FCPX and SAN

[James O’connor]

Steve, thanks for the response. Opening a project that someone else was working on 5 minutes ago when they’ve just left just gone for a cup of coffee… IS the greatest thing in post-production as far as I’m concerned. So I don’t know about “over-doing sharing”! However, I’m a relatively “new” shop (as in we only went “shared” in January this year. So I’m VERY accommodating to a new workflow (we only have a year of existing projects in the “old” workflow).

But what I need (what we all need I think) is for someone to outline a couple of best practice workflows for medium sized production facilities. We can all spend time training and learning the new software at a feature level but Apple hasn’t provided enough guidance on using the software in a pro environment. Analyzing/optimizing audio is great – we can easily figure that out – but I can’t figure out how to get set up and started COMMERCIALLY because I’m worried about things like corruption, versions, keeping track of who’s got the most recent version on what machine etc. that’s crazy.

What we did at one point when running iMovie (yes, more proof that this is iMovie Pro) is to use an external hard drive to host the project file and just plug that in to whoever needed it ‘now’. In the case of FCPX, all the source files will happily live on our GraniteSTOR and should reconnect every time a new workstation opens the project file. We’d benefit from ONE SINGLE PROJECT copy and its associated metadata, smart collections, etc.

Then, at the end of its edit we can put the project file (versions etc.) into a temporary folder back on the GraniteSTOR near to the source files I guess. But it will always need to be moved back onto an external hard drive before going back into edit again (technically not huge transfers as the source files will stay put.)

The one major problem I have with this (despite the fact that I need to stock about 10 external drives) is that while the project is “sneaking” around my shop in this way, there is no RAID 5 protection (for the project files at least) which is what I spent all that money on in January (32TB RAID 5)!

If the project files are relatively small and don’t need much I/O performance then I suppose we could use memory sticks (will FCPX allow that?) but we still run the risk of losing a whole project file on a stick somewhere!!! I just don’t know why Apple didn’t say – ok, store the project file wherever you want and we’ll protect it’s resource files if anyone else tries to open it at the same time… how hard would that have been? And do you think it is something likely to be added?

I feel like I’m getting somewhere in understanding this all at least. Can you let me know if I’m going down the right road??? I REALLY appreciate it and I’m sure others are reading this too.

For the record all, Small Tree GB Ethernet rocks. I was able to get into the “serious” game this year at a very reasonable cost and have had nothing but smooth sailing and great support since then. Sorry for the plug, thanks again Steve.