10.0.6 a significant turning point.

[Morten]

Try saving events or projects to a shared drive. Not possible.
Try setting a shared storage as destination for transcoded media…

– No Parking Production –

2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS6, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial

[Keith Koby]

We are putting events and projects on the san using san locations. The media itself is elsewhere, centrally located, on the san and the option to copy the media into the event on import is turned off. We’ve had multiple x instances using the same media at the same time, but the san location containing the event and project folders with the dbs is only accessible to one editor at a time. It gives you a little message saying that the san location is in use by “userA” on “computerB” for example when you try to add the san location to a second x instance while it is open on the first.

So this is pretty much the same as 7. You’d have one user in a project at a time and no more, or you’d potentially save over top of each other. In X you have one user in an event or project at a time because of limitations on the db files. If you need to share an event or a project at the same time, export an xml and import it on the second station.

You could also duplicate the san location in the finder I think and then add the san location on the second computer.

It’s no better or worse than 7 as far as project sharing goes on a san, at least for now. I hope that this will change in the future, but there are obvious hurdles to get over for this app to achieve it’s full sharing potential (using a db that can be read by more than one user at a time for example).

This thing could really be great for collaboration some day though. I believe that it will get there. That is one reason that I’m really excited about it and pushing for us to use it. In some ways, I’ll admit, I’m betting on it. The ceiling of this app is way higher than anything else out there.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Misha Aranyshev]

[craig slattery] “I think its a turning point because there is no real reason anymore not to use the software.”

There is still no replace on playhead, no ganging, no real tracks and the timeline is still magnetic. That’s plenty of real reasons for me not to use it.

[Christian Schumacher]

[Michael Aranyshev] “There is still no replace on playhead, no ganging, no real tracks and the timeline is still magnetic”

And there are annoyances like having to create storylines to place a transition, weird undo and playhead behavior, inconsistent keyboard commands when on a event and on a timeline, ghost frames when having secondary layers stacked and connected to a primary, limited speed controls, still no audio mixer, etc…

Better now that we don’t get spinning balls and crashes, gotta hope for the best, right?

[James Mortner]

Hello Keith, just thought id ask:

[Keith Koby] “We are putting events and projects on the san using san locations. The media itself is elsewhere, centrally located, on the san and the option to copy the media into the event on import is turned off.”

Does this imply the SAN locations aren’t actually shared on Xsan or equivalent level? They are local to the edit bays?

Thanks in advance!
James

[Keith Koby]

Media is indeed on the same san volume as the “san locations”. Here’s an example of the relative path to the media and to the “project” or “san location”.

Xsan Vol -> Media -> [Workgroup] -> [year date org folder] -> Project Media Folder
Xsan Vol -> Projects -> [Workgroup] -> fcpx projects -> [year date org folder] -> san location folder

The fcp7 projects folder is organized somewhat similarly inside of Xsan Vol/Projects:

Xsan Vol -> Projects -> [Workgroup] -> fcp7 projects -> [year data org folder] -> project files

Making sure that the media is organized centrally is imperative if you want to have it available to more applications than just fcp x (in our case 7, AE etc). You don’t want users digging through other user’s event db directory structures and moving files or not moving files.

I’ve been struggling a bit with how to describe this to editors as we introduce them to fcpx professionally. I found myself using a crutch like; “san location” in x = “project file” in 7. So when we create a san location, we name it with the same naming convention we would have used for an fcp7 project file.

I think it’s a bit weird because if you weren’t sharing the media and putting the projects on a san, you’d probably describe events and projects in X a bit differently. But it seems to work and it gets users past the idea that the brower/bins are separate from the timelines which is foreign at first encounter to x.

Keith Koby
Sr. Director Post-Production Engineering
iNDEMAND NETWORKS
Howard TV!/Movies On Demand/iNDEMAND Pay-Per-View/iNDEMAND 3D

[Craig Slattery]

[Michael Aranyshev] “There is still no replace on playhead, no ganging, no real tracks and the timeline is still magnetic.”

Yes, but thats not a reason to not use the software. The television I cut in FCPX, looks no different to the television I cut in FCP7. I can make J cuts, I can add music, I can cut fast, slow, edgy, conservative. I can tell a story, I can inform, entertain, emote, and I can do it without tracks, without ganging, without replace on playhead, all within a timeline that happens to be magnetic. Ok you might not like working that way, but it can’t be argued that these are reasons the software can not be used to create professional broadcast TV.

[Misha Aranyshev]

From this point of view the turning point was when they enabled broadcast monitoring.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Morten Ranmar] “Try saving events or projects to a shared drive. Not possible. “

I guess you’d have to define “shared drive”. We have 48TBs on the network and I can save to it, but it’s a SAN and FCPX understands it.

If you are trying to run a NAS, then yes, you’ll have to use Sparse Disk Images. My guess is that FCPX locks out NAS to prevent corruption which is probably a good thing.

[Morten Ranmar] “Try setting a shared storage as destination for transcoded media…
“

Yes, FCPX needs to be able to separate render files from the Project folders, too.

And I agree that more options are needed in terms of media management, but if you have a SAN and you have media that is accessible natively in FCPX (meaning no need to transcode) then the tools in FCPX are not too shabby for getting work done on multiple seats.

What is really nice about the structure is that there’s no reconnecting. you simply mount the appropriate folder on any machine, and everything is connected.

For instance, if I copy project/event to local/portable storage, I can plug that in to any machine and it will mount with no issue (provided I know what I am doing with the media).

Jeremy

[Brett Sherman]

As someone who hasn’t yet switched to FCP X, but most likely going to early next year, I’m cheered to hear this. I couldn’t care less about whether it has this or that feature. Quite frankly if I can edit faster on it then FCP 7, that is what matters. It’s so easy to become attached to a feature that if you worked slightly differently you wouldn’t need anyways.

I’ve developed dozens of workarounds with FCP 7 to make up for it’s inadequacies and am confident that I will be able to do the same with FCP X if the feature that I need isn’t there. It will be a painful learning curve, but so what. Months down the road I expect to be more efficient than ever.