[Neil Sadwelkar]

HDCamSR to Digi will speed up the video by 4% and the audio as well. Pitch and tempo will change. You can correct the pitch in FCP with AUPitch. Its not that bad a filter and I think the algorithms come from Logic.

An alternative is to take the HD 24p ProRes, and convert it to SD 25fps in Compressor with Rate conversion set to best.

I come from an environment where films have songs and dances, so the 4% shift in tempo is absolutely not tolerated by our music directors. So we go with keeping the video at 24fps and cleaning it up with motion correction while keeping the audio speed intact. I’ve made many a telecast master this way.

May not be the solution for you, but you can try a small sample. Once with audio intact and motion corrected in Compressor. And one with 4% speedup and pitch corrected in FCP. And judge for yourself which is the better route.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

HFS+ is a filesystem. You can format an attached drive with a filesystem. You can’t (AFAIK) format a mounted volume.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m inclined to go with Bob about the elegantly simple solution of making a MacPro as a ‘server’ and using link aggregation and basic networking that’s built into the MacOSX. This plain works.

I work at a facility that has, apart from editing systems (Avid/FCP) a veritable cocktail of networking. PCs (300+) doing CG and VFX, Linux systems running smoke/flame, DI systems – iQ, Resolve, Lustre hanging off a Bright SAN, an old SGI SAN, and our own DIY NAS boxes. We do Linux, Irix, Win 2k3 server. TCP/IP, SMB, NFS, wiretap, and God knows what else. We have a team of over a score very bright IT guys to keep all this running.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging, but the point is, networking for editing and post can get complex.

But in all this cocktail, the one solution we found worked, even as far back as 2004, is simple AFP sharing. Except for Avid back then, it worked wonderfully. Now, with Leopard and link aggregation and managed switches, it rocks.

Mark my words, you can FreeNAS all you want, but if you’re editing with FCP, you’ll eventually find that this solution is the most elegantly simple and positively working. When you leave a long timeline to render all night and a DVD encode on the side over AFP networked machines, you can go to bed secure with the knowledge, that if the world hasn’t been destroyed overnight by a meteor impact, your render will be done the next morning.

AFP is not unique in this guarantee, its the cheapest.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m inclined to go with Bob about the elegantly simple solution of making a MacPro as a ‘server’ and using link aggregation and basic networking that’s built into the MacOSX. This plain works.

I work at a facility that has, apart from editing systems (Avid/FCP) a veritable cocktail of networking. PCs (300+) doing CG and VFX, Linux systems running smoke/flame, DI systems – iQ, Resolve, Lustre hanging off a Bright SAN, an old SGI SAN, and our own DIY NAS boxes. We do Linux, Irix, Win 2k3 server. TCP/IP, SMB, NFS, wiretap, and God knows what else. We have a team of over a score very bright IT guys to keep all this running.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging, but the point is, networking for editing and post can get complex.

But in all this cocktail, the one solution we found worked, even as far back as 2004, is simple AFP sharing. Except for Avid back then, it worked wonderfully. Now, with Leopard and link aggregation and managed switches, it rocks.

Mark my words, you can FreeNAS all you want, but if you’re editing with FCP, you’ll eventually find that this solution is the most elegantly simple and positively working. When you leave a long timeline to render all night and a DVD encode on the side over AFP networked machines, you can go to bed secure with the knowledge, that if the world hasn’t been destroyed overnight by a meteor impact, your render will be done the next morning.

AFP is not unique in this guarantee, its the cheapest.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I’m curious about this.

Were both Macs connected directly to one another and nothing else? And they had no connection on the other Ethernet port?

And, the cable was a proper CAT 6 type?

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

We’ve done exactly what you refer to, since Dec 2004. Not one single media file has ever been corrupted. Just because someone opened it over the network.

Just to clarify, we mount each others drives and share media over GigE between 4 FCPs. All with attached storage. So, an editor could be editing without knowing that someone elsewhere is actually running media files that are on his disk.

What we don’t do is to capture to each others drives. But that is not our requirement. Ultimately you have to realise that if you’re editing media that’s not on your disk, all you’re doing is actually just playing those files. FCP doesn’t alter media files while editing them. Except if you change reel name, file name, or timecode.

Neil

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Walter is right about getting storage that’s made for more than the 2 stations you have at the moment. If you make a ‘for the moment’ solution, then that will also cost something. To make that shared may add even more of an expense.

That being said, if you’re absolutely sure this will be your need for a while, then you can consider getting some really fast RAID 5 storage for a MacPro. Then connect both its GigE ports to a small GigE switch. And connect an iMac to the same switch. You can edit/capture on the RAID 5 from the iMac by mounting it on the iMac.

So this MacPro will be an edit station as well as a server. You may have trouble if you capture using the iMac to the RAID 5 while the MacPro is also editing off the same. But this solution will not cost you anything extra. So you can check if it works, and if its troublesome, then look for something like what Walter has suggested.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

ProRes even HD is fine over GigE. We use it as 1080p24 mostly. Also, machines that share storage need to be on a switch dedicated between the two. I have two MacPros connected with a direct cable between the two in Ethernet 2 and a cable from Ethernet 1 to the house network which has nearly 250 machines – XP, Linux, MacOSX.

Thes two happily share all the way up to 1080p24. One machine can even capture and layoff simultaneously.

Sharing media between Mac connected to each other directly over AFP through a dedicated network works better. And small 5-8 port GigE switches are quite inexpensive, and all MacPros have 2 Ethernet ports.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Instead of having a truly shared and’in the centre’ storage, you can consider this.

1. Leave the existing FCP as is, and make it the capture station.
2. Add another FCP for editing station.
3. Add another as output/mastering station.

Connect all three via a dedicated switch over GigE and keep jumbo packets on.

In the two new FCPs add internal storage or external fast SATA storage. For internal I’d recommend Apple RAID card and 3×1 Tb drives as RAID 0 or 5.

Your workflow will be to capture in the capture station. Mount its drive on edit station and edit off GigE or copy media to the edit station.

After edit, mount the capture station’s drive on the output station or copy media there. And output to tape.

You may wonder why all this copying and whether that defeats the purpose of central storge. But you know what, no drive is immortal and even if your projects are backed up hourly, a media drive failure or even funkiness can mean many hours of recapture and FCP is not exactly the most reliable ‘relinker’.

Redundant copy of media is a sort of data security. For many small houses, this central storage is a huge expense in time and money and only the expensive solutions are truly trouble-free in the long run.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.

[Neil Sadwelkar]

From the SRT files it may be possible to create XMLs that you can import into FCP and lay down on a separate layer. Then export out your movie one per language if you need ‘burnt-in’ subtitles.

If you need to make a DVD then the SRT files may be convertible to STL that imports into DVDStudio Pro. So you can have user-selectable subtitles ;like they have in movie DVDs.

Neil Sadwelkar

FCP Editor, Mumbai, India.
Completely PAL.