[Mac Stevens]

Bob-

Thanks for the reply…

The clip store had a bunch of the other directors I work with pretty excited. I think for many it’s like anything… A value add that requires one less piece of equipment.

We plan on using the clip store extensively on top of the external graphics system. Additionally we probably will also use the watch folders as part of our workflow.

One disappointing thing about the cg built in is that if you have a motion background, you have to import it as a TIFF sequence and then render the whole thing out again. I’m curious as to the render time for a 2 min TIFF loop. I probably will just use another key layer for static text over the graphics background. Nothing like finding a name misspelling a few min before going live 🙂

I did notice a delay with the multi view during the demo. I realize there is a lot going on software wise to make that happen. We are probably going to go with separate program/preview monitors anyways. During the demo the direct program monitor seemed to pretty low latency so I don’t think it will slip us up during live music segments.

[Mac Stevens]

What’s you zoning look like? Wide open? 1 to 1?

Also are the card/switch/os configs supported by the SAN?

One awesome thing about FC (and I actually prefer FC over iSCSI for SAN configs) is, and I’m sure many already know this :), the compatabilty issued are a blast to work through. Strange things happen with stuff that is not comparable.

SAN vendors literally have whole teams and labs devoted to “plug fests” where all sorts of different combos of cards, switches, OSes, are tried. You should see the labs where this is done… I don’t think I have ever seen so much fibre in my life 🙂

[Mac Stevens]

You can also check out openfiler if you want to dedicate a box to this. I know it works well from the PC side but I haven’t tried it against a Mac.

Openfiler will give you both iSCSI (block based storage/SAN over ethernet) and NAS support.

One thing… Speaking from experience here, make sure you don’t cheap out on the Ethernet cards. If you run iSCSI, the performance is not so great without a TCP offload engine (TOE). NAS will probably have similar characteristics but I used to run iSCSI more than anything.