Xsan Usage anyone ?

[Jeremy Garchow]

SAN usage in fcpx is different than not using a SAN.

You can setup “San locations” that are placed anywhere in any folder hierarchy, not just at root level in a Events/Projects folder.

You can setup separate San locations per project if you’d like, but you can only have one SAN location mounted at a time in X. You can have as many Events/Projects in a SAN location as you want. If you have one SAN Location per project, you simply remove the current one and add the new one.

Currently, Event Manager X only expects root level X directories.

Yes, event manager x moves folders out of your Events/Projects folder into another folder. But it’s a graphical list and very easy to use.

Jeremy

[James Mortner]

Interesting, this begs the question

[Jeremy Garchow] “Currently, Event Manager X only expects root level X directories. “

If Im unable to write to the root folder does this mean Event manager X isn’t any good to me ?

I still dont really understand how FCPX could work in my office with lots of people sharing the same storage. Wouldnt it be quite painful to set
SAN locations every time you open a project ?

What about the media moving around ? Would this generate a lot of traffic ? What if someone else needs the media too ?

Thank you very much for the understanding and responses !

[Jeremy Garchow]

[James Mortner] “If Im unable to write to the root folder does this mean Event manager X isn’t any good to me ? “

For SAN setups, it simply doesn’t work. Yes. SAN locations simply work differently. You can almost use them as a “check in/check out” but not quite as elegant.

[James Mortner] “I still dont really understand how FCPX could work in my office with lots of people sharing the same storage. Wouldnt it be quite painful to set
SAN locations every time you open a project ? “

It’s really easy to set a SAN location.

Remember, you don’t HAVE to bring all the media in to an Event and in a shared setting, maybe you wouldn’t. Everyone can simply reference the same media which probably helps to answer your last three questions.

It’s not a perfect system and it requires some thought. To keep things organized, maybe every user get their own SAN Location, and then you a create a common Event and Project repository. This way, if you need to work on a project, a user would go to the repository and drag the appropriate folders to their San Location and launch FCPX. After they are done, they quit FCPX and return the folders to the repository.

That’s the way I have to set things up on my particular SAN as I don’t have Xsan.

It’s still early days for all of this.

Jeremy

[James Mortner]

Right ! Cool, that clears that up nicely. Requires a lot of thought on my side to make that one work but interesting none-the-less

Thanks very much for your input Jeremy !

[Jeremy Garchow]

Also, XSAN gives you permissions per user, so you will have more options in “locking” people out of each other’s work.

My San, we have to manage this process manually, currently.

[Morten]

Lack of a usable shared storage workflow, is what now the only thing that holds me back from making the switch from Finalcut 7. If they don’t implement it soon, I’m of to CS6.

– No Parking Production –

2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS5.5, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial

[James Mortner]

Its a serious problem, is there any indication they are looking at solving this ? I cant set permissions or move files around every time I
want to open a project.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Morten Ranmar] “Lack of a usable shared storage workflow, is what now the only thing that holds me back from making the switch from Finalcut 7. If they don’t implement it soon, I’m of to CS6.”

Just curious, but what is unusable about it (I know it’s not perfect) and what does cs6 offer in comparison?

Jeremy

[James Mortner]

Wait a minute, Im confused again:

[Jeremy Garchow] “Just curious, but what is unusable about it (I know it’s not perfect) and what does cs6 offer in comparison?”

Didn’t you say Event manager X wont work at all in a shared environment ? How would you show/hide media and projects you didn’t want to see ? What if there are hundreds of other projects both current and older on the same drive. Would FCPX show them as well ?

[Jeremy Garchow] “It’s not a perfect system and it requires some thought. To keep things organized, maybe every user get their own SAN Location, and then you a create a common Event and Project repository. This way, if you need to work on a project, a user would go to the repository and drag the appropriate folders to their San Location and launch FCPX. After they are done, they quit FCPX and return the folders to the repository. “

The above quotes show how its completely unworkable in a large-scale (say 20+ seats) setup, no ? I could easily see our XSAN dissolving into an incoherent mess if every editor had to clean up after themselves, moving files around manually.

Unless Im being really, really stupid ?

[Jeremy Garchow]

If you have XSan, you would setup a SAN location per project.

Then, an editor would simply mount that San location. Once mounted, no one else would be able to mount that location until they remove it. Once unmountef, anyone can mount it.

The repository is what I have to do, as I don’t have Xsan.

It’s actually pretty easy.