Dave Barnard
Forum Replies Created
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FWIW David Pogue has said that FCP 7 will work on Lion according to the Apple reps he has spoken to.
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The key point with Avid and the Mac was the introduction of the G3 machines which had half the number of PCI slots of the models they replaced.
Avid needed 4 3rd party cards plus their own compression board to run, unlike their biggest competitor Media 100 who designed their own I/O board.
Avid either needed to re-design their hardware or switch platforms – they chose the latter, leading to the rise of FCP as increasing computer power and DV cameras made dedicated hardware unnecessary.
FCP has been central to the rise of independent voices in cinema and television over the past few years, I can only hope that this is not lost.
Software that makes remote collaboration easier would be really useful for independents. Apple started going this way with iChat Theatre in FCP7, perhaps this is an opportunity for open source developers?
Dave Barnard
cinedigital
London UK -
I’ve tested it with another 4Gb Apple Fibre Channel card and it does exactly the same thing.
The mouse pointer moves, but no clicks are detected and no keyboard input.If I leave the machine for some time after booting, both start working again but the Fibre Channel card is not detected in System Profiler.
If I substitute the 4 lane Blackmagic Multibridge card for a 1 lane Intensity Pro card, the system works but of course has no dual link SDI.
It should work with the Multibridge & Apple Fibre Channel card, but clearly does not!
Does anyone have a similar system working or can test with a 2008 MacPro and Apple Fibre Channel card?
Thanks!
Dave -
Pro Tools can be a problem when working with a SAN designed for video, it brings its own particular requirements that often cause problems.
If you would like advice on your SAN from an independent film & broadcast post production consultancy based in London, give me a shout!
An example of work – https://www.apple.com/uk/pro/profiles/talkbackthames/
Dave Barnard
dave@cinedigital.co.uk -
Any thoughts on whether it could work on OS X?
MediaHarmony is part of Ingex, a BBC R&D project to use Linux based storage appliances for multi-camera recording
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/researchanddevelopment/2009/11/the-ingex-project-an-introduct.shtml
Dave
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I’m using an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard & Mighty Mouse, but I get the same thing happening with an Apple USB keyboard and mouse plugged into the front port
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For reference, this bug still exists in v 7.
FCP tries to autosave when the project is in the process of being saved for the first time
It then goes into an infinite loop and force quitting seems to be the only way out. -
Hi Vik
When looking for ways to improve your SAN on a very tight budget make sure to look at all the variables in the equation to get the things you really need at an affordable cost.
I would recommend getting an independent consultant/systems integrator involved, they will be worth the expense to make the transition happen smoothly.
As you seem to have a 4Gb Fibre Channel setup already in place, upgrading this system would be the most cost effective, as you are thinking. There are a number of things to consider:
1) Storage upgrade – it is possible to upgrade the Fibernetix RAID with larger drives, but this needs some specialist storage experience to do. You will also need to backup your existing data and arrange some days of downtime for this to be done. It is possible to do it without downtime, but you would need to hire in and set up another FC RAID, adding to the cost.
2) MacPro – Unless you have an 8Gb Qlogic switch, there is no immediate advantage in having an 8Gb card in the new machine, and it is much more expensive than a 4Gb card. As you have Atto cards already, it would be best to keep to the same brand, though the cheaper Apple/LSI card may work perfectly well. 4Gb fibre should be fine for the upcoming edits, it will easily handle more than 4 Pro-Res streams.
3) SAN Software – For a small Final Cut editing SAN, volume based SAN software like Fibrejet gives a lot of workflow restrictions – no more than one machine can write to a volume at the same time. Tiger Technology’s MetaSAN is file-based, allowing all machines to read and write to one or more volumes without restriction, and does not require a dedicated metadata controller. I would recommend getting some trial licenses to test it with your setup.
3) Ethernet connectivity – network sharing is possible with the FC RAID, but a much better solution if you are using MetaSAN is to use the complimentary product MetaLAN. This gives a direct connection to the SAN volume over ethernet at a low cost.
4) CatDV – This can be run on the old G5 connected to the SAN by MetaLAN/SAN, though a cheap standard Mac Mini would be much faster in creating proxies. Doing this would allow you to use the G5 as a dedicated SAN metadata controller, which gives considerable benefits for the cost of an extra MetaSAN licence.
cinedigital have designed and installed SAN systems for numerous film & broadcast clients over the past few years, from small post houses with 2 edit suites to large feature film projects with over 20 seats.
A majority of these have used MetaSAN, including the installation at Talkback Thames in the UK, featured in this Apple Pro article:
https://www.apple.com/uk/pro/profiles/talkbackthames/Note that Apple make no mention of the SAN software they are using for some reason!
As I imagine you are still based in the USA, we are probably somewhat geographically disadvantaged to oversee your upgrade, but I hope this advice a help to you.
Mind you, from recent experience, international flights to the US are not that much more than internal ones! 🙂
All The Best
Dave Barnard
cinedigital Limited
London, UK
https://www.cinedigital.co.uk -
Your best low cost option for this is probably an external eSATA RAID 5 system with a PCIe controller card in the Mac Pro, using Multi Lane rather than Port Multipler eSATA will give higher speed which may benefit your workflow
If you have more that one person working on it at the same time, then use Fibre Channel storage and a SAN, though this is much more expensive.
If you have shot on HDCAM and digitized at 8 bit uncompressed, you will do better converting it to a 10 bit format to get the best results in colour grading & VFX.
ProRes 4444 would be a good choice, it gives very high quality at reasonable data rates
Working uncompressed can be a good workflow, especially if you have VFX or grading work being done on a non-Mac system, as only Macs can write Pro-Res files. We used this recently on the Swedish animated feature film Metropia, and also have recently built a portable uncompressed recording system for a VFX supervisor here in London.
20TB is not really that much storage these days, we currently have 48TB hired out to a client who are upgrading their SAN and 20TB of current and archived production work.
If you are based in Europe and are looking for some suitable storage for the film I’d be happy discuss options
Dave Barnard
cinedigital
London, UK -
Hi Chris
A lot depends on your clients type of project and workflow – with film and animation projects there is less likely to be original media to go back to.
We have used the Superloader3 SCSI LTO3 with a couple of broadcast clients, it’s not the most sophisticated tape library but does the job at a low price. We’ve seen some rather slow backup speeds from it, but the SAS LTO4 version should be a lot faster – see if you can get any real world performance data.
One of our clients used a Dell/IBM FC LTO4 library on a recent animation feature with excellent results – around 300GB/hr
BruPE is designed for for creating archives of media projects so doesn’t have all the functionality of a network backup program like Bru Server. Should be a good tool in the right environment though.
Take a look at Archiware PreStore https://archiware.com if you are looking for network backup & archive, we’ve used it with good results
Dave Barnard
cinedigital
London, UK