Eric Hansen
Forum Replies Created
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you can already edit video on an iPhone 3GS, why not do it wirelessly? pretty soon we’ll see Final Cut Studio for iPhone. really, it has to be going in this direction. if Apple can’t get Final Cut to run on an iPhone, why would they even both developing it further?
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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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are you using a NAS file server such as one by Lacie? or are you using a server like the Xserve or Mac Pro with direct attached storage?
are all folders available to all systems? if you open a project on Edit 2 that you created on Edit 1, can you see the Edit 1 render folder in Finder while you’re on Edit 2? you might be dealing with file permission issues. the NAS might also be creating a different path for each system that you can’t see. but without knowing the file system that its using, i can’t really answer your question. are just the render files offline, or do you have to reconnect all the media in the project?
when i install these systems, i set them up so everyone logs on with the same username. this way all files that are created are owned by all systems and users. i’m not sure how a NAS works under these circumstances. are you able to reconnect to your render files?
as for Autosave, Waveform and Thumbnail, i usually set those up to save locally. if you open a project and the thumbnails are not available, Final Cut should (although sometimes it doesnt) recreate those thumbnails pretty quickly. if the autosave is local, it will also write quicker, which the editors like. getting an SSD drive makes a huge difference! where ever you save your Autosave, just make sure you keep an eye on it. before you know it, it will be 50GB+ in size.
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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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maybe a drive is about to fail. i’ve had issues like you describe (volumes slow sometimes but not other times) that eventually turned out to be a drive about to fail. a drive in the process of failing will make a controller nuts, which could be what is slowing things down.
is this an issue you’ve only recently had or has it always been the case with this RAID? does it have the same stripe breadth, sector size, etc, as the other SATA RAID?
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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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hey bob
are you using the JMR Bluestor SASS-JS?
thanks
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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does your school have editing facilities? what about local community TV? i was able to get through film school (within a 40,000 student university) with just a crappy HP desktop and a Firewire drive because i was able to leverage other people’s equipment.
i had quite a few internships during college, but the most beneficial as far as production goes, was working for the local community TV station. think “Wayne’s World”. that place was always buzzing with volunteers who either knew a bunch about editing and shooting, or were scratching to learn. they had their own FCP editing suites and a bunch of prosumer Canon shooting gear. as a volunteer, i got free use of everything. i also got to work on a few local productions, especially live music events, that for me really filled in the gaps in my film education.
i didnt learn this until my last year of school, but one of the university libraries had their own cache of DV cameras and a bunch of G4s loaded with Final Cut and DVD Studio (this was 6+ years ago, btw). any current student could check out the cameras for any length of time, and the G4s were almost always available. when i couldnt get into the editing suites at the film lab because they were full, i was able to work on the G4s at the library. thus, all i needed was a firewire drive. i could always find a computer or camera when i needed.
one last thing. most film schools are dead in the summer. if you’ve been a student for awhile and gotten to know the staff, you might be able to check out equipment during that time even though you’re technically not in a class. in fact, one of my professors told me that he initially became a professor so he could spend his free time shooting movies with the free equipment from the school. students can sometimes do this too.
internships are key as Bob pointed out. you don’t need your own system. really, just an external drive will suffice. my rule of thumb was and still is –
beg or borrow
if not, then rent
if you absolutely have to because your income or learning depends on it, buye
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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actually Chris that is super helpful. it’s good to know that manufacturers are building this into their products to run automatically. i always felt like this issue didnt get enough attention in the large SAN systems a la Xsan.
the free space defrag i did on this system helped a lot, but we are discussing moving from one large volume to 3 smaller volumes. it will reduce the overall space because we’ll be going from a 12 drive RAID5 to 3 4 drive RAID5s. we’re discussing the Pros and Cons right now.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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yes i restarted the server.
i’m not surprised that its taking a long time. i knew it would. in fact the system is running read/writes at about 250MB/s as its moving all these files around. but yes, moving everything off and deleting would be way faster. luckily these guys are out of town for a few days.
The SAN is 2 CalDigit HDElements (6TB raw each) along with 4 internal drives in the Mac Pro all connected to the CalDigit RAID card. if defragging doesnt help this issue and it is in fact the Seagate 1.5TB problem, i’m hoping CalDigit will do something about it since the drives were bundled in their HDElements and they have a 1 year hardware warranty.
but i guess my overall question is, how do i establish some sort of regular defragging schedule? maybe on a system with 4 volumes, each weekend one volume is defragged, thus everything gets defragged once a month. or maybe something less frequent. these guys are just always capturing footage and transferring P2 files. a lot of quick edits and off.
e
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Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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i believe you could setup a VPN tunnel to keep the data transfer itself secure, but Dave is correct about opening up a server on the internet – it does expose you to more risk. if you’re talking about backing up a lot of data, make sure you do a local copy first so then you only have to do incremental backups over the internet.
as an extension to the Sneaker-Net approach (btw, awesome name), i have started using a safe deposit box at the bank for hard drives and film negatives. stopping there once a week to deposit checks, it just takes an extra 2 minutes to swap a drive out of the box. surprisingly easy and cheap.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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hey Neil, that’s an interesting suggestion. those sound like cool devices.
but for $2000ish, you can get a Blackmagic HD-SDI card for $300, which will soon get a free software update called Media Express 2.0 that offers remote deck control (i’m not exactly sure how it works but i think its similar to what Chris is looking for). then get a used G5 Quad or used base Mac Pro which can be controlled using Screen Sharing and is fast enough to capture HD ProRes. i’ve shown a few of my clients the Screen Sharing in Leopard and many have adopted it as a way to monitor captures going on in other rooms. i’m using it right now to monitor HDCAM captures going on in another suite.
just another suggestion
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com
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i’m working with a producer on a facility thats going to have the Blackmagic Video Hub. a really cool piece of hardware with great software. can’t wait to see it in action. but i’m also a huge fan of the manual patchbay. you can’t beat the price.
as far as your log and transfer workflow, on my first Xsan installation we had 4 suites, one of which was the “capture/print to tape suite”. we had about 50 HDCAM tapes that needed to be logged, but only one deck. so we captured entire tapes at DV codec and logged on laptops, creating subclips of the master clip. then we could go back and recapture at higher res with the completed logs. later, we just captured straight to DVCPRO HD and hooked the laptops up to the gigabit network for logging. they were logging right off the Xsan via the office network. this was about 2 years ago, and my first experience with editing over ethernet. that company still uses a variation of this workflow today for logging.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber – http://www.avplumber.com