Caspian Brand
Forum Replies Created
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[Craig Alan] “I need a way for students in a FCP X lab to NOT have access to each other’s media and projects. The only way I have come up with so far is storing the projects in sparse images and setting up a student user account with simple finder in OS X. In simple finder, sparse images are grayed out when you do an import search in FC. And completely invisible in the finder. I’m hoping there are no gotchas. This would be whole lot easier than setting up tons of user accounts and setting up permissions for every external folder.
If I mount a sparse image using the admin account then the sparse image shows up in FC. They could store all their files in that sparse image and then log out at the end of their session. Then I unmount the image and load the next one.
This will also make help transfer user projects to a different computer or to the trash or to a back-up. The media will be stored on an external raid. I have not tested this on external storage. The media drive I’m using is a software raided drives in a Mac Pro.
My first plan was to use password protected sparse images but copying media to an encrypted image takes way too long. “
Hi Craig,
Keep in mind FCP X only allows for one user per Event/Project period. No Read users, regardless of network file system. You can, however, import media w/o copying from another active Event/Project. Not that it sounds like you’re looking for simultaneous users in the same Project like an Avid workflow, but just stating for the record on how FCP X behaves in general.
The workflow you describe actually lends itself very well to a volume managed solution. We have a software product called SANmp which enables workspaces to be assigned per student just as you describe over iSCSI. Permissions can be easily set so that student volumes would only be visible to the assigned student and their instructor, not by other classmates, regardless of which computer the student logs in from. SANmp is very popular in educational media production environments like this for it’s ease of setting up such permission schemes as you described.
Common class media can be centrally stored on it’s own volume(s) for Read Only access by all students and Write access for the instructor. A CLI interface is even included for scripting so you can auto-mount volumes with a specific user’s account. It is available as stand-alone software to manage access to iSCSI targets with your existing storage, as well as with our turnkey Shared Storage platform called EVO.
With our more advanced EVO solution, SANmp is included free at no extra per-seat cost. EVO provides more advanced file level managed workflows with NFS, as well as AFP and SMB in addition to high performance media workspaces using SANmp. With EVO you can:
-configure an all Sparse Disk Image workflow over NAS protocols
-configure an all high performance media sharing workflow with SANmp volumes per Class/Student
-configure a combination of the two, with central/common elements for everyone on a high performance media volume and student specific edits/renders/projects on Sparse Disk Images
-configure XSAN over iSCSI and use the FCP X ‘Add SAN Location’ in conjunction with XSAN volumes/permissionsAs has been mentioned by others on this thread, performance of Sparse Disk Images is not as consistent when introduced in a network compared to using them on local disks, so care should be taken on a properly configured RAID as well as keeping your production network ‘clean’ and keeping your storage system over as direct a path to the edit systems as you can without traversing a bunch of routers or switches.
Regards,
-CaspianProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Hi Jason,
If you want to repurpose that Windows computer with an Internal RAID, I’d recommend getting a RAID card that has an External port as well, this way you can add an external JBOD enclosure with more disks in a RAID. You’ll find 4 drives to be ok for some work with two drives, but 6-8 drives would be better and handle far more users.
You’ll also need management software if you want to be able to edit reliably. We provide our SANmp software for managing access to shared storage over iSCSI. You could use an iSCSI Target for your RAID drives from the Windows Server and format them as NTFS and HFS+ volumes managed by SANmp for sharing the higher performance video files.
An extra Ethernet card in the server would also be good, but I would minimally recommend Cat5e or greater for reliable Gigabit speeds. Using iSCSI and Gigabit Ethernet, with appropriately configured storage you can expect at least two streams of ProRes and DNxHD reliably.
You can check out and download trials of our software here:
https://www.studionetworksolutions.com/sanmp/
Best Regards,
-CaspianProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
David,
Some of what you describe sounds like the difference between NAS and SAN protocols.
[David Tiberia] “if there’s a few files and folders, no problem. If it’s a big file (video file), it’s fine. If there are 50 small files, the folder will take FOREVER to populate. 45 seconds, 2 min…a while. If we copy a big file, it goes fast. If it’s 150 jpegs from a digital camera, it’ll take 4 min. before the operation even starts.”
SAN connections communicate at the block level and can be used with 8Gb/16Gb Fibre Channel (using block level SCSI commands) or 1GbE and 10GbE with iSCSI. I’m not saying it’s the only factor, but could be part of the equation. I’d venture a guess the folder you’re stating takes forever to populate is nearly instant by comparison from an internal drive or even over a FW800 connected drive.
You said you’re currently using Tiger Technologies MetaLAN, which is their solution akin to high performance NAS solutions. They also make MetaSAN iSCSI. With 10GbE connections already, talking at the block level to your shares may help reduce some of the latency you describe. Have you asked them about the performance differences one could expect between MetaLAN and MetaSAN on the same hardware?
Can you add additional 10GbE ports to your server/storage?
What 10GbE HBAs are you using in your high bandwidth direct connect clients?
Regarding Fibre Channel being dead, I don’t know about that. With ATTO’s 16Gb Fibre Channel cards and PCIe Gen 3, computers will be able to crunch on even larger files faster. We’ve seen SolarFlare 10GbE HBAs getting pretty much the same speed as 8Gb Fiber Channel in our testing on the Mac. Fibre has the reputation of being fast with very low latency, but there’s also 40GbE now (though seemingly less available than Fibre Channel). Ethernet has the advantage of being able to run both block level (iSCSI) and NAS (AFP, SMB, NFS) protocols over the same physical connection when needed. They both have their pros and cons and are both very much alive IMHO.
Another thing to consider is that 10GbE over fiber optic cable uses the same cable as 8/16Gb Fibre Channel, and while this cabling costs more than copper, fiber is still where it’s at for reliability in cable construction and distances, let alone cable space and faster speeds when available. So an investment in OM3 or OM4 fiber optic cable would be interchangeable between protocols.
Regards,
Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Even using locally formatted disks in Disk Utility on a Mac, smaller files take longer than larger files. I shoot a lot of time lapse as well as video on my DSLR, transferring a 16GB card full of time lapse images takes sometimes twice as long as a 16GB card full of larger .mov files.
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
I have not relied on the Finder for many releases (10.7, 10.6, 10.5, 10.4, and earlier). I’m sure we’ve all experienced failed copies for one reason or another and lost much time chasing down directories to see where the Finder decided to leave off…a major pain.
I recommend to all my customers NOT to rely on the Finder for copying critical data…purely because there is no verification or sensible logging. Who of us has time to literally check every single file’s integrity, especially when copying hundreds of GBs to dozens of TBs of data?
There are a number of software tools for the Mac which offer data verification, and while this step can literally double the transfer time, at least you can sleep at night. Some of these tools also offer logging, showing you specifically which files may have issues. These tools have also helped suss out issues with RAIDs and other physical media issues based on verification failures.
My favorite on the Mac platform is ChronoSync, which I’ve been using and recommending for years.
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
+1 for ChronoSync. And yes, the ‘Copy’ and ‘Move’ terminology isn’t quite as literal as you would expect. Matt Stamos at JB&A explained this to me the other day, if I recall correctly, Move is a Move only if it’s within different directories of the same volume, otherwise it’s a Copy, but with the option to Update Media Locations…I maybe a little off in my explanation, hopefully Matt or someone else from CatDV can chime in here and clarify.
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
You can totally start with stand alone copies of CatDV Pro and start building catalogs that you can later publish to a CatDV Server installation. With stand alone copies you won’t be able to search across multiple catalogs or have group/role permissions like you do with an Enterprise installation. This is one of the many cool things about CatDV, that you can use it isolated in the field, and publish to your server when you’re back in the studio.
-Caspian
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Hi Bryan,
I saw your post here on the Cow and also read through your previous support ticket with us regarding your installation. Your setup consists of the three MacPro edit systems, a Mac mini with a Magma Express Box 3T, 4 port GbE card, and Promise Pegasus via Thunderbolt. This Mac mini is running our XTarget iSCSI software managed with SANmp.
In volume based workflows there are a few general approaches that work very well depending on your needs. Customers who set up a single large volume for sharing media assets tend to do so in conjunction with a central ingest point. Another approach is to create multiple volumes assigned per user, per client, or per project. A lot of it depends on how you assign your edit work. For example, if users are not always sitting in the same edit suite every day, user based volumes can be leveraged for them to ‘carry’ their projects, media, renders, etc. with them from suite to suite. Some customers use various combinations of all these approaches.
How many users are there working between your three edit suites?
How is work assigned? Does one user Produce/shoot/edit their own project? or are multiple people working on various edits for the same project?Best Regards,
-CaspianProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Hi Cirilo,
Are you trying to share playback of media across more than one computer?
A MacPro Tower won’t work directly with a Promise Pegasus Thunderbolt array. The Promise SANlink is not designed to bridge a Thunderbolt target device like the Pegasus to the Fibre Channel protocol. The SANlink and similar devices are designed to add Fibre Channel and other network connections to Mac computers that are equipped with Thunderbolt ports.
If you’re looking for high speed storage to connect to a MacPro tower, a Fibre Channel HBA can be installed in the MacPro and then connected to a Fibre Channel RAID storage system or Fibre Channel network. This level of high speed storage can be treated as Direct Attached Storage as well as shared in a SAN environment.
We also have our globalSAN Xtarget software for the Mac, which can enable a Mac mini or iMac with Thunderbolt connected storage and a multi-port network adapter, to act as centralized iSCSI shared storage over 1GbE and 10GbE.
At Studio Network Solutions, we offer both Direct Attached Storage and Shared SAN storage with turnkey hardware and software solutions with our EVO products. Feel free to contact us directly if you’d like to learn more about how we can help you.
Best Regards,
Caspian Brand
cbrand@studionetworksolutions.comhttps://www.studionetworksolutions.com
Product Specialist
Studio Network Solutions -
Robb,
I know you posted this about Avid with CatDV, and that you mentioned thinking about moving to Avid. Based on your workflow comments, if you haven’t bit the bullet on Avid yet, I would highly recommend giving Adobe Premiere CS6 a try, it feels like an extension/updated version of FCP7 with some Avid style editing tools as well, and it’s integration with CatDV is a real pleasure to work with more similar to how it is with FCP7.
Best Regards,
-CaspianProduct Specialist
Studio Network Solutions