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AE and SAN options
We have three full time motion design folks on staff. Often they are all working on the same project at the same time. Each artist currently is editing their portion of the project on their own external drive.
When I comes time to archive the video we often have three times the amount of collect folder material than we need due to the redundant source files.
Does After Effects support multiple people using the same file at the same time? If yes, what are the required tools both hardware and software needed to do this? Does XSAN do this?
Any advice and/or links are greatly appreciated.
Mike Kroesen
Freelance Editor, Seattle -
3 Replies
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I hope you get better advice. There are several really good network wonks here on the cow.
From many years of watching similar discussions, I’ve concluded the maintenance overhead usually outweighs the perceived or hoped for gains in productivity. The ability to have simultaneous read/write access to a set of files is the function of a server and it must be supported by a high speed RAID so you’ll need high speed streaming communications usually over dedicated high-gig ethernet or fiber.
I don’t have any of that junk cluttering up my life.
My partner and I sometimes end up working on the same project that involves many applications such as FCP, AE, PS, AI and several encoders. We decide early to establish a bucket on a remote server to which we move copies of everything at the end of each session. We end up with legacy versions on the server and we can delete the local media and project files that are no longer needed. It’s tedious but it has saved our butts a couple of times. We just create a folder inside the big bucket for each day’s work and dump it in there.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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We use one RAID 10 drive as our central media drive through a GigE switch and managed by an XServe. Works pretty well for AE throughput wise on single screen HD stuff…though can be a bit choppy and hangy on multi screen HD comps..but then that is ALOT of data! a 10 GigE or Fiber network would sort this and will probably be a route we go down some point soon. This kind of 1 GigE network is not so great for multiple FCP editors though, as you need realtime all the time, rather than RAM caching in AE…for that you will need Fiber/10 GigE or similar for anything over SD or Pro Res I would say.
Workflow wise – we usually split a sequence up between artists where needed and then just import the pieces into one master project when the time comes and then reduce>collect at the end of a project. Can get hairy if you don’t discipline yourselves, but worth it in the end for speed/flexibility.
Bob Zelin wrote a great blog piece on building your own SAN – worth a scan around for that too…
AE7 Pro – Nucleo – Mocha v1.2.3 – PS CS3 – FCP 5.1.4
MacPro Quad 3GHz / ATI 1900XT / 8GB RAM / OSX 10.4.11
30″ ACD / Decklink SP / SONY PVM-20M4E/ Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / XServe / United Digital RAID
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Production Studio CS2 – Combustion 3 – Mocha v1.0.1
Win XP Pro 32 / Intel Core2Quad Q6600 / 2GB RAM / NVidia Quadro570 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5s / Sony BVM-20G1E / 2 x Dell 2007FP / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 320GB boot/800GB RAID-0 -
Thanks for the detailed information. I appreciate it.
Mike Kroesen
Freelance Editor, Seattle
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