How can we setup shared storage?

Question

How can we setup shared storage?

HI,

I work in a small team where we do a variety of short video projects.

We have 2 editors in the office. Currently we have our media stored on an external thunderbolt drive (and backed up on another one). We swap the drive between our macs when we want to do some editing.

This means only one of us can edit at a time.

What are the options for sharing a drive to allow us both to edit different projects accessing the same media? Is this possible?

Thanks a lot.

Final Cut Pro X, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 10, 2016 1:54 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,815 points

Aug 10, 2016 2:02 AM in response to peakflowimages

YYou can't share a drive. You have to create a shared network using gigabit Ethernet.

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Answer 2

Aug 10, 2016 8:24 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

Thanks Tom, can you explain or point to some guidance on how to setup a shared network for FCPX?

Cheers

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Answer 3

Tom Wolsky

Level 10

152,815 points

Aug 10, 2016 8:57 AM in response to peakflowimages

II've never set one up only worked on them. You might be able to google it.

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Answer 4

Aug 10, 2016 9:20 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

OK cheers, yes I ve tried googling! Some articles but seem intended for much larger usage than 2-3 users.

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Answer 5

Russ H

Level 7

22,432 points

Aug 10, 2016 10:21 AM in response to peakflowimages

This may help.

http://images.apple.com/euro/finalcutpro/docs/Final_Cut_Pro_X_Xsan_Best_Practice s.pdf

Russ

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Answer 6

Aug 14, 2016 7:49 AM in response to Russ H

I only have our experience to share: we relied totally on our IT staff to set up and to maintain our shared storage.

There are devices marketed directly at FCPX shops that need to share access to media and libraries. Some are known as FCPX editing appliances, basically SAN or NAS or NFS bulk storage with proprietary software that handles the networking and user switching. You hook 'me up with big Ethernet or fiber.

When we were researching these products we realized the overhead we would expend managing the system would be greater than the benefits to the users. We also realized setting up the appliance would violate our company's policies prohibiting independent or rogue servers. We were happy to let the experts have the project.

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