Re: S.O.S…. Calling Peter Garaway and Kevin Monahan

[Walter Soyka]

Is this a home-brew shared storage setup, or do you have a vendor you can turn to for more support?

I don’t have any experience with this configuration — but I wonder if you’d get better results installing Samba instead of DAVE for SMB on the server, or upgrading the server to Mavericks for its built-in SMB2 support. (Either way, I’d image the server as-is now for quick recovery in case it doesn’t work.)

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kevin Monahan]

Hi Steve,
Yes, the VAR that set up your system would probably be the first person to talk to, if you have that support.

Here’s what we’ve said in the past:

Premiere Pro can work with network storage if it’s mounted as a network volume (Mac OS) or mapped drive (Windows), and the OS-level device driver does not mark the volume as removable.

That said, Premiere Pro itself doesn’t have any locking features so it’s not set up to be used by multiple users at the same time. It is suggested that if you are going to have multiple users, split up the project into several smaller projects and then import all the sequences into a master project when completed. It is recommended that all systems are locked to the same time of day to prevent reconforming of media files.

We do know that people want to work on shared projects, that is why we are developing Adobe Anywhere. I understand that, currently, Adobe Anywhere is not a solution for absolutely everyone looking to work in a shared environment. What I do have (although for CS6) is this white paper to see considerations on working with Premiere Pro in a SAN environment: https://www.bit.ly/SQQudc

I hope it helps.

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin Monahan
Social Support Lead
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Premiere Pro
Adobe Systems, Inc.
Follow Me on Twitter!

Tweets by kev_mon

[Steve Martin]

Walter and Kevin,

Thanks so much for your response. Yes, we are working with an engineer (well know and respected) but most of his experience has been in working with Macs.

A little over a year ago when we made the hard switch to CS6 from FCP7, we thought we’d build a Win7 workstation as a test to see how we liked it. Overall, it worked quite well when it had local storage.

A few weeks ago we decided to pull the trigger to have the engineer build the same shared storage system that he’s installed for numerous facilities. Everything is well with all the Mac workstations, but the Win7 is having the issues I outlined below.

Also Kevin, I may have given you the impression that we’re sharing projects. We are not. We are only sharing the media. Projects are integrated by importing timelines as you outlined in your post and it works nicely. The issue we are having is that the Win7 has “difficulty” connecting to the server – but ONLY within Adobe apps (like PP, PS & AE). It connects just fine through Windows Explorer and other non-adobe apps.

I suspect it has something to do with the dynamic link server (or whatever Adobe calls it). For example, even on a mac, if I use the media browser to navigate to a new folder (to import or re-link footage for example), at the moment I open a folder to reveal items inside, there is a slight hesitation and sometimes a spinning beach ball for a few seconds before it opens the folder.

That’s what is happening on the Win7 machine. Except that it can take as long as 3 or minutes before it opens. Sometimes it never opens. Once it opens however and you successfully import or relink the media, it works dandy. You can even close the project, shut down the computer and when you re-open the session, it works perfect.

However, if you try to navigate to a new folder, you’re back to square one. It takes forever to connect (if at all) and if you bail out and don’t let it finish connecting, the media in the previous folder that had worked perfectly, is also stuttered and skipping frames. Very odd…

I’ll check out the white paper you mentioned and share with our engineer to see if that offers any insight.

I guess if we can’t make it work, we’ll have considered the Windows experiment a bust and simply replace it with another Mac 🙁

Production is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!

http://www.OmniNewMedia.com
http://www.GreenSlateStudios.com

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve Martin] “The issue we are having is that the Win7 has “difficulty” connecting to the server – but ONLY within Adobe apps (like PP, PS & AE). It connects just fine through Windows Explorer and other non-adobe apps.”

Bit of a shot in the dark, but have you tried NFS instead of SMB?

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Steve Martin]

The resolution was upgrade the MacOS media server to 10.9 Mav and use the new SMB2. Works nicely now! Thanks for the tips and advise!!

Production is fun – but lets not forget: Nobody ever died on the video table!

http://www.OmniNewMedia.com
http://www.GreenSlateStudios.com