Workflow for 3 or more editors on a SAN

[Mark Raudonis]

The key to successful workgroup collaboration is organization and maintenance.

Organize your media in a way that everyone on your team can understand and use. Assign someone to maintain this organization and insist that everyone follow the plan.
Every editor has their own way of approaching a project with their own naming conventions, and work preferences. In a workgroup scenario, this is a disaster! Sit down with your team and come up with an agreed upon approach that everyone is comfortable with and willing to use. For example, having a uniform naming of bins for “cuts” saves alot of time when other editors are searching for the latest work. We use names like “1. Current cuts”, and “2. Old cuts”. The number ensures that this rises to the top of the list and is easy to find.

This is an extremely important topic, and I’m sorry that I can’t possibly address everything you’ll need to know. My best advice is to find someone who’s already doing this and convince them to let you look at how they’ve organized their bins, data, and hardware. FYI, we have close to one hundred editors all networked together on FCP/XSAN collaborating on three different shows and numerous individual episodes. We have assistant editors on board who’s sole task is to keep everything organized. Even with only a few editors, be sure to designate someone to be responsible for the organization of the project.

Good luck.

mark