[Sean Oneil]

Lol, I don’t own the company. If I did I’d be out networking with people and not machines. I’m just an editor, and a defacto “CTO” for a boutique. Workload ebbs and flows. Most of this is done on my own time, and honestly I don’t spend that much time on it.

My philosophy is much different than most people in this business. Most people want something nice and expensive that lasts them a very long time. I see things differently. To me technology products are disposable, short-term solutions. The best of the best now will always be a total piece of junk in a few years. Especially computer products. Therefore, buying “the best” isn’t my favorite strategy. I’ve come to expect that any equipment I purchase will be useful for a year or two tops.

I know how it works when you invest in something expensive that’s supposed to last. I was stuck editing on Media100 7.5 up until 2005 trying to convince everyone to jump ship.

We almost bought the full on Xserve-RAID/Xsan system in late 2005 (didn’t really need it at all). I’m so glad we didn’t because I’d be stuck using it now and up until 2012.

There’s always something new. One day Apple announces “Time Machine.” Suddenly that DLT machine you spent someone’s salary on a few years ago is a lousy solution to doing backups. Things like that bug the hell out of me, and being at a small place it makes a difference.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[Paul Dickin] “Hi
Seagate have posted the Firmware updater (Windows only):
” target=”_blank”>https://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=207931″

DO NOT UPDATE WITH THIS FIRMWARE!!! Read:
https://i.gizmodo.com/5135916/seagate-firmware-fix-turned-barracudas-into-paperweights

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[Alessandro Merletti de Palo] “unfortunately the two [opposite ;)] directions you gave me have already been tested without any real improvement”

Improvement of what? What are you talking about? Convert it in Quicktime Player. What’s the problem?

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[Alessandro Merletti de Palo] “Is quicktime pro able to do this?”

Here’s your answer:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1019348

Are you always this pleasant?

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[Matt Wright] “The data rate will just plummet down to about 20MB/s Read and Write for a second then fire back upto full speed, which to be honest is crap if you are trying to edit HD streams.”

I’ve seen this problem a lot with various equipment. Don’t have an answer for you though. Try a large RAID-0 to see if it goes away. The RAID controller might not be powerful enough to write RAID-5 fast enough. If that doesn’t help, contact Xyratex.

GPT is not a file-system. It’s a partition table. You can still create an NTFS disk with a GPT and have a volume greater than 2TB. But your Xyratex machine has to support this in order for it to work.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

To change the wrapper format (like AVI to MOV) while keeping the original codec intact is normally very complicated and usually can’t be done on a Mac. But since you’re working with uncompressed video it doesn’t matter if it gets encoded again. There won’t be any generational loss.

Do not buy Flip4Mac as it will not help you at all. That is for WMV, not AVI. Quicktime already supports AVI so long as it is a generic codec – uncompressed AVI will probably work. If it does then just export to QT movie. If it doesn’t, Google “Perian” which is an QT plugin that allows additional AVI codecs to work on a Mac. Last resort, use a Mac app called VLC Player instead of Quicktime. It plays everything.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[Archie Cruz] “I take it it’s a Windows only issue? No mention of a Mac Fix”

No, it has nothing to do with the operating system. They’re just saying it’s easy to check what version you have using Windows. The same can be done using “About This Mac”.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

[walter biscardi] “Time Machine was a complete failure here when it came time to actually retrieve and restore stuff so I just use the Backup function of Carbon Cloner which works extremely well so far.”

That’s disturbing. Anyway for backing up media it doesn’t matter. I would never actually need to do a restore since it’s not a system disk.

Carbon Copy Cloner wouldn’t work for something like this unfortunately.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

I’m trying to develop an interesting backup system in-house, just haven’t gotten around to it yet. The idea is to use Time Machine to backup media, but make it work kind of like a Drobo.

I found the components to put together a SATA/SAS JBOD enclosure that holds 15 hot swappable disks with NO TRAYS (like the Drobo) for less than $800. It would connect to an old G5 on our network. Each of the 15 disks would be shared Time Machine disks. When they all fill up, take out the one with the oldest data, store it (there’s your permanent backup), and replace with a new drive.

If anyone’s interested, these are the components:
One of these: https://addonics.com/products/raid_system/rack_overview.asp

And 3 of these:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215083

Note, those look like trays but they’re not. They’re just flip-open lids.

Also note I have not done this yet so don’t assume anything. I’m sure it will work great, but I have a habit of being too cavalier about these things.

Sean

[Sean Oneil]

RAID-5 is better. No doubt.

Sean