Eric Hansen
Forum Replies Created
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I don’t have Thunderbolt, so I haven’t been able to experiment with a set up like this. but you’re saying your edit stations have 2 Lacie 2Big drives (each) and are using Apple Disk Utility to create a RAID-0 across the 2 2Big drives. correct?
can i ask why? do you need that much speed? what codecs are you editing with? i’m wondering if the Apple Disk Utility software RAID is unstable – i’ve had issues when trying to create a software RAID with external hard drives. can you just run the 2 2Big drives as individual drives?
i’m not saying this is your problem, especially if you’re not having any other issues. but to me, this is a red flag. i only use software RAIDs on internal drives. and even then, fairly rarely. I’ve heard good things about SoftRAID, but it’s been years since I’ve used it.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
hmm, shot in the dark here. is it Dual Mono and FCP is playing it back in Stereo?
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
Hey Bobby
I’ve used the 5770 in a 2008 “Harpertown” Mac Pro (which i think is the same as yours based on your specs), and am now using it in a 2009 “Nehalem” Mac Pro. no issues at all. the drivers are included with the OS updates from Apple. Since you’re running the latest version of Snow Leopard (10.6.8), you’re all good.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
Hey Morten
I think you might be looking too far ahead. At this point I wouldn’t worry about a lack of a new Mac Pro for server use. These are extremely robust machines. I’m still running the original gen Mac Pros and some G5s on a daily basis. If you buy one today, it will outlast most of the other components in your chain.
Small Tree debuted Titanium at NAB, which is basically a 16 drive RAID with a Linux server built-in, with card slots for 1Gb E, 10Gb E and SAS expansion, taking away the need for a Mac Pro server.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
Hey Shawna
I had to re-read this entire post, as i had totally forgotten about this issue. It’s amazing how many projects i’ve done since that movie this time last year. Like Matt suggested, we got really diligent about organization and when to delete and move media. So we never really ran into the problem again.
Autosaves saved our butt. actually, on that note, i worked with an editor last year that set the autosave frequency to 5 minutes. It was extremely annoying working at her station, as it would pause every 5 minutes to autosave, breaking the flow. the problem is that the default number of autosaves FCP saves is 40. so 40 at every 5 minutes is only 200 minutes – 3 hours and 20 min of backup. Normally, we would notice this issue the next day, so the autosave vault in this case would be completely worthless. so be careful how you have your autosave vault set up.
i’m not sure what caused the problem in your case. in my testing, deleting the media while FCP is open is the only thing that caused this issue. what kind of hard drive are you using for your media storage? is it possible it went to sleep for just a microsecond and FCP thinks everything went offline? check your Energy Saver settings and make sure “Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible” is UNCHECKED
thanks the only thing i can think of.
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Eric Hansen
Production Workflow Designer / Consultant / Colorist / DIT
https://www.erichansen.tv -
hey Sascha
could your client use Resolve Lite instead of needing a dongle?
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Eric Hansen – https://www.erichansen.tv
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hey James
to answer your LTO question, i would say no. i only recommend LTO to my clients that are putting away 20+ TB a year. less than that, and i think hard drives look like a better option price-wise. just make sure you have multiple copies in multiple locations.
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Eric Hansen – https://www.erichansen.tv
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Hey Ted
Thanks for adding to the collective brain trust here. Interesting to see what’s involved going the Linux route.
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Eric Hansen – https://www.erichansen.tv
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hey Bob
i just took a look at the Resolve Config guide, and even with the expansion chassis, BMD still recommends putting the HBA in slot 4 and not the expansion chassis. so it would still be stuck at 4x
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Eric Hansen – https://www.erichansen.tv
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hey Daniel
it is possible, but as i stated, i stopped doing it because i didn’t want to deal with BRU’s glitches on our main SAN server. BRU has added network support, so now i can use a regular Mac Pro as the LTO station, backing up files on our ethernet SAN. the source volume no longer has to be direct attached.
you don’t have to do anything to set up the card. just plug in the tape deck. it can’t be daisy chained to the RAIDs though. if your RAIDs are on port A, you have to connect the tape to port B and vice versa. i’ve been told that you can’t have random access (hard drives) and linear access (tapes) on the same port. so what happens here is that the tape is effectively eating up half of the available lanes on the SAS card (there are 8 total lanes, 4 per port), even though tape only uses 1 lane of bandwidth. so you won’t be able to add as many RAIDs to your card as you could if you didn’t have the tape attached. there is a practical upper limit to the number of RAIDs that can be daisy-chained and still maintain reasonable speed. with a tape drive taking up half the lanes, this upper limit is lowered. i suggest putting no more than 2 RAIDs on a single port. so once you need a third RAID, you will want to move the LTO to another card and plug this RAID in port B. others may disagree with me on this one, and i’d be curious to know their experiences. but an ATTO H card is only like $300 vs $1000 for the R680. so an H card is more practical for LTO anyway.
btw, only ATTO cards can do this. as far as i know, ATTO is the only company that makes cards that can do both hard drives and tapes on the same card (and only the R-series)
thanks
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Eric Hansen – https://www.erichansen.tv