[James Mckenna]

Hi Shane,

We have several installations where multiple Nitris stations share media as if it were local to each station. Media and project indexer are most happy with that setup. The DS project files on the other hand were never meant to be shared. Until recently one had to archive and restore a project onto another platform in order to even access the same video. Now it’s more of a close on on station, open on the other with a couple tweaks to reset storage configs.

Of course, Avid project sharing in the true sense is done within the MC app, so no one can share projects in an ideal sense like Avid can with Unity. Even Avid can’t share projects in an ideal sense, because the timeline (EDL, sequence, name your term), can’t be shared or even synched up after changes. In our solution, you will need to copy bins between stations. It hasn’t been a real downer for us, since most of out installs are finishing stations and HD where you’re not typically collaborating by the hour. Even when you do, it’s easy enough to pass someone a cut.

The real point here is the price performance. Avid may have you dedicate three ZX (or some amount of MediaArray II) enclosures for HD uncompressed. That’s not shared HD uncompressed, that’s just one HD client with the privilege of connecting to Unity and playing HD. We can do the same with 12 drives, or share HD with 24.

Jim McKenna
Facilis Tech

[James Mckenna]

Rich,

There are multi-platorm SAN solutions out there with the ability to perform in HD environments. The Facilis TerraBlock is one of them, and can do exactly what you’ve described. Virtual volumes can be created and formatted in either Mac or Windows native filesystem, and HD material can be shared between multiple stations.

There are limitations with any SAN, as the math will always catch up to you, but we do pretty well supporting 4 streams of uncompressed 8bit HD on a single server, or three streams of 10bit. We can support a dual-stream uncompressed HD client, as well as other SD clients on the same server. We are compatible with Nitris, and FCP.

Take a look – http://www.facilistech.com

Let me know if you have any questions.

Jim McKenna
Facilis Tech
james@facilis.net