3 People, FCPX and a fast switch

[Bernard Lamborelle]

Hi Marty,

It would be useful to know what codec/bitrate you work with and what type of work you do (short form or long form)? Also, do you currently have any central file server/NAS to park your finished projects? If not, what is your backup/archive strategy – if any?

Cheers,

Bernard

Bernard Lamborelle
bernard at tiger-technology.com
http://www.tiger-technology.com
514-667-2015

[Nathaniel Cooper]

Hey Marty, thanks for posting your question.

It sounds like you already have everything you need on the users/switch. What storage are you connecting to? Is that connecting through one of the Macs? Have you set up and tested it yet?

With 10GbE your pipe will be plenty for video, latency can still be problematic, which is addressed by the off the shelf manufactures. That said, for 3 users depending on your storage speed and how much you like to mess with set up. You should be able to get 3 users editing simultaneously.

The value of doing it yourself is that you should be able to save a few thousand dollars. The downside is you will generally have more random performance issues and and likely from time to time end up copying files locally, but overall (depending on formats/codecs) will work.

The value of an ‘off the shelf’ is guaranteed performance, user interface and a lot of feature sets that go beyond shared storage by itself. The downside is you will pay more. If you go this route, avoid getting shot by making sure you’re getting a product that does more than what you can build yourself. Most of them do at this point, some more than other; but any of the main servers should do way more than just sharing video files.

Again, if you already have the hardware, set it up and test it. Do a round of demos with all the main vendors and see where you land.

Good luck!

Nathaniel Cooper
ProMAX

[Bob Zelin]

before I answer, I have to ask you –
from your website, you state –
(We both still work full time and do MCM as a hobby in our spare time)

so is this a hobby, or do you do this full time ?
Since you are the tech guy, and you want to centralize your FCP-X libraries, do you know how to setup NFS ?

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Marty Mulholland]

Great help so far, thank you for taking the time to reply.

Bob, MCM is part time, media is full time. I’m an audio engineer technically but it’s usually environments that don’t require shared storage, just good backups, to which i can proudly say i’ve never lost a single file over the years with multiple hardware failures and clumsy co-workers breaking stuff.

I could be a full time dolphin wrangler and still want a good storage setup.

Workflow is basically just footage of 5D/70D/HM100, mostly h264 and we just edit straight as is, and then export masters are pro-res.

Material can be anywhere from 5 mins to 120mins but averages around 20mins. There are usually a LOT of shots, it might take 200 different shots to make that few minutes as a lot of it is technical stuff close then wide then close again with voice over to explain whats going on.

There’s no central NAS, just a huge PC with 10 sata ports and thunderbolt that i’ve got running macos 10.9. I’ve done this because i trust good quality PC power supplies more than external wall warts and power bricks. I can edit directly on that machine and currently we’ll just copy a FCPX library and the associated footage over to another machine, and then copy it back.

I know it’s wishful thinking but if there’s a way to retain a mac os x file system that would be great, not keen on having a windows server.

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
this will be an aggressive response. If you don’t like aggressive responses, then you should stop reading this now, instead of being insulted.

I have contacted you via your MCMTV website, with no reply. You have also been told on this forum by two incredible professionals – Bernard Lamporelle from Tiger Technolgy, and Nate Cooper from ProMax – both of which can provide you with professional solutions, that can do exactly what you want to do. And I have contacted you privately, to which you have not responded (it’s Thanksgiving in the US, but not in Australia, so I know you are working). So the bottom line is, that you are looking for someone on Creative Cow to tell you how to do this for free, and you are not willing to spend a penny with any professional who does this for a living (including all the wonderful dealers that do this in Australia) – you just want free information on how you can do this yourself, so you don’t have to buy an expensive WORKING solution, and you don’t have to pay anyone to help you – is that correct ?

Well, sorry, we are not going to help you. If you would like the phone #’s and contact info of professional dealers in Australia that can assist you (and YES, you have to pay them money) – I will be more than happy to list them right here.

If Castrol and Haltech, and SuperCheap Auto and Just Car Insurance, and GFB are willing to sponsor you, then you are doing the right thing (just like Creative Cow gets sponsored for these forums). But since you are in the VIDEO business, you need to take your profits, and SPEND THAT MONEY on a professional product (like from ProMax or Tiger Technology or the others that you see here on these forums).

since you state –
“series now sees up to 3 million views per week making it the #1 Automotive channel in Australia, and the #1 DIY Automotive Channel in the world. With such a massive audience, they are bringing together an international, multicultural community of open minded car enthusiasts from every corner of the planet.”

and you state –
“Being completely independent, the boys don’t have to answer to anyone except their own creative spirit and their focus is on quality over quantity.”

Well, that last quote is inaccurate. You don’t have to answer to anyone ? No, you have to answer to me. And the rest of the professional community. You don’t get to make all this money, and not PAY US for our professional services. You have received professional replies from Tiger Technolgy and ProMax. And there are others. SHOW US THE MONEY, and we will help you. If you don’t like “us”, there are countless other professionals on this forum, (just look at the banner ads), that can help you with a professional solution. Just crack open that wallet from your sponsors, and give us money, and you will have a wonderful working solution, that will allow you to do exactly what you want.

Bob Zelin
ps – happy holidays.

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Marty Mulholland]

Not insult taken Bob, i’d had a good read through these forums already and was prepared what you might come out with.

I only just signed up and haven’t found the private message function and can’t see any emails from you so not sure what happened there. I’ve just got the notification emails from the forum itself.I’ll have a closer look.

I also can’t see anywhere where i gave the impression a wallet wasn’t going to be cracked, i’m very happy to, i just like to throw the question out there and see what comes back. None of our sponsors make wallets, they make car parts and we use them on the show.

As a bit of background, I learned a lot from forums in the early years. Before you could look up a youtube video and be shown how to do something you had to read it. I think forums are wonderful things and seeing them be replaced by fast food on social media is a shame. So I thought I might go old school and try a forum post to see if there’s a popular solution or at least a bit of a shove in the right direction.

I made a few enquiries at some specialist shops before posting here to see what kind of help would be available, and rather than dig deeper like i saw instanly from replies here, i mostly got “here look at this website”, i think we may fall into a bit of an in-between big pro setups with 10+ staff and a 1 man show who uses time machine. There is just two of us producing, presenting, shooting, audio post, music composition – the lot. So the same guy who i supposed to research the energy content of ethanol vs gasoline and then shoot and present it has to figure out a storage solution (or at least who to call… and err.. “show the money” to)

So while i didn’t expect an analysis of the about us of our website and (assumed) business model, i appreciate you’ve taken the time to let me know the others who posted in this thread are worthy of a closer look.

Show me the forum spirit!

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
you have 3 Mac’s, all with thunderbolt
you have a 10G switch
you have 3 SanLink2 boxes

All you need is a dedicated Mac Pro server, and a big drive array, and you have shared storage. If you want FCP-X for your central library storage, you should enable NFS, if you want to write libraries to the shared volume (the big disk drive array). If you don’t mind “checking in and checking out” your libraries to your local computer, than the standard system will work.

So you are close, but done yet.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com

[Bryce Arroyo]

Marty,

If you are free soon I would love to get on a call with you Nathaniel cooper at Promax and Bob. Bob is our very respected and knowledgeable IT guru, if you will. As well as Maxx Digital works very closely with Promax. I know Nate personally and can get him on the line in a moments notice. Shoot me an email or call and we can dive into all your needs and get you the system that will help improve your business and production.

Bryce Arroyo
Maxx Digital
714-374-4944
bryce@maxxdigital.com

[Dmitry Demin]

Bob, I’m a newbie here but I have read many your posts (and much appreciate you). You’re often advising to use MacPro as NFS server with 10GbE LAN – but isn’t it too much? Why I shouldn’t use MacMini which is a way cheaper?

[Bob Zelin]

Hi –
the Mac Mini will work. A loaded (not bare bones) Mac Mini will cost $1000 – $1100 with 16 gig of RAM.
You will have to put your 10G thunderbolt box AND your drive array on the same single buss on the Mac Mini, so you will not get the performance that you would with a cylinder Mac Pro that has 3 busses (or an old Mac Pro that has separate lanes for the PCIe cards). Will the Mac Mini work – absolutely. We do it all the time.
Will you get better performance with a Mac Pro – yes.

Is the Mac Mini WAY cheaper ? – 1/3″ the price of a new cylinder Mac Pro, but the same price as a used
Mac Pro.

Bob Zelin

Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com