Taking FCPX out for a new test drive

[Joe Marler]

[greg janza] ” I have two OWC Thunderbay raids that are pc formatted because I primarily edit on a pc so the raids are connected to my mac through ethernet. Can I use these raids with FCPX? Nope….My raids work just fine on my pc and mac with premiere. They are ntfs…”

macOS cannot write to NTFS volumes, only read from them. Your observed problems may have less to do with FCPX than with your storage configuration. I actually don’t see how Premere is even working in that config, unless your project and scratch files are not on that RAID. In general nobody using a Mac should expect normal read/write app behavior on an NTFS volume.

Mac users needing write access to NTFS will often use Paragon NTFS: https://www.paragon-software.com/ufsdhome/ntfs-mac/

I use Paragon when I infrequently need write access — for any Mac app, not just FCPX — to NTFS volumes and it works fine, including for FCPX.

But you are apparently not directly connecting your Mac to the RAID, but using ethernet. Unless that’s 10 gig, that will cut your I/O performance (for both Premiere and FCPX) to a fraction of what’s available from the RAID, so this would not be a good configuration for evaluation. This is especially so for FCPX which does many database I/O calls.

However using network-attached storage may explain why Premiere works at all. In that case the file I/O calls are translated by the network layer to remote filesystem I/O calls, so this can buffer an app from dependency on a specific file system.

Why FCPX doesn’t work perfectly in that case, I don’t know. If using libraries on an SMB share, this requires 10.3.x to work properly: https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/final-cut-pro-libraries-with-smb-shared-storage-first-look/

If you want to evaluate FCPX from a feature or performance standpoint, it’s probably better to put those files on locally attached storage, then after that evaluation you can investigate how best to make that work for network-attached storage. It is definitely possible and people do this frequently. But using both Premiere and FCPX with local storage would simplify the evaluation and ensure you aren’t being thrown off track by items unrelated to the product.

[Richard Herd]

[greg janza] ” I have two OWC Thunderbay raids that are pc formatted because I primarily edit on a pc so the raids are connected to my mac through ethernet”

How are you getting your macs to see the drives?

Are you plugging the drives directly into the mac or are you using the connect to a server command?

[Greg Janza]

[Richard Herd] “How are you getting your macs to see the drives?”

Yes, I’m just connecting to a server and selecting the raid. However, I’m also not using Apple’s built in file sharing at all.

In preferences I have file sharing turned off. The built in OSX file sharing just isn’t very good so I’m using SMBup. It’s a complete replacement for Apple’s built in file sharing protocol. There’s other replacement file sharing apps out there but this one has worked well for me.

It’s a direct ethernet connection to my pc and so the transfer speed is fast enough to edit on the mac with the raid as the media drive.

Adobe Premiere 2017.1.1
Windows 10 Pro
Samsung SSD 850 EVO system
Samsung SSD 850 EVO Adobe cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
OWC Thunderbay 12t x 2 in Raid10 configuration (thru Storage Spaces and Disk Management)

[Greg Janza]

[Joe Marler] “But you are apparently not directly connecting your Mac to the RAID, but using ethernet. Unless that’s 10 gig, that will cut your I/O performance (for both Premiere and FCPX) to a fraction of what’s available from the RAID”

whether it’s the ethernet connection or some other aspect of my setup, the ntfs formatted raid works fine on the mac and it can read and write.

and yes, there’s a hit on speed by having it connected through ethernet but that’s ok because I do most of my editing on the pc side.

[Joe Marler] “If you want to evaluate FCPX from a feature or performance standpoint, it’s probably better to put those files on locally attached storage”

I’m currently using FCPX with local storage since I can’t get FCPX to see my raid.

Adobe Premiere 2017.1.1
Windows 10 Pro
Samsung SSD 850 EVO system
Samsung SSD 850 EVO Adobe cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
OWC Thunderbay 12t x 2 in Raid10 configuration (thru Storage Spaces and Disk Management)

[Richard Herd]

[greg janza] “The built in OSX file sharing just isn’t very good so I’m using SMBup”

Interesting. I haven’t tried it with FCPX, but the normal connect cmd-K (also Go > Connect to server) from the finder supports SMB, CIFS, NFS, AFP. Then you have to put in the server address using the protocol you want. For example:

smb://[ip address]

here’s a detailed video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50MYkoHfX78

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[Bret Williams]

While $500 is pretty cheap, your math is suspect. It’s only $400 ($397 actually).

_______________________________________________________________________
https://BretFX.com FCP X Plugins & Templates for Editors & Motion Graphics Artists

[Greg Janza]

Richard, thanks for the informational video but my problem is localized to FCPX only. I have no problem sharing my pc formatted raid with my mac. The only issue I have is that within FCPX, I can’t select the raid. FCPX doesn’t see it as a viable share.

Adobe Premiere 2017.1.1
Windows 10 Pro
Samsung SSD 850 EVO system
Samsung SSD 850 EVO Adobe cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970
OWC Thunderbay 12t x 2 in Raid10 configuration (thru Storage Spaces and Disk Management)

[Andy Neil]

[Bret Williams] “While $500 is pretty cheap, your math is suspect. It’s only $400 ($397 actually).
“

My math is always suspect.

Andy

https://plus.google.com/u/0/107277729326633563425/videos

[Richard Herd]

Did you watch the second half of the video? And I’d imagine the Library cant be hosted on the NTFS volume, but is it possible to import and the media, from the NTFS volume to a Library stored on an HFS+ volume?

[Richard Herd]

https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/final-cut-pro-libraries-with-smb-shared-storage-first-look/