Need collaboration solution for FCPX

[kepardue]

So, I need to collaborate with a guy editing video in an office some 50 feet away. I don't think it's practical (or possibly possible) to run a Thunderbolt cable that distance, and even if so, I'm sure we'd have to swap the cables when one or the other wanted to use it.

As I understand it, FCPX is designed to work with SAN for this purpose. I noticed that Drobo has a solution called B800i that might fit the bill. Does anyone have any experience using a Drobo B800i (or similar) in a multi-workstation configuration for sharing editing of FCPX libraries? If so, what's your experience?

What kind of adapters do you need for the workstations? This will be a Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro. What kind of cabling needs to be run?

Thanks in advance!

 

[tjwilliams25]

So, I need to collaborate with a guy editing video in an office some 50 feet away. I don't think it's practical (or possibly possible) to run a Thunderbolt cable that distance, and even if so, I'm sure we'd have to swap the cables when one or the other wanted to use it.

As I understand it, FCPX is designed to work with SAN for this purpose. I noticed that Drobo has a solution called B800i that might fit the bill. Does anyone have any experience using a Drobo B800i (or similar) in a multi-workstation configuration for sharing editing of FCPX libraries? If so, what's your experience?

What kind of adapters do you need for the workstations? This will be a Mac Pro and a Macbook Pro. What kind of cabling needs to be run?

Thanks in advance!

The Drobo should fit your use perfectly. The only cabling you should need is ethernet. You will want to have a fast network connection, as working with media over it will be slow (on a slower connection) if it is high resolution. Also, both of you can work on the same project, just not at the same time. However, as long as you have the library file on the Drobo, both of you will have easy access to the most recent cut.

I forgot to point it out earlier, but you will both have to be on the same network.

 

[kepardue]

I had just assumed we wouldn't be able to open the library at the same time, and I'm fine with that. I'm just looking for a solution to keep us from having to sneaker-net the Drobo from one workstation to another when we need to swap up editing duties.

Our computers connect to the Internet in general via wifi, so we'll run an ethernet cable between the two specifically for this application. It looks like the Drobo D800i has a USB3 connector and two iSCSI/gigabit ethernet connectors. Does it use both gigabit connections simultaneously if plugged into one computer? Could we attach the device to our Macbook Pro via USB3 and run dual CAT6 cables to the Mac Pro and connect with dual ethernet that way? Would a CAT6 patch cable work?

Or, if there isn't a speed advantage, we could just run ethernet patch cables from the dual iSCSI ports to each of our workstations and connect that way.

In any case, it sounds like you're confirming that this would give us the speed we need specifically for use with Final Cut Pro X, that it's fast enough to edit the video.

 

[tjwilliams25]

The Drobo is plenty fast to edit with, as long as it's not bottlenecked with a slow connection. I would suggest using two CAT6 cables between the workstations and the Drobo. That way both workstations would be able to access everything without needing to change the setup. USB 3.0 is faster, but only one workstation would be getting that advantage. With the Ethernet solution you would at least have parity.