Chris Harlan
Forum Replies Created
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ROtFL
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[Andrew Richards] “We’re only talking about the render files that would arise from cutting promos, so minutes not hours, no? The 50TB of source material should go right on living on spinning disks.”
Sorry, Andrew. I don’t think you understand the industrial aspect of a project like this. It is a bit more complicated than you are imagining. In some cases, you can actually end up with more promo material–in terms of aggragate length–than the source material, itself. Every once in a while it doubles. Because of a multitude of delivery variations (1-5 promo length variations, HD, SD, PAL, NTSC, and usually 6-8 different VO versions of each length version) each episode generates between ten and ninety minutes of finished rendered video (not including any of the renders to get there). A typical broadcast season is 22 episodes. Each season can add an hour or more of rendered specialty items. Most projects are multiple seasons. All of this needs to be online at all times, and, once finished, the project needs to be stored offline for–typically–six months, though sometimes longer.
Now, in FCP 7 when I make six copies of a :30 timeline to change out VO and end plates (Next, Next Thursday, Tonight, etc.) only the changes require additional drive space, as everything indexes back to renders they all share. Is this the case in X?
[Andrew Richards] “Even with all the various promos you’re making, there is no reason you couldn’t host the databases and renders on a single $400ish 240GB SSD”
Does that still seem true to you? I really don’t understand the under-workings of X’s event/render/project file, but if I’ve read this thread correctly, It seems to me I’m building a lot of baggage.
[Andrew Richards] “I should also point out that ideally you want the SSD installed internally, not in an external case. The low latency advantages of the SSD are going to take a hit hanging off a USB or FireWire bus.”
Well, that’s a pretty big “duh,” but I guess you never know who you are talking too. I’m eSata RAID off of my eight core, which does just fine for my current needs.
[Andrew Richards] “Unless you have one of the newest Thunderbolt Macs, you can also skip the more expensive 6G SSDs since you don’t have the 6G SATA bus to take advantage of them.”
Well, lets see if that ends up on the next eight or twelve core. If–I guess–there is one. This would be a good year to add to the collection, but so far, no TBolt Mac Pro. And, for the first time in a long time, I’m wondering about HP or Dell.
[Andrew Richards] “Incidentally, I highly recommend using an SSD for your boot drive. The difference in overall system responsiveness is very noticeable. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.
“Yeah. I thought about that a little. Frankly, though, I like a beefier boot drive in terms of size. With enough RAM and the right kind of video card, I’m not sure you get much past a faster boot. I don’t notice a whole lot of sluggishness on my system. I suppose I could do it only laptop sometime, but again, I think I’d choose the space.
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[Andrew Richards] “An 8TB project file! Wow, that’s gotta be a record… Oh, your media is 8TB. 🙂
Media should stay on spinning disk, of course. Fortunately, we can put projects on one drive and media on another.
The gotcha for FCPX is that it puts render files for the projects alongside the project files. Not ideal, I know. But if you are working on a one hour show, even rendering every frame is going to occupy less than 100GB (ProRes HQ 1080i29.97). One of those 480GB SSDs should handle that easily.
“Andrew, I’m delighted to hear that the source material can remain on regular RAIDS. BUT, we are talking big projects, right? I’m doing advertising packages for multiple seasons of broadcast TV over the next four months, most of it in 1080i@29. I’m guessing I will have a little over 50 hours of programing as source material. I will need access to all material throughout the project, and each promo has multiple versions. So, to follow your plan, I’m guessing that I need more than just one of those 480GB SSDs. So, maybe not $15000, but maybe 4000 or 6000 plus the cost of a Glyph? It still seems to me an issue.
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[Andrew Richards] “Role-based mixing would be handy too, though it is probably be easier said than done.”
Yeah. If I could patch Roles to a mixer–and color code them by type–I’d be happy, I do believe.
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[Andrew Richards] “Contemporary consumer SSDs at their worst will deliver about 100 times the IOPS performance of a typical SATA HDD. That kind of gap absolutely matters in this analysis.”
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[Andrew Richards] “I just don’t agree that there is nothing we can do about it, such as it is, out here in deployment-land.”
Let’s see–my current project on FCP7=8TB @ $1,000 (2 4TB Glyphs/GRAIDS at current flood prices) vs. $15,000 (16 480GB OWC Mercury Electras). I’m thinking maybe us here in deployment land don’t like to hunt with that dawg.
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Back at you all! Happy T Day to each and every one.
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[Bill Davis] “[Chris Harlan] “And perhaps you’ve drunk way, way too much Kool-aid.”
So the observation that one program has single direction information flow – and that the new verson of that program has bi-directional information flow — and that might be interesting to people trying to decide between them — is, in your mind, roughly equivalent to duping men, women and children into drinking a poison laced beverage?
Interesting the way your mind works, Chris.
“It’s not the way my mind works, Bill; it’s the way you use sophistry, straw-man arguments and non-sequiters to spar here. It makes it difficult to communicate with you. Its frustrating, and I just decided to give up. Have fun using FCP X to “locate slugs and output their aggregate time.” I really don’t know why anyone would want to do that, but it seems important to you.
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[Bill Davis] “And if you haven’t come to understand that yet, perhaps you stopped your examination of FCP-X a bit too soon?
“And perhaps you’ve drunk way, way too much Kool-aid.
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[Shane Ross] “FCP 7 is perfect for my spots
“Here, here! Best promo machine ever.
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[Andy Neil] “[Chris Harlan] “I love the K/L, K/J key combos, for instance, and have never quite understood why FCP didn’t incorporate that into its JKL setup.”
Are you refering to slo-mo forward and reverse? Because those same combos work in FCP.
Andy
“OMG, that is SO funny. I had no idea. And, I tried every version to see if it finally showed up! And would mutter to myself that it hadn’t, and yet it was too small a deal to bitch about on a board like this. What a laugh. Turns out that if you start the move on FCP by pressing “K” first, which is what I generally do, there is a 3-4 second lag you have to hold for before it kicks into slow scan. On Avid, it goes immediately. So, every time I tried, I’d press the key combo and it wouldn’t work. It never occurred to me to hold it down for a full 4 seconds. Of course, if you start with “L” and add “k” the change is immediate, but I never tried to do that because I didn’t think the function was there. Dang. You learn something every day.