[James O’connor]

Well, back to waiting on Apple to decide whether it’s worth caring or not! Right now we use FCPX and Premiere Pro side by side but until they let FCPX play on the same setup as just about every other serious (not even pro) editor, then we have it sandboxed and it doesn’t get to play with our bigger projects at all. Shame because I really like the interface!

Thanks Bob.

[James O’connor]

Great – but does this mean I have to have Apple’s Fibre Channel system for Xsan or can I find a way to get my GraniteSTOR by Small Tree Networks (GBE and SATA) to host FCPX Events ***and now, more importantly, PROJECTS*** on the server?

Right now it actually works fine – we connect to media on the server by just leaving content where it is (referenced) when importing. But the projects… as we all know… are stuck on the client machine until you “move” them via sneakernet… which sucks.

Is this only going to work with “XSan approved” hardware?

James

[James O’connor]

Steve, thanks for the response. Opening a project that someone else was working on 5 minutes ago when they’ve just left just gone for a cup of coffee… IS the greatest thing in post-production as far as I’m concerned. So I don’t know about “over-doing sharing”! However, I’m a relatively “new” shop (as in we only went “shared” in January this year. So I’m VERY accommodating to a new workflow (we only have a year of existing projects in the “old” workflow).

But what I need (what we all need I think) is for someone to outline a couple of best practice workflows for medium sized production facilities. We can all spend time training and learning the new software at a feature level but Apple hasn’t provided enough guidance on using the software in a pro environment. Analyzing/optimizing audio is great – we can easily figure that out – but I can’t figure out how to get set up and started COMMERCIALLY because I’m worried about things like corruption, versions, keeping track of who’s got the most recent version on what machine etc. that’s crazy.

What we did at one point when running iMovie (yes, more proof that this is iMovie Pro) is to use an external hard drive to host the project file and just plug that in to whoever needed it ‘now’. In the case of FCPX, all the source files will happily live on our GraniteSTOR and should reconnect every time a new workstation opens the project file. We’d benefit from ONE SINGLE PROJECT copy and its associated metadata, smart collections, etc.

Then, at the end of its edit we can put the project file (versions etc.) into a temporary folder back on the GraniteSTOR near to the source files I guess. But it will always need to be moved back onto an external hard drive before going back into edit again (technically not huge transfers as the source files will stay put.)

The one major problem I have with this (despite the fact that I need to stock about 10 external drives) is that while the project is “sneaking” around my shop in this way, there is no RAID 5 protection (for the project files at least) which is what I spent all that money on in January (32TB RAID 5)!

If the project files are relatively small and don’t need much I/O performance then I suppose we could use memory sticks (will FCPX allow that?) but we still run the risk of losing a whole project file on a stick somewhere!!! I just don’t know why Apple didn’t say – ok, store the project file wherever you want and we’ll protect it’s resource files if anyone else tries to open it at the same time… how hard would that have been? And do you think it is something likely to be added?

I feel like I’m getting somewhere in understanding this all at least. Can you let me know if I’m going down the right road??? I REALLY appreciate it and I’m sure others are reading this too.

For the record all, Small Tree GB Ethernet rocks. I was able to get into the “serious” game this year at a very reasonable cost and have had nothing but smooth sailing and great support since then. Sorry for the plug, thanks again Steve.

[James O’connor]

[Steve Modica] “but I would never suggest something like this for a real shop.”

Thanks again Steve. You’re helping and I really appreciate it. If that’s how most “real shops” are doing it now then we have to infer that you’re also not recommending FCPX to those same shops. If that’s the truth we’re facing then the question is: does anyone think Apple is going to deal with this issue?

I have to confess the only reason we’ve been “playing” with the software is because we are merely believing that Apple is going to tackle this. What worries me is that it’s such a fundamental change at the I/O level that Apple would not have risked adding it after, at the risk of creating problems for those who have projects that will need to be “moved” to the now permissible “right” location.

However, it won’t be the first time. The first version of their pro photo editing app, Aperture, launched with the inability to reference files outside of the sanctioned library. THEN they later added the ability to do that but denied people storing their Aperture library on a network drive. THEN they later added the ability to do that.

All we can learn from this is that they are: Crazy. But Talented. Anyway… any ideas?

J

[James O’connor]

Hi Steve,

I use Small Tree products (and GraniteSTOR) here in my business… great stuff. I’m curious about your “good sharing” practices though. You mentioned the symlink which you showed me previously. My question is this (and it’s a biggie):

If we symlink, or find another way to let FCPX access events and projects on the SAN, then you will have multiple editors all accessing one “FCPX Events” folder and one “FCPX Projects” folder. When you open FCPX the project and event browsers show you ALL the projects in those folders. Even if other editors have them open and in use. Now, if you accidentally click on a project that you aren’t concerned with it loads the project. Now… in this case, which editor is writing to the metadata database? … and what is the result of such action? Corruption? Version problems? FCPX, like iMovie does a lot when you load it up, depending on your preferences, it may start doing colour/shake/audio analysis on content that another editor was busy modifying.

Plus, project sharing, the “new Apple way” is all well and good but editor ONE will wrap up his work and “share” a project for someone else (great if the media files are all on the server, reconnecting will be a good experience) but, now instead of just telling someone else to open the project, we have a copy on different machines because we shared it out. Now we have to track who’s got the most up to date version, and choose to delete surplus versions. Does this scare anyone else? Can someone please put together a workflow for the rest of us? I feel as though I haven’t really cracked this yet.

In the meantime, my guys ARE using FCPX but projects/versions are staying put on local machines and I DON’T LIKE IT!! 🙂

When we figure this all out, I’ll be sure to post back. But in the meantime, I need all the help I can get!

James

[James O’connor]

Are you saying that MetaSAN is already “installed” in the SuperShare switch? If so, how are we supposed to maintain, update it? Is it a “server”? What’s it running? Hard to spend money on things we don’t fully understand. This, for me right now is the appeal of the Small-Tree 10Gb ethernet solution because it is using pretty much off-the-shelf parts that can be re-purposed in other systems if we change the setup. With SuperShare, it’s all or nothing. That’s fine, but if I’m not 100% happy with the way it performs then it’s a bitter pill.

I am right now in the process of compiling all the specs and prices on these different systems – for 4 Mac Pros and I’m realizing that money isn’t the deciding factor. It’s the day-to-day functioning. I’m already having to deal with way too much IT!

[James O’connor]

Thanks Bob,

I understand we’d be expanding by SAS expander, but I keep reading things like this:

https://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=3103912

How would you do it? Run iPartition on your precious RAID 5 array? Or have a huge, slow JBOD backup (mirror) of your fast RAID that you can draw upon in terrible times… like having to do an expansion.

I’ve seen the question asked: what good is a controller card that gives you online expansion when OS X can’t “use” the new larger size? If that’s the case, I feel safer relying on my backup and doing a reformat of the newly expanded RAID.

Am I right here?

[James O’connor]

Hi Bob,

I keep reading with interest “you don’t need any kind of SAN software”… but I’m wondering – and posted elsewhere – what takes control of the storage pool? We had Caldigit hardware too and their controller cards were nice and all, but doing online expansions is crippled by OS X not recognising the partition increase. How do we scale the storage without xSan?

I’m about to go Small-Tree/GraniteSTOR/Switch… the works… but how do I scale my storage and keep it as one volume as my business grows?

Thanks for all your help. Every forum I read comes back to your knowledge and input.