Does anyone operate multiple PT LE's with a centralized drive?

[ddotbach]

I manage the equipment in my office - a public radio program. 6 of our staff members all operate Pro Tools LE AMIII on their computers. We are still using the old SCSI external hard drive method. So, whenever we need to bring Pro Tools files to the other computers we have to shut down and walk it over and restart. Not abysmal but an annoyance nonetheless. I want make this more efficient.

I know firewire is an option but then you would still have to physically move the drives whenever you needed to go to another computer. I am looking for a centralized drive networking solution that doesn't cost $40,000. (I'm referring to the Glyph system with fibre cable) Does any one operate multiple PT systems with a centralized drive system that didn't cost them an arm and a leg?

Can you do this with gigabit ethernet thru copper cable?

[stupetech]

Have you thought of firewire networking?

Unibrain make a driver for networking through standard firewire cables.

Here's the link if you are interested.
http://www.unibrain.com/home/

They have a free trial DL also. Good luck!

[Michael Cottrell]

I wasn't sure about fielding this one.

However, I think you may be overcomplicating the issue.

If all you Mac's are EtherNet/Appltalk compliant then all you would need is a simple AppleTalk network. This way you could simply transport audio files over the network instead of SneakerNetting all the time.

What I don't believe you can do is what's called program linking. Program linking means that you have Pro Tools LE on one machine/server and all machines on the network use the one application.

I presume that there is no restriction placed on the Pro Tools application where each machine on the network has a unique and authorized version of the Software/Hardware. (need to check with Digi).

I hope this will help you. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[ddotbach]

To Michael Cottrell, ckerian is correct: Appleshare is way too slow to move 1 to 5 gig size pro tools Audio File folders. Although, I haven't tried it with say a SCSI UW 160 PCI card and gigbit ethernet. If that's fast enough then I would be more than happy to use Appleshare. I was hoping that someone on this board has tried this set up.

Oh, one more thing. We rarely mix more than 10 tracks together so I think that gives me some more leeway with speed.

Thanks to stupetech for the firewire suggestion. I'm definitely looking into it.

[galaxiejer]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by ddotbach:
Appleshare is way too slow to move 1 to 5 gig size pro tools Audio File folders.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

what kind of LAN do you have right now? A 10Mbit LAN is indeed kinda slow for file sizes like this, but if you've got switched 100Mbit (and all your computers have 10/100 cards in them) transferring a 1 gig file is about two minutes. depending on your budget, you could always go for a gigabit LAN (but that's huge bucks).

[ckerian]

They want to share sessions without copying the files from the network. they want to share files and work with sessions on the same drive without moving drives. esentially they need a super fast network or disk drive system that all the workstations can share.

right?

[billbo]

Stupetechs recommendation is pretty freakin hip!!!

The FireNAS looks like a perfect solution.

right on!!

My only dislike is that you can't run at speeds a couple of 15K Cheetah, dual-channel U320 RAID's would get, but still, for a Windoze-based NAS, it looks pretty smokin'

Then again, I bet the price is as well!!!

[dcell]

A fiber channel SAN is probably the only thing fast enough to do what you're thinking. You should take a look at Studio Network Solutions. They have a system which is much more reasonable than the big guys (Rorke, Glyph, etc).