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Editshare and FCP
I’m not sure if this is the right place for me to ask this question, but we are a postproduction facility looking to invest in an Editshare system. We would like to have 7 macs running FCP Studio connected. Nearly all of the footage we shoot is done with the Panasonic HVX 200 at 720p24pn. Will the system work fast enough for all computers to be working at the same time using footage off of the Editshare system? Have you heard anything about this system, good or bad? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Chad -
2 Replies
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I have heard good things. Wanting to get one myself. I do know that the more machines you have attached, the larger the unit has to be…the more drives. Because bandwidth drops with each machine you add to the EditShare (well, that is true just about everywhere). But contact EditShare and have them explain it to you. I talked to them at IBC last year.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
We’ve had an EditShare at our facility for about 10 months now. We’re using FCP/Kona systems in 11 rooms, and 4 of the rooms are dual-boots, with Avid & Mojos – all running off the EditShare system, using just a Gig-E network.
We had an Avid unity system before, but with all of the FCP work we’re doing, we needed to get a shared solution for those projects. It works pretty well – I won’t say flawlessly, but compared to local storage or firewire drives, it’s made a HUGE difference for us.
We’ve got a pretty big system, with 24TB of storage, 48 drives in 2 chassis with a 10-GigE switch, lots of hardware, so it wasn’t cheap. We regularly work in DVCPro HD, ProRes HD 1080p24, Uncompressed SD – and usually don’t have problems with bandwidth or dropped frames. (I used a Quad G5 for 9 months, and could count on one hand the number of times I had a dropped frame. Oddly enough, I just got a Quad MacPro, and I’ve had a few more dropped frames – not many, just enough to be a little annoying when laying off a master tape… Haven’t had time to trouble shoot that yet.)
The Admin tools are functional, but a little clunky – at least compared with Avid Unity.
Tech support is fantastic – e-mails are returned within an hour, and I once spent Saturday morning on the phone with the president of the company. (Turns out our system wasn’t set up properly from the get go – which he troubleshot for us remotely. You have to completely separate your regular network from the EditShare, otherwise your mac may try to connect through your regular network and whatever 100Mbps switches may be in the way.)
It’s a little complicated to get set-up, especially since we needed Avid compatibility. All of our systems can regular clock read/write speeds of 60MB/sec or so, which has been fine for the formats we’re working in. Using FCP only, you should be able to get 90MB or so (FCP only systems can use AFP protocols, but Avid-Compatible systems use SMB and another networking program called DAVE.)
Does that help? Feel free to ask me anything else if you’re interested…
Dave Jahns
Joint Editorial
Portland, OR
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