Avid Media Composer and sharing media on a SAN

[Eugeny Korkhin]

One more thing:

To make it all even easier, there’s Media Creation preference (orange box) in the settings list in Avid. Different tabs where you can specify the target drive (red box) for different types of possible media (green box). This way, you can automate the process at some extent and also exclude the chance of creating media on a shared volume. By the way, if it is a network drive that is shared (I mean, it is not a local drive of one machine, shared to another), then you don’t even need to partition it. Here’s how I see it:

SAN is the place “The Ingest” captures to. Editors have their personal folders (Editor_01, i.e.). Make them shared folders, then “The Editor 01” connects to his pesonal folder: Command+K, enter SAN IP Address/Editor_01 and he has that folder mapped as a network drive (green boxes). Therefore, Avid can use that “drive” to capture and etc (orange box). That is briefly.
And Bob, anticipating what you may say, I certainly understand that this is still a volume-based system, just put another way.

[Bob Zelin]

Eugeny,
I appreciate your response, and your experience more than you know.

Thank you very much for your detailed answers.

Bob Zelin

[Ryan Mclean]

Just chiming in to say “ditto” to everything David Parker has said as I’m looking for a similar solution for exactly the same reasons.

I’m in an educational facility and we do a mix of quick turnaround news pieces as well as longer promotional type pieces. Most the news/quick turn around stuff is shot on XDCAM and edited in Final Cut, but for the “higher end” stuff we can tap into the resources of our parent organization and shoot on formats like HDCAM/HDCAM SR, RED, etc. We’ll edit proxies in house on Composer and take our projects to their editing facility for finishing on Symphony.

So a handful of Avid projects, with Final Cut being our current bread and butter.

So we might be moving more towards Avid in the future, but we’re still very much a Final Cut shop…and this makes it hard to invest big bucks in a system like Isis or even Edit Share when our Avid usage is so modest.

Like David mentioned, I’ve read a lot on the Cow on this subject, including many informative postings by Mr.Zelin.

I recognize that a $5,000 solution will have different limitations from a $15,000+ solution. What I’m still unclear on, even after all this time, is the advantages, disadvantages, benefits, and shortcomings of a Volume-based sharing system. I don’t feel like I fully understand what it makes possible compared to, say, moving a firewire drive around and what is still impossible compared to Isis. I don’t really understand the full workflow from start to finish.

In Final Cut we have all three of our workstations working off a single network volume. Editors rarely work in the same exact project at the same time, but the network makes it possible for editors to use common media across multiple projects and brings some mobility to our editors as well (So Editor A might prefer Workstation A, but they can work at Workstation B or C should the need arise). Also, FOR US it’s proven to be a lot easier and more reliable to keep a networked RAID array online and backed-up than managing an army of portable drives.

[David Sans]

Hi Eugeny;

I’m digging in a bit late in this thread as i’ve recently been discovering “the hardway” exactly all the issues you mention.

I’ve been struggling with 3 Avid MC systems hooked to a shared access point and endless scanning waits and the un-ability to see bins locked are evaluating our patience.

Whilst i await for response from the manufacturer of the brand who claims the system should work fine, your active response has proved priceless, so firstly, thanks for this. I find your turnaround really smart and creative.

Secondly i’d appreciate if you could go further for me and clarify, once at the end of the day, into which folder should we drop the rendered files of each of the networked participants in order to share the new media from the sharepoint again.

Thanks in advance,
David.

[Eugeny Korkhin]

Hi, David.

In the suggested working environment you should drop newly created files (files, not folders) into “the shared” Avid Mediafiles location: let’s say, for instance, “SAN -> Avid Mediafiles -> MXF -> 1″.
Or you can create a numbered folder inside of MXF folder, i.e. “2” and copy the files there – thus making them easy to locate in case something goes wrong.
Or you can rename your local “1” folder into “2” (in case you don’t already have a folder named “2” in shared place) and copy this folder into that same shared MXF folder.
Or you can use Consolidate feature inside Avid to gather new media to the shared storage.

Hope that makes sence))

But don’t forget: It doesn’t prevent scanning, but only makes it controllable.

Feel free to ask,
Eugeny

[David Sans]

Hi again Eugeny;

Been testing your suggested workflow and does it’s job fine.
Many thanks again.
David.

[Eugeny Korkhin]

I’m really glad it works for you.

[Ryan Mclean]

Since I’ve been following this thread, I just wanted to point out that OWC has made some exciting announcements in the area of low cost SAN this past week. I saw their setup at CES and talked to one of the people developing it. They seem to think that it’s going to be a system with a low enough cost to get us cheapskates in the door (Starts around $5,000) while scaling up to meet larger needs too. Here’s their product info page:

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/storage/Enterprise/jupiter/mini-SAS

[Ian Liuzzi-fedun]

I’d be interested in this as well – where can I contact you?

[Kendall Kaiser]

Just giving my 2 cents… I work for Warm Springs Productions in Missoula Montana, managing 4 Facilis servers with a combined total of 240TB of shared storage. We just completed the transition from FCP 7 to Avid, and while there were definitely some growing pains, Facilis was a good choice for us, as it works great for both Final Cut and Avid. They even have some project sharing tools for Final Cut and Premier.

If you need help with workflows or migration from one system to another, feel free to drop me a line. It’s not something you want to tackle on your own. kendallATwarmspringsDOTtv

Talk with Shane R. at Facilis, he may be able to direct you to a used unit at a very reasonable price.