Software based Media Sharing for Avid
by David Norden
on
Jul 18, 2008 at 10:46:23 am
This is a small "poll" to see what the interest there is for a software based solution to share media between Avids and Final Cut. I run an offline editing company with about 20 editing stations, and we have been working on our own solution to share media between our editors, basically what we have done is to develop our own alternative to a LAN-Share or Editshare.
Our solutions looks like this: We run everything over a Gigabit network with Procurve switches. We use an older G5 as a server. The G5 has an ESATA-card where we connect Raided (Raid5) disks on Sonnet-chassis with 5 disks each (we use 5 1TB disks). With this solution we can connect up to 4 chassis, or totally 20 Terabyte of storage. When we need more, we can put in another ESATA-card that will allow us to connect 8 chassis, or 40 Terabyte of storage.
This solution allows us to expand our storage needs for a few hundred dollars per Terabyte, compared to a few thousand dollars per terabyte if we would have a LAN-Share or an Editshare...
The main difference is of course that the sorage hardware and the server is totally independent of each other, wich is not the case with LAN-Share or Editshare. We have for example shared disks that were connected with USB and Firewire. We have shared internal disks from one computer to another, allowing two editors to share media without the need of a separate server, since the server software also runs on the same version of OS X as the Avids and Final Cut.
Eventually we plan to make this software commercially available, but for now I would just like to hear peoples opinions and thoughts or ideas, what would be interesting for you in a software like this? We also plan to add iSCSI functions (to enable any drive as an iSCSI drive) and ATA-over-Ethernet, but that will be a bit in the future.
Re: Software based Media Sharing for Avid by Bob Zelin on Jul 24, 2008 at 2:34:44 am
how are you dealing with the MSM media databases on the AVID systems. You can do simple sharing using Apple AFP on FCP systems (and there are better ways of doing this, using link aggregation), but for AVID, you are STUCK dealing with managing multiple media databases. This is the "secret to the success" of Editshare and Facilis Terrablock.
SO, how do you avoid overwriting another Media Composers MSM Media Database in your home brew SAN ?
Re: Software based Media Sharing for Avid by David Norden on Jul 25, 2008 at 7:32:58 pm
Hi Bob! Yes, you are absolutely right, making sure media databases dont become corrupted when two or more Avids access them at the same time is crucial for this to work... This was the first thing we set out to solve, and its not supereasy to do... We have done it, and several of our projects have been using our "homebrew" (good idea for a name for the software BTW) and we donīt have any problems with the databases anymore. Sharing a disk is quite simple, making sure it doesnīt mess up when you start working on it is not so simple.
We pan to release this software when we feel its ready, and it will not cost millionsof dollars, since we want people like us, on a tight budget, to have access to it. I am guessing the price would be around 1000-2000 USD. Add a (for instance) Mac Pro, Sonnet Chassi and 5TB of disks, and you are ready to go (more or less...)
So the short answer is - we have solved the issue with Avid databases, but I cant tell you how we did it... But eventually you will be able to buy the software:)
Re: Software based Media Sharing for Avid by David Norden on Aug 6, 2008 at 10:03:29 am
Hi Dan! Thanks for your offer! As I told Thomas as well, we will have a Beta-version of the software for testing, but not for a while though. The way it looks now, the only one that can really work with it, is my tech-guy.. Letīs just say the "User Interface" is not so user-friendly yet:)
Best Regards
David
PS. I can put your name on a Newslist if you would like. And just out of curiousity, donīt the company it looks like youīre working for have stuff that does kind of the same thing:)
Re: Software based Media Sharing for Avid by Thomas Schick on Aug 12, 2008 at 3:56:00 pm
Hello Dan,
I can only encourage Avid to look for such a project sharing solution. So I feel you are on the right track, Dan.
Would fit just great in the newly announced Avid strategy.
Unity is a great product, but in a cost sensitive market not everybody's choice... you know what I mean.
However many smaller facilities with 2-5 Avid (with Compositing or 3D) seats are highly interested in shared storage. If only the project sharing was'nt the big issue with Avid.
The majority switches to the 'fruit company' and a simple file server solution.
