[Mark Raudonis]

Once you’re into shared storage, in my opinion, you should abandon the notion of using a “capture scratch” folder. In our shop, the SAN has NO capture scratch folders. Rather, the footage is digitized locally over multiple systems, then moved to appropriate folders at the finder level, organized by show, date, type of material (interview, b-roll, etc.).

So, to answer your question, I’d suggest that you have separate “elements” folders that contain your perennial resources that you tap into over the year. That’s the beauty of X-SAN, and FCP. You can just use the basic Mac folder structure to organize your media.

It sounds like you really need to sit down and think about how your media will be organized. Take advantage of the fact that FCP can have multiple projects open simultaneously, and use that feature to separate the process of digitizing from how your media lives on the drives.

Good luck.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Sean,

You are correct that one could put together the kind of system you’ve outlined for much less than buying a complete solution. I recall years ago that Shane’s “rubber band and popsicle stick” internal RAID was very popular. But I think most people in the market for a small SAN are looking for a simple “plug and play” solution that requires little or no setup and maintenance.

Terrablock is a great product for that customer. Lairdshare may be too. I don’t know. I haven’t seen in out in the market yet.

Your recipe may work in some cases, but it’s not the supported config for an X-SAN system.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Robert,

Stow the cynicism, please. Do you really mean to say that just ’cause you didn’t see it or hear about it from your “friends” it can’t be any good? Close minded, are we?

It just so happens that Videography magazine gave “Lairdshare” one of it’s “Best of Show” awards. When I was at NAB I happened to wander by the Laird booth and ended up having a long conversation with Dan Summer, one of the brains behind the product. Dan told me that his background is in much larger scale SANs for the likes of various government agencies, but that this is his first effort at transferring that technology and expertise to the “under 12 seat” post house SAN. What’s so unique about this product? The bandwidth that he’s able to push through plain old gig E is extraordinary. If you can avoid fibre, you can save a ton of money on HBA’s, fibre switches, cable drops, etc. The Lairdshare is a step in that direction.

I’ve got no reason to tout this product other than I can see that the design and concept of this product is very forward thinking. I’ve already got a huge X-SAN, and the Lairdshare as currently configured isn’t for me. But, if you’re looking for a small, efficient, easy to use “SAN in a CAN”, you should take a look at Lairdshare.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Bob,

My best advice to you is to just buy a mountain of storage. Forget up rez, down rez, moving files around. If you just have a big bucket, you can throw it all in and never worry about media management.

I’ve done a lot of reality shows and trust me when I say, you can NEVER have a big enough bucket. Estimate what you think you may need and TRIPLE it! You also REALLY want to avoid the “uprez” later workflow. Deadlines are becoming shorter and shorter, and there are constant needs for high rez material in advance of picture lock (PROMOS?). So, the off-line to on-line workflow is really a hinderance. Yes, we still use it, but we’re trying to get away from it every chance we get.

Good luck.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Alan,

I just got back from NAB, and I can tell you that the advice you quoted from MR Zelin, while accurate at the time, is rapidly changing.

I saw more “SAN in the CAN” solutions this year than ever before. These simple to implement, maintain, and administer systems are all aimed at that “12 and under” small post environment.
Most interestingly, many of these solutions are NOT using fibre channel. They’re figuring out how to achieve the necessary bandwidth over gig e.

This space is now getting very crowded with many players offering various solutions. Off the top of my head, check out:
Terrablock by Facillis, SANmp, Editshare, and a new entry at NAB, “Lairdshare” from Laird telemedia.

Finally, I saw a very interesting approach to a SAN using over one hundred small laptop drives. Keep in mind, “more spindles equals more bandwidth”. The whole thing ran on DC power (just like your laptop). Very interesting .

The SAN field is undergoing MAJOR innovation right now. Expect a rocky ride ahead.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Walter,

Yes, we’ve been successful “punching in” to D beta or HDCAM SR masters with no black at the end . We do it all the time.

Kona 3 for either HD or SD.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

What are you talking about?

You sound like you’ve been abducted by aliens!

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

We use Pilotware. http://www.pilotware.com

We’re able to use the low res proxies from XDCAM for logging on either a PC or a Mac.

It’s really quite an extensive program. Widely popular in the reality world.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Another vote for “NO PROBLEMS” with long form.

Just completed a 2 hour special for MTV. We work with multiple projects open simultaneously in a workgroup environment, which keeps the individual project size down. “Project bloat” is best avoided, and if you do so, the length of show is irrelevant. I think people equate “FCP problems” with longform because one tends to spend more time on a long project, thereby accumulating lots of garbage along the way. If you’re careful to keep a clean project, FCP can keep up with you, regardless of the length of show.

It also doesn’t hurt to have at least 4 gig of RAM on your computer.

Mark

[Mark Raudonis]

Julian,

We’ve been working with editors in different time zones for years.

Here’s my suggestion.

Have a duplicate set of media. If your producer already has FCP, there’s no need to compress down to h.264. It would be far easier to clone a firewire drive of the digitized media and have him just boot it up. Then, rather than a word document of “selects” he can just email you a project containing a single timeline of choices. The file size of that small project (sequence only) is small enough to email back and forth. Worst case, you set up an FTP site to send that info back and forth. If you maintain a file structure of naming your drives EXACTLY the same at both ends, your “reconnecting” is literally just one click.

Renders stay local, so you’ll have to redo those, but the time it takes to do that should be minimal… especially if you’re working at a low resolution.

There’s plenty of people who have been doing this for a long time. It works well.

Mark