User accounts with FCP X

[Bill Davis]

Sure.

Get the Intelligent Assistance Event Manager X Program.

You can easily make visible and invisible projects at will by moving them on or off the root drives. So the instructor can make students projects appear or disappear from shared storage at will.

(I thought you could do this via Thumb Drives, but I was wrong. Appears X only recognizes drives, not memory sticks.)

Interestng.

Done.

Done.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Jeremy Garchow]

What’s the storage on those computers?

A San? Jbod? Everyone has their own disk?

[Andrew Richards]

[Bill Davis] “I thought you could do this via Thumb Drives, but I was wrong. Appears X only recognizes drives, not memory sticks.”

FCPX will address any direct-attached storage in terms of form factor, but it is limited in terms of the filesystem used (how the drive is formatted). The pic above is my ExFAT USB thumb drive. HFS+ is the standard, of course. Most thumb drives come formatted FAT32 so they can support the broadest range of OSes, but FAT32 will not work with FCPX (nor would you want it to).

Best,
Andy

[Bill Davis]

Andrew,

Thanks for that. Very interesting.

So in the classroom example, I presume all the teacher (or school system it admin) would have to do is format a bunch of cheap thumb drives as HFS+ and then the students can keep their own Events and Projects on their own memory sticks – and those projects would simply be available for individual student use by plugging them into the host computer running X.

That would be a great solution in any circumstance where you don’t want group storage and group access to individual projects.

Wish I had time to test it out.

Anyone?

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Craig Alan]

We will have external raids for media storage. Some will have firewire raids. Others will have thunderbolt raids.

These raids will be used for each computer not for a given account. My plan is to use user accounts to log in each period of instruction. So, for example, Team 4 Period 4 will be assigned a computer. They will save their work on that particular computer under that user account. Does FCP X treat a user account like all other programs do?

If I sign in under my user account, I can have FCP 7 projects, word docs, pics, etc that (given the right permissions set-up) no other user on that computer can open or even see. Can FCP X work that way?

The reason I ask is that this issue was a big cry from the pros that they didn’t want different clients seeing each other’s files. What if they were created in different user accounts?

The workflow of moving projects/media out of their home every period seems impractical. However, I will be setting up a teacher computer and apple remote desktop. So there might be a way to do this fast and efficiently.

Even if the project files can be moved, will the original media be visible to all?

Forgive me if I am using the wrong terms for FCP X (projects/events). This week I plan to start reading the certification book and learning the program. I was on the fence for a long time. I plan to use AVID for my advanced students and FCP X for beginners. I might start with Imovie at week 1 but I’ll see how easily they can pick up FCP X before going that route. All these programs are new to me having used FCP 3-7. And the old Imovie HD. When Imovie got the make over I didn’t like it. Felt too template-y. So I stayed with the old Imovie but mostly FCP.

What made me decide to even try FCP X was feedback from teachers that are using the program. They tell me kids are picking it up fast and having a good time with it and most importantly producing good work fast. We have each class 1-1 ½ hours a day not all day to edit. Time will tell if these same kids will be at a disadvantage if they move on to a pro environment that uses a different program with say traditional timelines and tracks.

MacPro4,1 2.66GHz 8 core 12gigs of ram. GPU: Nvidia Geoforce GT120 with Vram 512. OS X 10.6.x; Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170, Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Andrew Richards]

I’d be concerned about the speed. I suppose a very fast 32 GB or larger thumb drive could maybe support light native h.264 work but higher bitrate material could choke the pipe.

Best,
Andy

[Craig Alan]

We’re not going to use thumb drives. The media and projects stay in class. Everything is done in teams and kids can be absent. Lower income. Can’t require thumb drives. We will have fast firewire and faster thunderbolt raids.

MacPro4,1 2.66GHz 8 core 12gigs of ram. GPU: Nvidia Geoforce GT120 with Vram 512. OS X 10.6.x; Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170, Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Craig Alan]

We’re not going to use thumb drives. The media and projects stay in class. Everything is done in teams and kids can be absent. Lower income. Can’t require thumb drives. We will have fast firewire and faster thunderbolt raids.

MacPro4,1 2.66GHz 8 core 12gigs of ram. GPU: Nvidia Geoforce GT120 with Vram 512. OS X 10.6.x; Camcorders: Panasonic AG-HPX170, Sony Z7U, Canon HV30/40, Sony vx2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Bill Davis]

[Craig Alan] “The reason I ask is that this issue was a big cry from the pros that they didn’t want different clients seeing each other’s files. What if they were created in different user accounts?”

Craig,

A few things to consider.

I think some of the “pros didn’t want different clients seeing each other’s files” was a bit overblown back in the early days of X. The design does value making the largest possible pool of events available to the editor a priority.

However, the way the event browser is structured, you can easily create folders with ID numbers and tuck all of “Client B’s” work in one, Client C’s work in another – and at the event browser level, those projects (and even the names of the clients would remain hidden from casual view.

Still those files, while not “visible” would be accessible if someone went looking for them in an unsupervised setting. So in that case, Intelligent Assistants Project Manager X provides the next level – making whole projects functionally “invisible” to anyone using X by taking them off-line entirely until you use PMX to reveal them.

Since that lets you control which events and projects get mounted, you can easily mount “global assets” projects and just keep individual students work hidden.

So yes, you can do what you’re talking about with X through that third party solution.

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Andrew Richards]

[Craig Alan] “We’re not going to use thumb drives. The media and projects stay in class. Everything is done in teams and kids can be absent. Lower income. Can’t require thumb drives. We will have fast firewire and faster thunderbolt raids.”

Fixed direct-attached storage (DAS) is more difficult to mesh with your environment. FCPX stores Event and Project scratch by default in the current user’s Movies folder (so that is cordoned off from others already) or it can store Event and Project scratch at the root of any DAS. If you have a fixed DAS, you aren’t going to be able to restrict user access to FCPX scratch unless you do the sparse disk image workaround that is necessary for storing Event and Project scratch on NAS. The exception is Xsan, but you didn’t mention it and it is probably out of your budget from what you’ve related.

One thing you could do with DAS is carve it into partitions, one per student or team of students, and then apply permissions to them appropriately. That could get unwieldy though if your environment can’t tolerate wiping the DAS clean periodically to carve out new partitions.

Best,
Andy