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How do I create a font repository/server???
Before I explain my font problem, let me first say that I hope that SOMEONE out there/here has good knowledge of fonts, (storage/management/etc.) and can take the time to help me out with my problem. I’d be ETERNALLY grateful for a solution to this problem!! Let me also explain the workflow setup I am coming from. I work at a production company that has 3 edit suites, accessing media from a SAN, managed by FibreJet software. We are running Apple Mac Pro’s with 2 x 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon chips, and 8 GB 667 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM memory. The 3 stations can have READ access to any one drive on the SAN at the same time with no problem, but only one station at a time can have WRITE access to a drive. We each have our own fonts (~2500) on our local systems, and we are all using Extensis Suitcase Fusion 12.1.6 to manage our fonts.
Over the past few months, a couple of projects have reminded us that we have to address a problem in the way we manage our fonts. A project was started in Edit 1 (E1). Footage was loaded, music added and graphics created all in E1. The graphics were made in the Title 3D generator. Near the end of the project, a change had to be made and the original editor and edit suite (E1) was unavailable, so another editor needed to make the change in E2. This is a workflow that we use all the time, and usually don’t have a problem. However, this time, when the graphic change was made, either the font that was originally used was missing from E2, or it was not activated. In either case, FCP simply substituted another font in it’s place. Unlike Photoshop, FCP does not give any warning when this happens, it just changes the font, so unless you are familiar with the project, you may not know that the change occurred.
As I said, these problems have reminded us that we have to address a problem in the way we manage our fonts. One solution I have thought of would be to consolidate all our fonts onto one of our SAN media drives, and always read that drive. We would then add fonts from this drive, instead of adding from our individual local drives, and hopefully avoiding the “font-switch” problem in the future.
Questions arise, such as: Will Extensis read a font from a SAN drive, or does it have to be local? Will there be a problem with the fact that the drive will be READ only, as opposed to having WRITE access, since all three of us cannot write to the same drive at the same time? Should we just use Apple’s own FontBook, instead of Extensis Suitcase, or do we even look into something like Linotype’s FontExplorer X, (which I stumbled upon during searches for solutions to our problem)?
If anyone has any answers to my questions, or any solutions we haven’t thought of, I’d be very grateful for your help!
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1 Reply
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I know this is probably not the answer you are looking for, but here goes:-
When running multiple clients on a SAN I make sure all systems have the same fonts, plugins, templates etc installed. Yes I use Fontbook, seems to work fine.
This is a PITA across multiple systems I know but sometimes the lo-fi approach works. An example of this is we share/load itunes libraries via XML to avoid putting the strain on the machine with the master database.
Peter
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