[Erik Lindahl]

Apple File System will be out spring 2017 for everyone and will be the default file system to use at that point. Apple will offer a migration solution to move a volume from HFS+ to APFS.

A few nice features for us video-folks:

– File Cloning. Duplicated files that are identical take virtually zero extra space. As I understand it the file system handles file changes on byte level so only changes take extra space not necessarily the entire new file.
– Snapshots. Roll-back to any given point in time.
– Per file or complete volume encryption.
– Much smarter handing of volumes and partions than HFS+.
– Very low latency file access. Fast user response and reliable app-respons.
– Very fast headachy indexing. Get file- and folder-info instantly.
– Much better handing of file read / write / over-writes.
– Truly 64-bit / multithreaded.

Basically it brings Apple back on par or possibly past the top-tier file-systems out there that also is far more future proof. HFS+ has solved a lot of the above with add-one such as TimeMachine (sort of ha does snapshots in a terrible way).

It supposed to be built for everything from tiny NAND drives in Apple Watches to multi-TB MacPro RAIDs and high performance PCIe storage.

How it turns out… We will see in about a year! 🙂

[Erik Lindahl]

The problem with this approach is that the files are unreadable by some applications.

[Erik Lindahl]

Reading their website it seems they might have adressed some of these deal-breakers for us actually.

Version 1.1.0 added support for Run workflow for media which are imported from Watch Folder
Version 1.1.5 added support for External Media

So it might be something we should give another look.

[Erik Lindahl]

I also think it couldn’t just catalog media from a watch-folder and keep the given folder structure intact on the drives while creative proxies internally for use in KeyFlow Pro.

I might give it another shot one of these days but it seems not to work as we wanted to.

[Erik Lindahl]

I tried it last fall and it didn’t work at all as we hoped for. I might recall it wrong but it I believe it wanted to take far more control over the media than I wanted it to and I believe it didn’t really like reading media from our NAS-storage. It felt more like a one-man-band thing than anything else. But I’d love to be proven wrong! 🙂

[Erik Lindahl]

Even “official” systems at IBC at the AJA and BMD booth suffer from the latency / lag issue. I don’t understand how people aren’t bothered by it. Last year an AJA engineer said “we’ve heard that from user, we’re aware of the issue” and then mumbled something about Apple.

Premiere Pro had the same issue – worse even – in the CS5, 5.5 and maybe 6 days, but not anymore.

[Erik Lindahl]

Nope. FCP7 was instant play / stop on a decent system. Crap realtime FX but super low latency editing. Premiere Pro of later versions are also instant. FCPX is not.

[Erik Lindahl]

It’s about time Apple actually implements some use of their enormously powerful roles system.

[Erik Lindahl]

The only request for FCPX I’ve had since day one is zero lag playback over video I/O. In it’s current state I can’t see anyone editing in FCPX in other ways than with-out video I/O.

With lag I mean the time from you push play or stop and until the app responds. It’s embarrassingly poor now, given I haven’t tested the latest FCPX with 10.11.3 – it seems BMD has stability issue there anyways so I’m not sure it’s the best platform anyway.

[Erik Lindahl]

10-bit output to the GUI in El Capitan? How? Do you have source for this?