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FCP X “Add SAN Location” to any shared storage system
Hi –
as a quick background, Jeff Kirkland has been doing this, but never shared until now. John Heagy of NFL Films discussed this with Jeremy Garchow in April 2013 on Creative Cow, but nothing ever came of it.I have been doing shared storage with FCP-X on the Maxx Digital Final Share system using Sparse Disk Images, as outlined by countless guru’s on the internet and YouTube. It works well, but is a little inconvenient. But it works. With most networks, and most shared storage systems, you simply can’t “Add SAN Location” unless you have Apple XSAN, or so I thought. Which is why, from the beginning of FCP-X, people said that you can’t have shared storage with FCP-X.
Well, you can.
In doing ongoing research, I found a little article by Amanda Burns of Florida Atlantic University, and how she is accomplishing this. Amanda told me today that she is using a NetApp SAN server, but this is unimportant. Any server will work that can support NFS. Maxx Digital Final Share is nothing more than a Mac OS X Server, and has NFS, hidden away.
As Jeff Kirkland has pointed out, Marcel Bresink has created a simple to use application called NFS Manager, that you can download from the internet. It costs $15 euros (I don’t know where the symbol for euros is on my US keyboard – sorry). So, once you have this little app, you can get NFS to work on your Mac server computer. This can be done manually without spending any money, using the terminal and some UNIX commands, but it’s cheap enough to get the Bresink app that Jeff Kirkland has shown in his post, to make things easy.
SO, this is all you do – on your shared drive volume, you manually create folders – one for each project that you want to work with. Wedding1, FeatureFilm7, etc. and in each one of these folders, you manually create TWO sub folders – one called Final Cut Projects, and one called Final Cut Events. So now imagine that you have your 300 projects, with 300 folders, all with folders inside them called “Final Cut Projects”, and “Final Cut Events”.
You have enabled the NFS network on your Mac server computer, and you have your big drive array hooked up to your Mac server computer (or whatever server you are using for your shared storage system).
On your client editing computer that is hooked up to the switch of the server you do this –
GO> Connect To Server>
and enter in the IP address box
nfs://192.168.2.3/volumes/MyBigSharedDriveArray
and your drive mounts on your desktop – just like on any little Mac network. No big deal. Except this time instead of using Apple AFP, you are using NFS.Go into FCP-X, highlight your Macintosh HD, and select ADD SAN LOCATION, and “low and behold”, the network shared volume appears.
Just like it should do in Apple AFP (or SMB) – but obviously Apple doesn’t want this to happen for some reason.So it’s not like Apple has to “fix” something, or invent something – it’s already there. As a matter of fact, NFS was a checkbox choice on older versions of server software, but Apple removed this. Now all you see is AFP and SMB. I wonder why ?
So now, all of a sudden, you can have easy to use shared storage with FCP-X without the aggravation of sparse disk images, and without the expense of specialty shared storage software that makes FCP-X work. Your only expense is 22 bucks to Marcel Bresink.
Amanda Burns at Florida Atlantic University – you are a very smart young lady. This forum sings your praises.
And thank you John Davidson, Mr. FCP-X, for helping me test this out. I am glad that it is working with my 10 Gig Ethernet system.
If anyone wants more of the little details on how to get this to work, feel free to contact me.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
ma*****@****rr.com -
16 Replies
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Bob or John,
Just to verify. Only one editor can access one of these productions (like FeatureFilm7) at a time. Right?
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Yep. Posted a screen grab of the alert in my thread below. This will be radically changing my workflow.
John Davidson | President / Creative Director | Magic Feather Inc.
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Bob –
This is great. Mind if I post a link to this on the FCP X Techniques and FCPX-L forums?
sw
Scott Witthaus
Senior Editor/Post Production Supervisor
1708 Inc./Editorial
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
BUT, there is still no way to share media that lives on one computer (the old internal RAID volume with the Captured media) on another computer with FCPX. It HAS to be a centrally configured RAID that basically everyone shares….correct?
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
Rich –
the answer to your question is YES – it has to be a central server, with a central attached storage array, but what is the big deal about that. You already own a Mac Pro. Use that as your server, and plug in your drive array to it. I can help you setup an inexpensive 10G network to share from your Mac Pro. Then buy yourself a simple iMac or new Mac Pro, and go to work. This is the first time ever that you can have inexpensive shared storage, using the parts you have lying around your place right now.And Scott – please feel free to post the link from Creative Cow.
I am sure that Creative Cow would love the publicity.Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
maxavid@cfl.rr.com -
What if it’s a Windows server?
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never tried it. Most people have Mac Pro’s, and it’s really nothing to setup a shared storage environment, all OS X based, without issue. Why go thru the aggravation of an NTFS file server, when you can have everything OS X from beginning to end.
Ask your PC Server guy if he can enable NFS. See what he says.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
maxavid@cfl.rr.com -
Mr. Zelin,
I am impressed! Great detective work.
It appears that you have truly discovered a “faster, better, cheaper” workflow for FCP-X shared storage.
Looking forward to hearing how this plays out in the real world.mark
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John Davidson in LA is the guinea pig on this, since he loves FCP-X so much. Let’s see how he does.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
maxavid@cfl.rr.com -
Do you intend on testing this with Mavericks? – thanks.
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