[Neil Sadwelkar]

But its still not clear if Xatlast needs the Avid MC to be MC Ultimate or will work with MC standard. If Xatlast can work on MC standard then the difference in pricing between MC Standard and MC ultimate is made up by the price of Xatlast.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

David,

Yes we tried it. In a situation similar to what you described. Two Avids working together on the same media. Both had drives connected to them and media had to be shared quite often. These were in a VFX facility with hundreds of machines so they were on a large network. There, I guess because of the traffic, Xatlast was a bit of a struggle to work. Their IT dept tried to make the share going, and eventually gave up and connected the systems directly with a cable to each other. Besides, they were the average Windoze folks so they couldn’t even figure out networking and sharing on a Mac.

This was all last year, when the world was a different place.

Then eventually in Feb 2020 or so, they bought Mimiq since the version of Xatlast they had then wasn’t working out. I too was travelling so I couldn’t support them.

In March everything changed for us and we all had to move work home. So, Teradici, and these two Avids functions changed and they were in different homes. One of these two Avids is still at a home, and the other is at work with the editor coming 2-3 times a week.

Hopefully it will get better and we will have people working together not from homes.

But I’m still curious. Does Xatlast need Avid MC to be MC|Ultimate or does Xatlast work with Avid MC|Standard. One or both?

Neil

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Great to hear Tolis has been acquired by OWC. Now I hope OWC stops bundling the myLTO software with their Mercury Pro LTO device. And instead offer Bru-PE or Argest with the Mercury Pro LTO.

Looking forward to new stuff from Tolis.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I had to Google these to find out what you are referring to.

From what I could gather, you are comparing,

1. getting an internal Apple 8TB SSD fitted in your MacBook Pro at the time of purchase for an additional $ 2,200, vs

2. getting an external Thunderbolt RAID the G-Technology G-Speed Shuttle SSD for $ 4,800, vs

3. a Sabrent RocketQ 8TB SSD (SB-XTMQ-8TB) which is a PCIe SSD in a Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.2 case for $ 2000.

The G-Speed model you mention, is a 4-bay 3.5″ RAID fitted with 8 2.5″ SATA 1TB SSDs getting you 8TB formatted as RAID0. The RocketQ and the Apple SSD are actually comparable to each other as they are both PCIe NVMe SSD, one is internal and the other is external.

There is something very convenient about having a large storage inside you MBP vs one hanging off a cable, so if that kind of hyper portability is important, then there is no contest. Get the internal SSD. There is no detrimental effect of having one’s OS and data on the same drive as far as I can tell. I use my internal MBP SSDs to back up huge amounts of data off camera cards while doing other things like dailies grade or sync off the same SSD.

If having all that data available to any other system is also important, then get an external SSD. The Sabrent RocketQ is not the only one available in that capacity and form factor, so, shop around. For example take a look at OWC’s Thunderblade SSD RAID (2 SSDs), or the OWC Express 4M2 SSD RAID (4 SSDs). Even Netstor makes a handy 4-way PCIe SSD enclosure with a small fan too. Actually, considering the heat these SSDs produce when reading/writing, it might be a better idea to use external SSDs. The MacBook Pro is anyways quite ‘thermally challenged’.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

One of the issues that anyone with Bru faces now is that, if they have ver 3.x, then they can no longer upgrade to Argest 4.x. And that’s important because ver 3.x does not work on macOS 10.15. And any new Mac you buy now, will have macOS 10.15 pre-installed and which cannot (presumably ) be rolled back, nor can the Mac be booted with macOS 10.14.

So, if one is using Bru 3.x on an old system, then that needs to be replaced with an old system too. One option is to buy a refurb Mac 2018/19 model on the Apple Store. Or, of course scour eBay or some other such site for an old system. Outlets like OWC could be having good ‘open box’ deals on 2018/19 models too. But the time is literally, now, for this purchase.

Alternately, since Tolis is closed, one can possibly ‘borrow’ a copy of Argest for someone who has it, and then one is fine with a new Mac. But any compatibility issues with older Bru 2.x and Bru 3.x catalogs with Argest, will not be supported since Tolis isn’t functional.

The situation will get more complicated next year or maybe 2021 when all new Macs ship with macOS11 which may or may not work with Argest.

Migrating from Bru archives to LTFS using a good LTFS app is a possibility for the original poster because they have all the data on drives as well. But for someone who doesn’t, the laborious task of restoring their Bru tapes to drives, and then writing them to LTFS looms large, and needs to be done within about the next 2-3 years.

Happily though this might be a good thing as the number of tapes will reduce drastically. Like, 12 or more LTO-4 tapes will be replaced by one LTO-8. Or even with LTO-5, 7 or more LTO-5 tapes will be replaced by one LTO-8. If one waits for LTO-9, then there number or tapes reduced will be even more.

But migrating LTO looks like is going to be a necessity as older LTO tapes become unsupported by newer LTO drives. Already LTO-8 tape drives can no longer read LTO-6 or earlier tapes. So, one necessarily has to own and maintain multiple LTO drives. And check the older ones from time to time to ensure that they still work.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Make the ‘Path’ column in the Media Pool active if it isn’t already. Then against each offline clip, check the path and ensure that its valid. Like, the drive/folder names and full paths are not different from what Resolve is seeing. If they are, then either do a relink and relink them to the new path, or at the Finder level rename folders to match.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Mike, you are confusing Thunderbolt with Firewire.

You’ve linked to an old Startech Firewire card. That won’t work in this case.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

This depends on how long you need to access this RAID on a PC. If its like permanently, then get a Thunderbolt 3 card for your PC. That may or may not be possible depending on your PC’s motherboard, and your appetite for opening the PC and inserting a card in it.

So the other option is, via a network with a Mac. You could get a mac Mini and a 10GigE or a GigE Ethernet adapter to connect that to your PC over Ethernet. Then you connect to the drive to the Mac Mini, connect the PC and Mac Mini over Ethernet, and share the drive. So the Mac Mini is working like a ‘server’.

Its not absolutely necessary to buy a new Mac. If this is a temporary requirement, then you could borrow one, buy a used one cheap too. It has to have a reasonably capable dual core CPU with even 8GB RAM will do. It can be a MacBook Air too. All you need is an Ethernet adapter for the Mac, assuming that on the PC side you already have a Ethernet port.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Bru PE 3.x is not compatible with macOS Catalina. So, its already impossible to buy a new Mac that can run Bru PE 3.x reliably.

I haven’t used ArGest, but from what I’ve gathered from your post, it seems to have one large database of catalogs. Unlike Bru PE 3.x and earlier, which had one catalog per tape. Which one could simply copy to a new system and Bru on that system would see that catalog and enable you to restore from that tape.

Another method I use extensively when making backups fro disk to LTO is to also drag and drop the contents into a Diskcatalogmaker catalog. And name it the same as the LTO. This enables me to ‘browse’ the LTO contents offline without having to actually run the tape or open Bru.

Alternately, at one client place, I have NeoFinder which can actually import Bru Catalogs and present them in a Finder like interface so that too enables you to ‘browse’ a Bru tape offline. Mind that for some reason NeoFinder can read file and folder names and reconstruct the folder structure on a Bru Tape, but it seems unable to show file creation/modification time. Maybe it s NeoFinder 6.x thing fixed in the newer version.

But if you restore from a Bru tape, all file date/time are, of course, restored. So Bru certainly stores this somewhere.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Yes, that’s with Bru 3.x. I didn’t upgrade to Argest, and probably was a good thing I didn’t, looking at the trouble you’re having with importing archives.

Very recently, like in May-June sometime, whilst still in lockdown, a client needed to restore some data from a tape written a couple of years ago. I knew they had kept catalogs safely, but , with all the social distancing in place, I didn’t have easy access to them.

So I went ahead and imported the catalog off the tape. It took a while, but I don’t know how long exactly as I kept it for import and checked it the next morning. So maybe it got done in a few minutes or maybe longer.

Anyway, with the catalog inside Bru, I proceeded to extract the files I needed.

So, yes, even with the shutting down of Tolis, Bru 3.x archives aren’t orphaned, it would appear. At least till we still have the tape drives, and systems to read them.

Now, if someone can convince Tim Jones to frequent this forum, and offer ‘per case’ support on Bru, for a small fee, maybe with Patreon, or some such online payment scheme, it would help the large number of existing Bru and Argest users while keeping him supported.