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2847
Does anyone use Macintosh Avid Media Composer with the Isilon?
Hi all,
Has anyone came across any experiences with Macintosh Avid Media Composer saving files on the Isilon? The Isilon share would be SMB protocol. I have seen and heard lots of file saving issues with Mac Avid Media Composer. Apparently a third party tool called DAVE by Thursby is required on the Mac to allow Avid to write "correctly" to network drives.
If anyone can share their experiences/suggestions/work around, that would be appreciated.
Kind regards,
Liewy
aj2546
49 Posts
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May 20th, 2013 19:00
Yes that is what the video editors ended up doing. There are multiple challenges with using Isilon vs a dedicated NAS that supports Avid. The biggest challenge is that to get the maximum benefit of having a shared NAS, the device has to be connected via 10 Gbit or Fiber to the video editing workstations. Second is that the NAS device has to support the sharepoint like mechanism Avid uses to check in, check out and lock files while editing and sharing. Isilon cannot do that natively.
If you really want Avid and Isilon to work, search for an EMC whitepaper titled “Collaborate Editing Using EMC Isilon and Flavoursys Strawberry”. It adds a software layer between the Isilon and Avid.
Any solution (Facilis, and Avid’s own NAS) I looked into is based around having super fast connectivity between the NAS and workstations.
Ahmed Jalal
aj2546
49 Posts
1
May 20th, 2013 05:00
Not with a Mac, but I do have experience with Avid Media Composer on Windows and Isilon. I will summarize, it doesn’t work 100%. Multiple users cannot work on the same project, working on a video causes unexpected delays and Avid will not support external NAS device connections.
liewy
9 Posts
0
May 20th, 2013 18:00
Thanks for the prompt reply aj2546. It is interesting to learn Windows version of Avid doesn't play well either. In terms of work around, does it mean the user would best be copying down the Avid project file and work locally, once completed, manually copy it up to the Isilon.
liewy
9 Posts
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May 21st, 2013 22:00
Thanks AJ!
RobertMcNeal
13 Posts
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August 28th, 2013 14:00
Liewy,
Check out the MXFserver solution for Avid editing on the Isilon platform. This is the same technology used by the Harmonic/Omneon Mediagrid IP SAN system for video. As for Mac OS X support, you are correct, Thursby worked closely with Avid to fix the compatibility issues between Avid Media Composer/Symphony and Apple's SMBX stack. Unfortunately, Thursby DAVE only supports SMB1, so editors seeking support for streaming throughput greater than 50MB/s on 1GbE and 10GbE will need to consider the Windows 7 version of Media Composer. It will be interesting to see how Avid runs on Mac OS 10.9 (Mavericks) which will replace Apple File Protocol (AFP) with SMB2 as the default file sharing protocol.