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Multiple Edit Station Storage?
Hello all, last year I plagued these pages to help me get used to editing on FCP to start work on a low budget film. Thanks to all the helpful souls on this site it was a very succesful edit and I’m very happy with the results.
http://www.kapitalfilm.com ……in case you wanted to have a small look at the results.
Now in the new year we have money to make another feature and I would like to use the two computers that we have, 1 x G5 Quad 2.5Ghz and 1 x 8core MacPro 3.0Ghz so that my assistant can capture the rushes and sync them with the audio while I cut. Also the director uses a G4 laptop and he could look at snippets for the film’s edit process.
I don’t know anything about how this is possible and the people in the London Mac Store looked terrified when I quizzed them about it.
If you could fill me in on Xserve and how to use it, or what would be better to use or what I should be lookin for then I would be greatly appreciative.
Thank you for the past advice and for your advice for the future,
Jon
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11 Replies
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A full blown XSAN is expensive and requires a top notch tech to properly set up.
if it’s just the 2 of you, you can get away with buying a nice fibre channel storage option (like a G-Speed), and you can edit off it connected over gigabit ethernet while your assistant loads and syncs.
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I wholly concur. XSan is not the way to go for such a small setup. I would look at Facilis. But whatever solution you go with I would purchase the highest grade support service that is available. Shared storage adds a layer of complexity that can cause real havoc at the most inopportune times. But what it works it really streamlines post.
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Do I need fibre channel cards for the G5 and Mac Pro? If so should I get Mac ones and is it possible for the director to hook his laptop up the disk array using a LAN connector?
sorry if this seems ridiculous, this is all new to me.
Jon
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[Jon_Alpha] “I would like to use the two computers that we have, 1 x G5 Quad 2.5Ghz and 1 x 8core MacPro 3.0Ghz so that my assistant can capture the rushes and sync them with the audio while I cut. Also the director uses a G4 laptop and he could look at snippets for the film’s edit process.”
Jon,
Hard drives are incredibly expensive now, but shared storage is still very expensive. Why not network the computers and have your assistant copy the captured media and logs to your workstation and to a drive the director can access through his laptop. Its not rocket science and it will cost you a mere fraction of shared storage.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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Buy a fibre card for your Mac Pro. The drive will live on that computer only. Everyone else connects over the network… just like you would to any other drive on someone else’s computer. gigabit ethernet is plenty fast to play video files (except uncompressed, but that’s probably not how you’re going to edit).
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oh, and go ahead and get the Apple fibre card. ATTO is twice as expensive, but we have only used apple’s cards (made by LCI) and they work just fine.
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[David Roth Weiss] “Hard drives are incredibly expensive now, but shared storage is still very expensive.”
I’m guessing that David meant to say “Hard drives are incredibly inexpensive now, but shared storage is still very expensive.”
Arnie
Now in post: Peristroika, a film by Slava Tsukerman
https://www.arniepix.com/blog -
[Arniepix] “I’m guessing that David meant to say”
Arnie you are “the man,” a real editor’s editor… You can fly wing for me for me anytime.
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.
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We use a similar solution. All of our G5s have the internal Jive by Sonnett with 1.5 terabytes. We digitize to these drives locally, then if I need files on other G5s I connect via gigabit ethernet. I can even edit entire projects over ethernet with media on the other computers.
Basically save often and don’t have the same FCP project open on two computers at the same time.
We use this method for everything from editing to AE work. Has been working flawlessly for more than three years.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media -
Hi everyone
I will be the assistant editor on this feature when it gets made, so first of all I’d like to say thank you to everyone for all the suggestions made so far.
What we are really looking for is a way to be able to share both media AND project files, so that I can be working on one task while Jon works on another.
The idea of trying to combine the various different pieces of work into one “good” project at the end of each day – say I’ve been marking all the shots with evidence of an intermittant camera fault and putting them in a new bin, while Jon is cutting together scenes – not only sounds a bit dangerous but also is not as efficient, as Jon may want to have a look at what I’ve found in between cutting.
Basically, we want EditShare. But we don’t want to pay that much for it. Final Cut Server sounds like it might be good… but no one seems to know when that’s going to be shipping.
Anyone have any ideas? Either about Final Cut Studio, or about a cheap 2-3 person alternative?
Cheers all
Phynal
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