Final Cut Express & Ethernet

[jjjn2]

I was just told by Apple that Final Cut Express will not work with NAS drives (will not work over Ethernet is how they put it). I find this hard to believe. I am running a gigabit ethernet network which includes a wd Raid 5 gigabit interface drive. Is it really true that I can't use this?
Does anyone know if Final Cut Pro has this issue, perhaps this intentional to make people upgrade?
This is really critical to my business, if the people doing editing have to work on local drives it creates lots of issues.

Thanks.

 

[ChemiosMurphy]

can't be done. Even if you are running on gigabit, you only get 1 gigabit in and out of the NAS drive. If you have 4 editors working on a single drive you are only getting like 250 mb/s. It's too slow. Firewire400 minimum

 

[jjjn2]

Thanks

I understand the reasoning. But now I'm stuck, how do shops that have multiple editors working handle storage (I'm new to Video editing, thanks for the patience)?
If I give each guy (2-3) an external/local drive, then I have a massive backup problem.... I'm sure I'm missing something obvious.
Thanks again
Joe

 

[sl1200mk2]

I understand the reasoning. But now I'm stuck, how do shops that have multiple editors working handle storage (I'm new to Video editing, thanks for the patience)?
If I give each guy (2-3) an external/local drive, then I have a massive backup problem.... I'm sure I'm missing something obvious.
Thanks again
Joe

For a single user it'd probably work, but I can understand why Apple wouldn't endorse it -- too many variables at play in regards to setup. I don't know for sure what the "big guys" use (I'm not in the video industry), but I do manage storage arrays for server farms. I'm guessing they use a fiber channel array comprised of at least 8 (probably more though) drives in RAID-10 or RAID-50 with a 2 or 4Gb/s fiber connection back to each machines HBA. This type of hardware gets real expensive, real quick and out of reach for most users.

I don't think your backup issue is a bad as you think though. Give each user / station their own small firewire or esata array, then use something like Chronosync to automatically back their data up on a schedule to another machine (could be something as small as a mac mini with external storage) over gig ethernet. The backups would take some time to run and you'd likely want to do that overnight daily.

I love this type of stuff, so I'd be interested in hearing how this is actually approached by semi pro, pro and large scale production houses.

 

[KeithPratt]

Yep, fibre channel or even 10-gig ethernet. But the RAID here is often to prevent downtime, not to act as the full back-up plan. Project files and footage will be backed up on separate hard drives or tapes.

The main benefits of this kind of set-up come when you need several people working with the same footage at the same time. It can be really complicated to administer though, so I'd throw that idea out of the window straight away. If they're working independently, it'll be a lot easier to have each person manage their own drive cloning.