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Workflow Problem
I’ve got a situation that I could use some advice on. I’m a video editor using Adobe Production Premium CS5. My buddy that I work with is a graphic designer using Design Standard CS5. Our department is entirely PC based. We all have to use PC’s for our normal email/internet/intranet communications.
But, we’ve now been given permission to use a couple Mac’s for our creative work, as long as they are not on the network. I got a Mac Pro Xeon quad core workstation and my co-worker got a 27″ iMac with Core i5.
Now what we need to have the ability to do is easily swap files between our Mac & PC machines. The obvious choice would be networking via ethernet or wifi but that isn’t an option right now.
I am trying to come up with a solution using some kind of external storage that we can both access. Our workstations are in close proximity (about 15 feet) if that makes any difference. We are thinking about using some kind of USB switch and external hard drive that we can access. On the Mac save a file to the external drive, flip the switch (making the drive accessible on the PC), and go from there. Once a file is available on the PC we can share it across the office network between our workstations.
I know that this is not the ideal workflow, and I expect things to change in the future, but we need a solution right now so we can share files between us without using a flash drive every time. I’ve heard about some kind of Bluetooth enabled hard drives, but I’m having trouble finding what we need. Any ideas?
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4 Replies
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Try searching for “WiFi NAS” at a large hardware reseller…
-jeff
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Your IT dept. needs to get with the program and let you connect the macs to the network. There is no harm in this…
Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC -
Well, that’s what we thought, but they are scared to death of “Macs” because they don’t service them.
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My suggestion:
Setup your own network between the two Macs until the IT/IS admins realise they’re being silly.
Requires:
– 1 Network cable (usually cross-over, but I’d be surprised if the ports weren’t autosensing MDI/MDI-X on modern macs meaning you could use any old network cable so if you have a network cable lying around try that first.)A rough sketch of what you could do:
– Connect one of the Ethernet ports on the Mac Pro to the Ethernet port on the iMac.– Setup each machine to be on the same nework. Use a static address for each (for example, 10.0.201.1 & 10.0.201.2 or use the more common 192.168.x.x. nomenclature) under the network perferences.
– Turn on “File sharing” under the “Sharing” pane in system preferences.
– The machines should be able to see each other at this point. (You should see them listed in the Finder sidebar or under the Shift-Cmd-K/Network location in the Finder with public/dropboxes listed)
– Create duplicate user accounts on both machines. IE. you’ll need to make sure a username/password for the two of you is on BOTH machines.
– Set the permissions on locations you’d like to share (preferrably using a tool that allows you to control the ACL/Access Control Lists on folders). Do some reading on ACLs – tools like Tinker Tool will help out with setting up inheritable permissions on shared folders. Why is this important? It makes sure that when you’re creating/adding/deleting folders/directories on a shared location the permissions are propagated correctly.
– Share those folders/directories (again under the Sharing pane.)
– Test it out (copy some files, open files, save files).
….profit? 😉
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There is no intuitive interface, not even the nipple. It’s all learned. – Bruce Ediger
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