Throwing out the Kool Aid

[Don Wilson]

Must add that I’ve the utmost respect for and am a huge fan of AJA and all the people there. They’ve bent over backwards helping up over the years.

Don Wilson

Don Wilson
AmericanaMediaInc.com
MississippiSon.com

[Bob Zelin]

Oh Don – this won’t make you feel better, but it’s some feedback to you (and some ranting) –

YOU WRITE –
But I am totally sick of having to go into life-saving mode ever time we do a feature length project. Ever time, literally ever time. The projects will become corrupted because of a supposed corrupt media file somewhere, the restore project NEVER works right, the project won’t boot up or crashes imemdiately on boot up……..we most always end up fixing the project in a laborious process that this time, and most every time, takes days, this time a week.

REPLY –
As you know, I push LOTS of SATA (and now SAS) drive arrays with both FCP and AVID systems. I have seen about 5 – 6 different clients suffer with “corrupt projects”, where the initial reaction is “the drives died”, or “the drives disappeared”. Sometimes running Disk Warrior fixes it, sometimes it doesn’t. But EVERY TIME (particularly when it doesn’t fix the drives), I replace the entire drive array (and cables etc), and get them up again (of course they have to redig their media). And I take this “broken” disk drive array, re-initialize it with Apple Disk Utility, and it miraculously works just perfectly. I then install this very “broken” array somewhere else, and it works FOREVER. So what happened ? I don’t know. The drives don’t break – they become corrupt. And it doesn’t happen to everyone, just a few people. Most work absolutely perfectly forever. And even the “broken ones” work on other systems once they are re-initialized. I am dealing with this VERY ISSUE tomorrow at Omni Video (a member of this forum), whose SATA array has disappeared twice on him, for no reason. Yet the drives work fine somewhere else. This will be the third visit for this issue. I have no answer. This does not mean that FCP sucks. Most people (almost 200 now) have NO ISSUES.

Now for the rant.
Don, please don’t tell me how wonderful AVID is. AVID Media databases become corrupt all the time, and it is STANDARD PROCEEDURE
to trash your Media Databases (the MSM files on the media drives) to get your drives that won’t mount, back up. (At least there is a proceedure to get this to work). And if you move AVID drives around from system to system, you can still get yourself into trouble.

With that said, the reliability of local SCSI drives, from AVID and everyone else has been TERRIBLE compared to SATA. You put 4 – 8 AVID SCSI drives (or anyone elses RAID 0 drives) together, and there have ALWAYS been failures of the SCSI drives, where you loose everything, and have to redigitize everything. Both StorCase SCSI arrays at Electronic Arts recently failed on their AVID DS systems, and they lost EVERYTHING. What a hightmare this was. I do maintenance every day, and I see dead drives ALL THE TIME, and I almost NEVER see them with SATA drives.

I totally sympathize with you about your situation, where your project just becomes corrupt, and you can’t proceed. I have seen this happen with large drive systems, and I don’t know how to resolve this (other than getting lucky with disk warrior). This does not mean that Apple sucks, that FCP sucks, or that SATA sucks. It is my lack of knowlege that prevents me from knowing what is going on. As I said before, I re-initilize the drives, and everything works fine, every time. I know that this is not an answer – if you are in the middle of a feature, and the damn thing gets corrupt, and you are forced to reinit, and lost everything. I just don’t have an answer for you. But most people NEVER see these problems. Because I have seen it multiple times, I am responding to your post.

By the way – which SAS do you have (this is all pretty new).

Bob Zelin

[David Roth weiss]

Don,

As a fellow southerner, from New Orleans myself, I can identify with the topics of your films, but I’m completely mystified by your continued hardware wars with your FCP system.

After switching over from Discreet Edit*, which our mutual friend Larry touted for so long, I have had nothing but great times with my FCP system. I just wish I could find a woman as reliable… There are certainly some things that could be improved or made more elegant inside FCP, but I gotta say, as far as keeping the darned thing working, its really never skipped a beat in over two years.

BTW, my work is mostly longform likje your own… I’ve cut a 90-minute documentary feature in 10-bit uncompressed and half hours in DVCProHD without a hitch.

So, something is wrong at your shop, and whatever it is, it is fixable. You really should bite the bullet and get it fixed, because filmmaking is simply too important for all the crap you’re going through.

Contact me and I’ll either fix it myself or turn you on to someone else who can do the job. Just do it…

David

“No job is worth doing more than once…”

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Don Wilson]

I hear ya Bob. I never said FCP sucks, and especially never said SATA sucks, though my SCSSI Huge’s have never been an issue ever. In fact I never tried to imply that SATA was even my issue here, or in times past. I’m a SATA fan. Eveyone who assists me tells me I really push a system. And I will admit that I do push it. I grew up on trucks, live stuff, and have always had that “immediate” personality. I do a lot of feature length stuff which most people I come in contact with don’t. I use FCP on SpeedTV and Fox racing, short form stuff, with no issues really love the FCP way of editing, superb. But these 100+ hours of storage/feature projects are tough. It’s gotten to be a nervous time when it nears “finishing” with us. We become much more gentle and damn if we still don’t get bitten more than not.

I’ve talked with you in person and please don’t take any of this personal. You, Walter and the other guys are the ones who’re always coming up with the answers. And I appreciate it much. And I probably wouldn’t have posted the rant if I’d slept in the last week. The floor is developing a drool stain from me sleeping next to the decks listening for sync issues. But damn if it doesn’t get us every friggin’ time. We always think we’re ahead of delivery and here we are smellin’ and tired, again. I lept to FCP because of my frustration with Avid’s attitude and their HD bottleneck with the DS. Now the Nitrus Symphony, my freelance money maker, I think kicks butt. It fails, but I can be up and running in 30-40 mins by copying bins from the attic to the a new project. An I have the luxury of the Isis/Unity redundancy admittedly. But I consider that thing robust. I know, 85 grand before mass storage….but

I can’t give up, I’ve got too much into these systems. New Pro Tools too. Maybe after this is over, I could shoot you a chronology of events and problems and have you look over it when you can.

Regards,
Don

Don Wilson
AmericanaMediaInc.com
MississippiSon.com

[Don Wilson]

“I’m completely mystified by your continued hardware wars with your FCP system.”

Me too David. Ask Larry, I’m one of the old vets like him. I can’t remember all the systems I’ve built or been a part of building. I’d like to meet up after all this. I’m in Studio City. Larry and I are going to meld minds soon as well.

By the way, were you around in the TeleProductions day in NOLA? Worked there a bunch on concerts and The Final Four for CBS. That was a strange environment.

Anyway, I’m no baffoon is my point. I get this stuff. I solder and know how to use a scope….now that’s rare these days you gotta admit.

Thanks for your input. Shoot me an email sometime and we’ll meet up with Larry at Fox n’ Hounds or something.

Don Wilson
AmericanaMediaInc.com
MississippiSon.com

[Jeremy Garchow]

All computers will eventually have problems. I have a story for you.

A good friend of mine was recently editing with me and my FCP system while their editor sat on tech support and their brand new $40,000 Avid system sat idle in multiple attempts to get fixed and was unusable. They had so many projects going on, they came to me to get one of them done, and they had to rent another Avid system to continue their other projects. They swapped cards, swapped CPUs, swapped dispositions, kept their careers but lost time, sleep and money, just like you. They won’t even touch FCP, but the project we worked on got done ahead of schedule while they are still scrambling to get their other ones done.

I still have not put FCS2 into full time production yet, and my dual 2.0 G5 cranks away.

Perhaps when my intel box arrives soon and FCS2 starts to get into production, I will be writing a similar thread to you.

No matter how long you have been editing, problems will appear. Experience helps in many situations, but on the other hand it doesn’t make one a magician.

Jeremy

[David Roth weiss]

[JeremyG] “No matter how long you have been editing, problems will appear. Experience helps in many situations, but on the other hand it doesn’t make one a magician.”

Jeremy,

There’s nothing that can’t break and nothing that can’t be fixed. It doesn’t take a magician.

David

“No job is worth doing more than once…”

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[Bob Zelin]

Don –
it’s funny that you mention Speed TV. In Tampa, there are 3 companies in the same space that do a lot of work for Speed TV – MultiVision, Restoration Productions, and Big World Productions, all three on FCP/AJA/SATA, and one of the companies that had an issue like yours, got lucky and Disk Warrior recovered their media on the SATA. I never knew why it happened, and it hasn’t happened since, but they lost the entire drive array, which they were able to recover.

The moral here is that THERE IS A PROBLEM, and I dont’ know what it is. It hardly ever happens to anyone. I know ONE COMPANY that it happens to ALL THE TIME (every 4 weeks) – I don’t know what on earth they are doing (they blame the drives every time “these drives suck”). But almost no one has issues.

You never answered my question about what SAS you are using. My current favorite is the new Dulce unit – which is some of the guys from HUGE.

Bob Zelin

[Walter Biscardi]

[Don Wilson] “I have tried so hard for 6 years to convince myself that Final Cut is a real threat to Avid. I’ve spent nearly 50 grand on a full HD FCP system with Cal Digit raids and newer Sata SAS technology raids, digital audio through-out etc, Mac Pros….”

Hate to say it, but CalDigit is probably the root of your problems on this particular setup. I killed three of their arrays here over a three or four month span and will not use their products any longer. The very first unit I tested here performed flawlessly for about 6 weeks and then it took a nosedive. The newer products were worse. I even had them pull my testimonial off their website. I have no idea what is wrong inside their products, but we had three completely different products eject themselves off the desktop with a total loss of data here. Really nice guys and tried to help me all they could, but ultimately I lost faith in the product.

We’ve tested Sonnett, MaxxDigital and are testing Dulce now and so far all the products are rock solid. Get between 350 – 500MB/s with the Sonnet and Maxx running in the sweet protection of RAID 5. We ejected a drive in the middle of HD 10bit Uncompressed captures and the unit kept right on working. Outstanding at a great price each. Of course Ciprico and Facillis are outstanding products as well.

FCP truly is only as stable as the media array it’s built around and thankfully for us, we always test, test and re-test before we commit to a purchase. This doesn’t help you in your current situation, but throwing out FCP because of a drive manufacturer really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I know you’re frustrated but hopefully you’ll be able to find a solution that works for you. Feel free to call me to chat about this at any time.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.

All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Stuart Simpson]

As someone who junked Media100 for FCP (back when FCP hit V4) I can understand the frustration felt by someone who’s system doesn’t “just work.”

We went through the pain of sorting out a reliable SAN, and trying to get Cinewave to digitise HD properly – but looking at the stable systems we have now I look back on those days and I’m soooooo glad we stuck with it.

-Simmie
2 G5 – Kona LH
3 G4s – Cinewave
1 xbox360, 1 PSP, 1 PS2 & a Gamecube
https://www.speak.co.uk