment for PC or MAC is a thrash you dont need to deal with.
what sort of pc fiber system? whats the server file system? is there support for more than 32 charachter file names? or files over 2 gB? can the servers support quicktime? what kind of NAS is IT talking about? a smart box w drives and gigabit? or a Domain server with attached storage? or some form of clip storage like a EVS or a Profile?
And
gigabit only works when you are the only users ie a physcally seperated network, just the FCP worksations and the server.
hope this helps
bee eph
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
Hi
what your IT gut needs to do is talk to a certified FCP engineer. Someone who has been around the block a couple of times getting FCP to run in a multi user envirionment.
this is not a discussion you should be having unless you just want to have inforamtion overload. configuring a multi user san environment for PC or MAC is a thrash you dont need to deal with.
what sort of pc fiber system? whats the server file system? is there support for more than 32 charachter file names? or files over 2 gB? can the servers support quicktime? what kind of NAS is IT talking about? a smart box w drives and gigabit? or a Domain server with attached storage? or some form of clip storage like a EVS or a Profile?
And
gigabit only works when you are the only users ie a physcally seperated network, just the FCP worksations and the server.
hope this helps
bee eph
“I like video because its so fast!”
Bob Flood
Greer & Associates, Inc. -
Your IT guy is an ignorant twit. He clearly does not have your interests in mind. All he wants is some new toys.
Let him do the research and proof of concept and budgeting for equipment improvements all on his own. He will not listen to you nor will he believe you have anything useful to contribute to his lack of knowledge of server-based video file storage.This is a losing battle that only he can admit is lost.
bogiesan
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Well just repeating some of those questions alone would help me prove the point. For that I appreciate it. The server would just be a hefty Dell running Windows Server 2003 or the like with the NTFS filesystem.
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