Mark Raudonis
3
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
-
Mr. Footagehead,
I’m sorry, but with all due respect, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.
We do “network file/project management” all day long. Have been for two years now. Do I think X-SAN is a contender? Actually, in my opinion, I think that X-SAN it offers superior performance for the price. Pound for pound, we’re getting much more bang for the buck out of our X-SAN than the Unity it replaced. Yes, that’s right. We replaced our two Unity’s with two X-SAN’s. Haven’t missed a deadline yet. Haven’t lost any media. Haven’t looked back.
If you really have a working knowledge of X-SAN’s capabilities, you would know this.
Mark
-
Paul,
There are better solutions than FCP out there.
FCP needs to digitize anything to work with it. That , almost by definition takes you out of the “live” arena and into the “post” world.
Look at something from Sony called the “Anycaster” for around $20K or the “Tricaster” from NewTek, the company that created the “Video Toaster”. These tools are much more appropriate for a live environment. FCP just ain’t designed for that.
Mark
-
Dan,
You don’t say what kind of deck you’re using to play back your HDCAM material. If it’s a J H3 it has a firewire output and you can go directly from that deck to FCP as a downconverted DVCAM or RT Off-line file. This would be your easiest, simplest, and cheapest way of working off-line.
No capture card needed for this approach. Isn’t that what you’re looking for? Good, fast, and cheap?
Mark
-
Mike,
An X-SAN solution is NOT a simple plug and play operation. Go to the Apple site and read about the requirements. You’ll need a fibre based infrastructure, a gig-e based network and a second ethernet if you want to access the internet. You’ll need a switch and at least one, preferably two dedicated metadata controllers. And then, you’ll need drives. Having said all that, if you do it right, and don’t cheap out on components, the X-SAN compares quite favourable to a Unity system. We have close to one hundred users spread over two x-SAN’s all sharing projects, media, and data on a variety of volumes. That’s the beauty of the X-SAN, you are NOT volume locked. Depending on how you organize your media, you can have many, many people all accessing the same medai, writing to the same volume, and sharing data.
If you’re at DV resolution, you have NO NEED for 4bgit speed. I don’t know what you’re talking about “poor reputation” for high level support. I would think any tech head would love to jump a plane and come visit you in Hawaii!
In a SAN environment the number of “spindles”(Drives) you have enhances your throughput. If you’re looking at doing serious, uncompressed HD, then I would be thinking about getting at least two X-RAIDs fully populated.
Noise? What? I can’t hear you over the sound of the fans! Yes, these suckers are LOUD! And, they generate a fair amount of heat. But that’s gonna be the case with any SAN you get. I would NOT want to edit in the same room as these drives. Plan on a separate machine space. Don’t forget about the air conditioning.
Mark “Missing Diamond Head” Raudonis
-
[footagehead] “Until this is directly addressed there will never be a solid networked management system like Avid Unity for FCP. “
Mr. Footagehead,
Have you ever heard of X-SAN?
Mark
-
That exclamation point is telling you that your video is too “hot” (Excessive Luma or Chroma). When you see the exclamation point or the green check, that means you have turned on the “range Check” feature of FCP. If you don’t want to see this, go to “view” , select “range Check” and turn it off. This doesn’t fix your video, it just keeps quiet about it.
mark
-
And… don’t forget that everything is changing by the minute.
A year ago, HDV was unknown and unproven. Now, it’s found a place in the Hi Def production arena.
Test. Test. Test. It’s a good mantra, ’cause just when you think you know all there is to HD, a new camera/format/codec/NLE comes out that challenges everything you already know.For example, our workflow for an HD show we did one year ago would NOT be how we approach a show today.
mark
-
Pardon the obvious, but do you have ALL eight trks enabled? If you’re using the “edit to tape” function, you have to turn on all the tracks that you want to record to.
Also, what are you using to control the deck? An AJA box? Black magic card? Make sure that your card is set up to control eight channels.
Mark
-
Try this.
Forget multicam. Create six “pictures” in picture in a timeline. Playback. Does it work?
If not, your problems have more to do with through-put on your raid than anything with Multi-cam.
Six streams of 10 bit uncompressed is a pretty heavy load. I think this is more a drive issue than anything to do with multicam.
Mark
-
It’s called “amortization of investment”… also known as “being a cheapskate”.
While we “tech heads” may thrill to the latest greatest technology, those actually trying to make money in this business are less impressed by what’s new and more partial to the tried and true.
mark