Bob Zelin
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yet another post of mine that will be removed (hey, it’s Christmas, maybe no one from management is looking today) –
When it comes to film production…
1. What challenges beings facedREPLY – where to find cheap labor to produce the film. How do you find free actors, cameramen with RED Cameras from their parents who will work for “spec” and bring their cameras along, and shoot for free, until you sell your film. Finding young editors and graphics people with all the equipment and software, so they can edit your film for free (you will pay them when you sell your film to the Weinstein company for millions).
2. Where the in-efficiencies in film production (finding and hiring good talent etc)
REPLY – it takes SO LONG to find young people who are 1) qualified, and 2) willing to work for free, so you can make huge profits for yourself. You are best off going to film and video schools to find such talent. It’s at least much easier finding “talent” who is willing to work for free, as (unlike cameramen, DP’s, lighting people, editors, sound guys, graphics people), actors seem more than willing to work for free, if they actually get a chance to be in front of the camera.
3, Do you have perspective on how current technology can help those inefficiencies?
REPLY – YES ! Davinci Resolve and Fusion are FREE. Use that to edit your film and do your effects. Find your free student talent to edit and do effects (and of course color grade) with Blackmagic Design products.
As for cameramen – find a kid with an iPhone, and have him shoot your film for you –
https://mashable.com/2017/07/01/michel-gondry-iphone-7-film/#EJtR2cYTbkqKLook how much money I have saved you, after advising you. Make sure to put my name in the credits.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Hello! I am updating my editing computer from an old MacBook Pro to an iMac. (Please spare me any argument on the exact computer, I need MacOS/programs for other work that I do, and recently lost a monitor as well. Thank you)
REPLY – no argument for me. The iMac is currently the correct purchase for anyone on the Apple platform.
So as I design this purchase, I know the specs I want on memory and everything else, but am a little confused on storage. From what I recall in my limited technical training on Avid MC, you never want to store your video files on the internal ‘C’ (MacHD) drive. My first question is why? I can’t find a straight answer anywhere on whether this is wrong or if I misunderstood somehow.
REPLY – simple – because your c: internal boot drive will fill up with media. All video projects take up tons of space and the capacity of a 512G or 1TB SSD is simply not enough to hold your video media. Once your boot drive fills up beyond 90 %, your computer will start to crawl. I don’t care if it’s a Mac or a PC. That’s just fact of life.
Following up on that, what is best practice for externals when working on projects?
REPLY – best practices ? I don’t know. Just keep your video media on external drives. You have not stated what type of video you are working with – 4K and 6K RED files, or iPhone h.264 files ? 6K RED files and uncompressed or RAW footage takes up a lot of space, and working with multiple streams of video like this, won’t play back from an internal or external single drive. It’s just not fast enough.
In the past, I’ve had two externals running off my computer. One is exclusively for Backups, the other my production drive where footage is stored, the Avid project files live, as well as renders and the like. I know technically I should keep the RAW camera files on a different drive, but I’ve never had issues – even AMA link then transcoding, on 20 minute+ projects.
REPLY – hey, if it works for you, then that’s great. From day 1 of AVID, there was your boot drive, and there was your media drive – even if was a single drive. It’s always been like that. If there is no issue for you, and you are not running out of room, then who am I to tell you what to do.
So what is the best practice, in a perfect world, for editing with Avid using external drives? How many, and putting what where? As a secondary question, do Adobe programs like Lightroom and After Effects share a similar affinity for not using the ‘C’ drive, or actually prefer it? I’m trying to decide how much internal storage I really need, as well as how best to upgrade my externals.
REPLY – there is no perfect world. For Media Composer, some people keep their render files and project files on the boot drive, or an isolated drive. Some people keep everything on the external volume (be it a single drive or an AVID ISIS). For Adobe CC, you have a media cache (Preferences> Media> Media Cache). If you keep the cache file on the same drive as the external media, it will take FOREVER for the project to open up. The “ideal” situation (which few do) is to have a dedicated small SSD drive for the media cache drive, and all your media on the external volume. Can you keep everything on your boot drive ? (c:) – I don’t know. I never saw anyone setup like that. You will run out of room quickly. When Apple was selling the horrible Apple RAID card (LSI Logic) for the old Mac Pro’s, I would see silly people put in 3 additional SATA drives, and create a RAID 5 with the 4 total drives – so they would keep their operating system, programs, and media all on the 4 drive RAID 5 array. Almost everyone of those people eventually got into trouble.
Thank you in advance, my apologies if any of this was confusing – it’s being typed on a phone since my computer has finally gone the wayside.
REPLY – that’s a lot to type on a phone. It’s Christmas – go buy your iMac !
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
oops –
and this switch – 40G uplink with 48 10G SFP+ outputs –
https://dcomcomputers.com/dell-s4048-on-sfp-10gbe-open-networking-switch/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhrXipZCj2AIVyLfACh3hwgf7EAQYAiABEgLkAvD_BwEit’s the Dell S4048-ON
Bob
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Hi –
this is part 2 of my comments –
in your last paragraph, you write –
“So digging round the forums I’m now second guessing myself whether I’m over capitalising the Synology ‘consumer gear’ by wanting 40GbE speeds out of a non FC and non PCIe solution, and whether I should in fact be looking at a some of the hardcore media streaming stuff like Avid, or maybe even a small enterprise box like the EMC Isilon’s for example, or despite my earlier comments, a small SAN. ”REPLY – your Synology RS18017xs+ will outperform an AVID ISIS or AVID Nexis Pro, and is dramatically more expandable. The AVID Nexis Pro uses a single Myricom 10G SFP+ card inside it to connect to a switch like a Dell N2404 (which is a 10G uplink but a 1G switch to client) or a cheap Netgear 10G switch.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1153058-REG/avid_7080_30085_00_dell_networking_n2024.html
But since you have the 40G bug up your butt, and AVID does not support 40G, your most realistic bet is a
Mellanox XS1012, which is a “TOR” (top of rack) 40 gig uplink that you can have 48 SFP+ breakouts (kind of sloppy but it will work).
https://www.mellanox.com/page/products_dyn?product_family=163
this is really designed to “break out” into the SFP+ ports of 10G switches like the Netgear 10G series, to allow for a 40G connection on the server, but 10 G out to multiple clients (you have 20 Mac clients).
In my opinion, Mellanox really owns this market right now. Certainly you can go with a deadly expensive
Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switch, but this will cost a fortune. If you really don’t want Mellanox, you can certainly look at Arista Networks, that is a much more friendly company to work with than Cisco.Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Hi Claude
Oliver Peters showed me this excellent article. This does not mean “throw out your Mac’s”. He specifically states that he has a ProRes delivery requirement (as most of us do). It’s just that modern PC’s – be it Dell and HP, or ASUS, MSI, and the other Chinese brands, are making GREAT STUFF. I would like to see a consortium group of users hold Apple executives “hostage” (this is an expression of speech – I am not suggesting that someone does something illegal) and FORCE them to answer the question “why won’t you fully cooperate with NVidia – it’s not like it will cost you any money, and people will still buy your computers”. My introduction to the original FCP was because of the AJA Kona and original AJA I/O products, which happened because of Apples cooperation with third party companies. I wish this policy would return.There is no question that many Chinese and Taiwanese companies are making incredible modern computers (let’s face it – where do you think the iMac Pro is being manufactured). It’s a shame that “we” have to suffer financially and technically, because Apple simply won’t be cooperative with “third party companies” as they have done in the past. I assume this is all because of “the bottom line”.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
Hi Dave –
Merry Christmas. Many of my posts get deleted because of my rude aggressive responses. This will probably be one of those posts.Exactly what are you trying to accomplish here. Build the worlds most complex system, that will accomplish nothing that can’t be done in a similar way ?
You write –
Have about 20 late model Macs mostly all now Thunderbolt 3, and too much data for a burgeoning media/video business, plus a bunch of historical ‘big data’ approx. 60m files, a stack of large 600-1Tb VM’s and their grandfather son backups, some large data stores and code developments, and a bunch more Parallels VM’s from another automotive company that I need to active ‘warm’ archive (to spinners not tapes).REPLY – so to summarize, you have 20 iMac’s and/or MacBook Pro’s with thunderbolt 3. You are working for a corporate video department that has a bunch of historical footage (which translates to this forum as Standard Def video or Hi Def Video – not 4K, 6K or 8K). You are not working with feature film footage that is being shot in 6K and 8K.
You write –
Stage one is to consolidate the data from a number of Lacie Thunderbolt 5big units (~250Tb all up) onto a new 40GbE NAS main box w/2x expanders, stage two will be three all flash expanders, and stage three duplication and replication. Stage one am hoping to get max throughput reading and writing mostly sequential, stage two VM’s so probably iSCSI – but I really would prefer not to have to worry about the management of it all. And I’m wanting NAS not SAN (they’re very different but closely converging nowadays), and 40GbE not FC – plus ‘consumer’ friendly interface and apps. Will be mixing RAID 10 and RAID 6 volumes.REPLY – so you have a bunch of small crappy performance drives, and you want to consolidate your media onto a large shared storage system. Yes, you need a NAS, no you don’t need iSCSI. We will get back to your 40GbE requirements.
So I recently purchased the Synology RS18017xs+ with couple of expanders and some Samsung SSD’s for caching plus for now 38x Seagate 12Tb IronWolf Pro drives. Added a Mellanox 12x 40GbE switch and bunch of their Connect 3x cards, one into the NAS (works fine), and a bunch of the Akitio Node Lite Thunderbolt 3 interfaces to install the C3x cards for the Macs.
REPLY – While I mostly use QNAP, at least you have purchased the correct Synology. the RS18017xs+ is one of the few Synology products that can be expanded via miniSAS with multiple 12 bay expander chassis, so this is the right choice. I am not sure of where the Samsung SSD’s are going to go, but you will quickly find that SSD Caching does little for huge video files, and your search times will not be affected by SSD caching (even though it sounds good).
I assume you purchased Samsung Pro 850 series SSD’s.
As for the 40G ConnectX-3 Pro cards – really ? Your Synology (or QNAP or anything else) will max out at about 1600 – 1800 MB/sec. A 40G connection from your client will get you 2200 MB/sec. Exactly how do you intend to realistically use 40G with multiple clients. You will saturate the bandwidth of your system. Had you chosen simple 10G interface (you could still put this 40G card into the Synology, and get a 40G uplink switch with 10G client connections), this would have been a much more realistic workflow. 6K video (as per red.com/tools) requires about 146 MB/sec, so 800 MB/sec is MORE than enough to edit with. But 2200 MB/sec to the client ? All you will do is saturate the RAID array. A single client will choke the Synology. The only advantage of having the 40 in the client is for doing fast data transfer. Once that process is over, it’s the wrong solution – especially with SATA drives like Seagate Ironwolf drives (or any other SATA drive for that matter).On their own the Akitio’s work fine on the Macs, but plugging in the Mellanox cards, they don’t work. Yep, was told by sales they would, as they do, and the cards don’t have a Mac driver (which I knew from the outset), but now apparently after many escalations I’m told they only work ‘natively’ on Win10 – not with Win10 via Parallels as I was wanting, AND not even with Win10 on BootCamp. Agggghhh . . .
REPLY – just stop this nonsense. Got Thunderbolt 3 Apple computers. Send this 40 Gig crap back (keep your 40G card in your Synology). Get a 40G to 10G switch (Mellanox makes it) and get simple Promise SanLink3 boxes.
You will get 350 MB/sec write and 1100 MB/sec READ. When you say “told by sales they would” – Sales ? Who at Sales ?
The bandwidth on the Mac is not like what you can get on a PC. And even if you were to switch to a PC (like an Asus X99 motherboard system, or HP Z840) – a 2200 MB/sec client is going to saturate your Synology. Even with a 16 Bay QNAP TVS-EC1680U, and 16 Samsung 4TB SSD’s – you get 3800 MB/sec. Two clients working at 2200 MB/sec is going to saturate this with ALL SSD’s. 40 G is a fantasy today – go back to 10G. This is all you need.
You got 20 Macs ? get 20 Promise SanLink3’s at $299 a piece and you are done.So now the issue I have, is that to get Thunderbolt working in a full 40GbE environment I’ll likely have to shell out a further $1.5k per client to get the ATTO TB3/40GbE adapters which I’m told are plug and play. Yep, sure.! However frankly speaking, this is probably just the ‘Apple’ tax – LOL.!
REPLY – I just answered this question. Don’t do it. Go to 10G
So digging round the forums I’m now second guessing myself whether I’m over capitalising the Synology ‘consumer gear’ by wanting 40GbE speeds out of a non FC and non PCIe solution, and whether I should in fact be looking at a some of the hardcore media streaming stuff like Avid, or maybe even a small enterprise box like the EMC Isilon’s for example, or despite my earlier comments, a small SAN.
REPLY – now you are thinking like a total crazy person. “If I have unlimited budget, what kind of killer system can I build”. There is NOTHING wrong with the Synology that you purchased. The problem is you. You want to build a KILLER system – you are in an industrial corporate video environment, and you want to build a system that
ILM and Pixar would have. YOU DO NOT NEED THIS. You need to CALM DOWN, and get the right equipment.
Your editors want Mac’s. They want to work with Adobe software, Davinci Resolve, perhaps FCP X, perhaps AVID Media Composer. You don’t need 40G for anything. You purchased a very nice Synology which is expandable.
You can easily purchase thunderbolt 3 to 10G adaptors from Promise or Sonnet to accomplish exactly what you need to accomplish, and then your Synology will work wonderfully, and everyone will have enough bandwidth for their SD, HD and 4K Media. And you will be the hero. The minute that you consider an EMC Isilon, is the day that you should be shot.You write –
I see some of the EMC speeds quoted are over 15GB/s but not sure how real world and achievable these are on my budget – I’d think not.REPLY – who cares. This is crazy. Is your only concern, to make sure that no one else will ever be able to administrate the system except you ?
You have a good start. Now finish the job. This is not rocket science. This is corporate video.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
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Hi Lauren –
I really don’t like any of the examples that are being given to you. To work in an industry, you can’t work with zero budget. If you are an UBER driver, and your tires are getting thin, you either BUY NEW TIRES, or you can’t work as an UBER driver. The idea of popping out one drive at a time, and spending forever trying to rebuilt the array is ridiculous, because – don’t you have to WORK, and edit your show ? You ran out of room – buy more storage. It’s that simple. I assume that this is not a student project, and even if it is – most students are supported by their parents, so instead of having them pay for your car and housing, have them buy you a new RAID array.There are SO MANY POSTS of “how can I do this with ZERO money” – you can’t. It’s an absolute miracle that things like Davinci Resolve are free, but hardware is not free. Things are cheaper than ever IN HISTORY. But no matter how cheap things get, people always say “isn’t there a cheaper way”.
You don’t save anything when avoiding buying a new enclosure with your new drives. Because if something goes wrong, and you lose your media – YOU ARE SCREWED, and your employer will never hire you again. Just like if you got a flat tire on the highway, because you could not afford to get new tires for your UBER car. If you can’t afford the equipment, you should go to work for another company. It costs money to be in business, and hopefully, you have enough work to cover your business expenses (they are 100% tax writeoff’s off your billing).
Buy the correct RAID array, with the space you need, go back to work, make money, and stop dwelling on these work arounds.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
no – it’s not slick like Spotlight. Spotlight (right there on your user interface of your Mac computer on the upper right hand corner) only works with AFP connections. If you want to use Spotlight you have to index the drive, but when you add new media, reindex the drive (if this is a network volume). Spotlight only works with AFP, and only with Apple volumes – not the famous shared storage systems that you are familiar with (including the QNAP) unless you manually index the drive.
So no, with QNAP, you have to open Safari (or Chrome, or Firefox), enter the IP of the QNAP, get into the QNAP GUI, and launch Qsirch, which is their little app, that allows you to do a “spotlight search” on the QNAP. But unfortunately, it’s not a little icon that you can drag onto your Mac desktop, and use it at a moment’s notice.
And just remember, Spotlight is for AFP – and Apple is quickly making AFP disappear. You may say “but I really need this”. That’s like saying you really need Quicktime Pro. Apple doesn’t care. They do what they want.
this is the command in terminal to index your drives for spotlight
mdutil -a -i on /Volumes/Name of ShareIf you need help with the QNAP when you get it contact me directly.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com