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Final Cut Pro using Avid Unity shared storage
Has anyone ever used Final Cut Pro with Avid Unity as the shared storage server? I know Avid qualified this configuration back in April but I don’t know what that means. I’m working with a rental vendor who will only offer this configuration, but I’ve never used it and I can’t find any information besides the white papers on the Avid site. I normally work in an Apple XSan environment and I don’t know how the Avid configuration is different. Do the Unity volumes just show up as drives? Do they show as network drives, or local volumes? Does it still require XSan software and metadata controllers? Are there any permissions issues or digitizing problems?
I don’t want to bail on the vendor out of ignorance, but I also don’t want to go into battle with a setup that I don’t understand. Any insight would be appreciated.
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4 Replies
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Brian,
Your vendor should be walking you through this. Ask them to let you test drive the config that they’re
offering you in advance of your rental. While Unity has been around for a long time and is quite reliable, I’d ask them to show you specifically how it handles FCP.I would imagine that it would operate similar to X-SAN in that every editor would see the “volume” available to them. This volume would show up on the desktop just like in X-SAN. Questions to ask: Can multiple editors write to the same volume simultaneously? My guess is YES.
Seems to me the burden of making this sale in on your vendor, since that’s the only option they’re offering. Make them earn the sale by demonstrating to you that it will work as you expect.
Mark
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We’re in that process with the vendor now, but we have yet to dive into the technical specifics. The complicating factors are that its an out of town edit, so I can’t test the rig before we start, and the rental vendor has a contract with the production facility that we’re using, so if I want to edit in the same place we shoot the show, I have to use this Unity configuration. I’m hoping that somebody has some real world experience to bolster my confidence.
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It shows up as mounted volumes…just like most SAN setups. Mimics what XSAN does. You will NOT be able to use this like Avid does in terms of shared projects. For that you need to figure out how to do this the FCP way.
Shane
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Thanks for the insight. Do you know if it requires the same metadata controller setup of a typical XSan? Or is that handled by some part of the Unity software?
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