[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Thank you very much, Rainer.
Your suggestion for a larger RAID5 is more for safety while working (I know that a RAID5 is not a backup) or speed? I am used to synch and backup the projects I’m working on onto two different sets of slower drives at noon and at evening, so what I’d loose in case of failure is a couple of hours of work, four at worst, that is not deadly in my case. That would balance the at least 1.000,00 Euros of price difference between a two drive RAID 0 and a Promise Pegasus r6. Real need for more speed would of course change everything and push me towards the larger and faster and more expensive set, and that’s why I was wondering if about 250 MB/s like a two drives set would offer would or not be enough for editing two or three streams of 50 to 150 mbps footage.

Fabrizio D’Agnano

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Hi Rainer.
I currently own a late 2013 MBPr 15″, so I can use two TB2 connections. The USB3 ports have always been someway unreliable, with drives randomly dismounting, more often during long copies or backups, variable transfer speed etc. Using the drives or arrays via the USB3 on my Belkin TB adapter was often tricky because it sometimes took several efforts to have the drives recognised, and transfer speed was slower than direct connection. That’s why I was thinking about going for the TB connection. As I wrote, I am currently running a very low budget, so I was wondering if a 2 striped drives small array like Lacie 2Big or G-Raid would be enough, or if a larger setup like a Pegasus R6 was convenient. Until last year I only edited 1080i or 1080p, but I am adding some 4k media.
Thank you!

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Hi Declan.
You raise a lot of very interesting points. It’s very true that different workflows can fit different needs.
I used to work with external media managed in folders until a couple of years ago, then switched to self contained libraries. I don’t need to exchange projects with other people, so I find this procedure easier and more error proof for me.
About the RAID5, I agree it’s not a safe solution as it is. I had to rebuild a system once during a major reorganisation of years of footage, and it was painfully slow and scary. Once I had a problem with the hardware, so that the only solution seemed to find and buy an identical unit and put the drives inside. The unit eventually got fixed, but I learnt the lesson. I like to use one RAID5 ARRAY as the hearth of my editing suite because it’s large enough so that it can contain the last two or three years of projects and media, and allows me to search indexed clips throughout years of footage. An example could be finding clips of a particular jelly fish I may have shot in several different occasions in the past three years. Since I don’t use it for editing, I trade the extra speed and space I’d get if it were a RAID0 for that bit of extra safety. I copy the needed footage on the external drive, and keep editing on that. The finished and delivered projects go from the external SSD to two more separate drives, so I keep three copies anyway, while the current projects that are on the external SSD’s have a back up on a RAID1 system, so it’s actually four copies running, one of them on RAID5. So if a SSD fails I can just copy back the libraries from the RAID5. Should the devil be on my shoulders and burn one drive in the RAID5 array while I’m rebuilding the SSD, I still have the RAID1 to rebuild copies on the ssd from and keep on working, before restoring the RAID5, or trying to. I totally agree that at least three copies, one in a different location, are a bare minimum for critical data.

Thank you for your insight!
Fabrizio

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Hello.
You sure have your reasons not to use an external drive, but it seems a great option to me. I use an external USB3 box containing an ssd drive (actually, a few of them, each dedicated to one series of projects). I keep my projects self contained inside a Library, with media also managed inside the library and not external. The drive is large and fast enough for my needs, and is bus powered, so I can connect it when working on a train or wherever. I always keep working on the same drive, connecting it to any machine running the same FCPX version, and for safety reasons only I sync the library via Sync Folders Pro onto a safer raid 5 array. I find this solution very practical and easy, all the media stays together in one container I can work on without really moving or touching anything, so the risk of damaging something is limited and I don’t end up with a missing something that was not copied from one machine to another. If the RAID 5 was actually faster than the external SSD (and it seems it’s not), I would work on that on after synch’ing with the ssd, and sync back (bidirectional) after the session (it is really fast if you’re not adding a lot of new media).
Just my 2%

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Thank you Oliver.

Fabrizio

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I had some problems upgrading libraries as well. I solved following this advice I got from this forum: from the finder go to the library you want to upgrade, and ctrl click. “Next thing to do would be to “Show Package Contents” on the library and delete the Currentversion.flexolibrary file, then launch 10.3″
Hope it helps.

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I’m working mostly on projects from the previous version. I feel everything is somehow snappier, even if I could not really practice on the new features due to urgent deliveries. One thing makes me happy: with all the previous versions I always had some problems importing from Canon XA-G10 cards. Everything was very slow and laggy, up to the point I couldn’t really skim from the preview. Now it’s fast as it should be.

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

After solving the issue of some libraries not getting upgraded, following Jeremy’s precious advice, I’m experiencing an almost flawless editing after upgrading to Sierra by a clean install. The only things that happen sometimes are unexpected quits caused by the latest Blackmagic Desktop Video driver (it was the same with El Capitan, I had to revert back to older drivers, and I’m going to do the same now) and skimming sometimes going off. Nothing really serious. I have the feeling everything is snappier, and I’m certain importing from Canon cards is now really much faster, but I can’t tell if it’s the new OS or FCPX, since I upgraded them together.

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

Thank you very much, Jeremy.
I deleted that file, and the library upgraded just fine.
Problem solved!

Fabrizio D\’Agnano
Rome, Italy

[Fabrizio D’agnano]

I have installed Sierra yesterday. I did not have the opportunity of a long FCPX editing session because for some reason it’s apparently impossible to drive a super wide external monitor via the HDMI output at it’s native resolution. The largest option is 1080p, so everything is distorted and blurred, and I had to quit after half an hour. It seems I’m not the only one experiencing that issue, and no fix has been released yet. I lost a few hours, but it was a good opportunity to test how to revert to the previous OS version using CCC, that was indeed a fast and flawless experience, and to restore the old habit of not upgrading the OS before a few months from its release…

Fabrizio D’Agnano
Rome, Italy
2014 MacBook Pro Retina, Blackmagic UltraStudio Mini Monitor, FCP7, FCPX, OSX 10.9.4