editing > rendering workflow optimal setup

[Alex Udell]

The simplest way is to share the drives the machine was originally created on to the machine you want to render on. In doing this, it’s helpful to map the drive letters to be the same (if possible).

So if your video was on drive V: on the original machine, set the mapped video drive to V: on the networked machine.

This will ease re-linking media files when you open the project on the other machine.

I don’t know what you mean by rendering…it could mean that you want to “render” the timeline for playback, or it could mean “export” to a file. But I’ll guess it’s the 2nd one.

Alex

[Carly Smith]

thanks Alex –
really its all of the above – rendering, exporting…all the heavy lifting. I just hate that editors have to stop editing and wait wait wait for things to render, and frankly, so do they.

but what about the network? If I network them together over Cat5, will that suck the life out of available bandwidth? Would prefer to use a stand-alone connection if possible.

We prefer the edit suites to not be online.

[Alex Udell]

Hi Carly…

As far as rendering in PPro during the editorial process, Adobe, to my knowledge, hasn’t introduced a workflow that allows that to be pushed onto another machine. The way to minimize that (not eliminate it) is to develop a plan about how footage is acquired, and look at systems that spec out to take as much advantage budget wise to Adobe’s mercury playback engine and include appropriate graphics hardware in that design.

As far as exporting once the Project is complete, that’s really what I am talking about in my description in the previous post.

You’re offering a couple of conflicting ideas that I can’t seem to reconcile. 1 is that you’re editor workgroups aren’t online, 2 you’re worried about bandwidth?

What I assume you mean is that you’d prefer your editors not to be generally exposed to the internet, yet they are connected, as they probably use services like e-mail and Instant messaging for interoffice communications.

So I suppose there are a couple of solutions to this.

Once is to equip the editing systems with ethernet cards in addition to what’s likely built into the motherboard of each system and set it up IT wise so that editing workflow and workgroup traffic is on a hub that connects just the editing systems together or a router that is smart enough to segment traffic based on either a dedicated subnet or group of IP addresses.

This goes hand in hand with the idea of moving storage in general off each local machine and onto a centralized storage device, like SAN. I’ve been in several different SAN environments both PPro and FCP based. SOme based on SAN MP and some based on Facilis Terrablock.

This can allow for common libraries of audio video elements to be accessed by the group simultaneously and projects (with associated render files, to minimize re-rendering) to be moved from machine to machine pretty transparently. Based on threads I’ve participated on here there were some SAN issues with CS5 not sure if these have been remedied in 5.5 or not.

What this comes down to, is that it looks like you may need to enlist some local professional help once you start moving past this simple things you can try. IT expertise is money well spent. but I suggest looking at someone who is an actual video systems integrator, not a traditional IT expert. There is a lot to understand about the workflow of Video post and that type of software specifically that is outside the knowledge of traditional IT. It can make all the difference when it comes to troubleshooting and support.

I know that’s open ended…..but I hope that gives you something to consider.

Alex