[Doug Metz]

It really depends on how you’re going to configure it – if you’re going RAID 0, then the Thunderbolt enclosures will likely be faster (assuming identical HDD specs).

The thing about RAID 0 is that you trade speed for safety. If one of your drives dies, you lose everything. So a rigorous backup schedule is necessary. I’d recommend going with a 4-bay chassis and configure RAID 5 – this way, if one drive crashes, you can pop in a new one and the RAID set can be rebuilt – saving your data.

I run an 8-bay enclosure configured RAID 6, which allows for 2 drives to fail and still retain the ability to rebuild the volume, FWIW.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

[Adam Berch] “I have DSLR footage that was given to me on an External Hard-drive that was shot with a Canon camera.

Is it possible, to import those clips into FCPX as HD1080i 24 FPS instead of ProRes?”

In FCPX preferences, look at the Import tab, and make sure “Create Optimized Media” is unchecked. This way, it will simply re-wrap the H264 DSLR footage. The footage will then appear in FCPX with the settings that were in use on-camera when the footage was shot (frame size / interlaced or progressive / framerate).

I assume H264 for DSLR… haven’t seen any other encoding for those cameras. At 24fps, you should have progressive footage.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

If you have Compressor 4.x (well worth the $50), it has a built-in BluRay setting – which you could set up as a Share destination in FCPX preferences…

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

[Craig Alan] “how [could] the media (without using aliases) be in both libraries but not double the space”

Think of the hard disk as a shed next to your house, and in that shed is a ladder (your data).

In this situation, an alias would be a sign at the end of the driveway with a picture of the ladder and an arrow pointing toward the shed. A hard link would be adding another door to the shed, so you can access the same ladder from two different entrances. Sealing up a second door doesn’t change the ladder.

When you create a copy with the Finder, it goes down to Home Depot and buys another ladder to put in the shed.

FCPX opens new doors when you copy media from one Library to another on the same drive.

At least, that’s how I understand it…

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

It would be much quicker and easier to take your 1080 master file into Compressor and scale/pad it there. No need to re-import or any of that.

I did a quick test and the results are perfect. The tricky bits are in the Video settings for the preset to add the padding, but once you see it everything makes sense.

I’ve uploaded the setting here for anyone who’d like to try it out:

9306_640x480cow.cmprstng.zip

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

The FCPX ‘Share’ function (computer / better / 1080) results in a file with the video stream encoded at 20+ mbps.

For the material that I’m compressing, I don’t see any improvement over 10-12 mbps, so I typically use Compressor at the lower bitrate, which produces a much smaller file to upload.

As Bill likes to say, YMMV. :^)

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

Two things I would check / try:
– Select the project in the browser, and check it’s settings in the inspector. Set to Progressive.
– Instead of overriding the field settings on the clip, select the Deinterlace checkbox in the inspector.

The combination of these two should get you the results you’re after.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

Have a look at this:

https://www.arcticwhiteness.com/finalcutlibrarymanager/

Highly Recommended, and dirt cheap.

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

[Tim Jones] “NeoFinder simply imports the BRU PE catalogs and lets you browse them like any other drive’s contents.”

This I did not know… I use NeoFinder every day, and have recently been researching LTO archiving options. Score 10 points for TOLIS!

Doug Metz

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[Doug Metz]

Would be nice if the ioHD would integrate with FCPX, but…

You can still use it for ingest using AJA’s VTR Xchange app – it’ll control the decks (serial works, accurate TC writes to files, too) and provide monitoring for them, just not within FCPX. I still use mine to capture from BetaSP from time to time, but I use it so infrequently that I don’t miss the direct integration. I imagine you’ll miss the live monitoring most, but that could be achieved using an inexpensive PCI card.

Doug Metz

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