FCPX Production Studio Storage Question, Need Help

We are setting up a new production office where we will be using FCPX for our editing for broadcast TV. I was wondering what are the best options you are aware of to access a central media pool (SAN, NAS)? We have a sizable library of media spanning over 6-7 years, I would estimate it at around 50TB or so.

We want to be able to access the footage from a central server from different workstations. What are the best options for performance and capacity? What is the difference between a SAN and a NAS? What is the best for FCPX editing and are there any hangups working this way?

Thank you so much for any input and help!!

Hi Adam,

The media management improvements in 10.1.2 have made using FCP X on a shared storage system much more straightforward now, which is a good thing. Yet setting up a good working SAN or NAS is still something you don't do overnight. There are hundreds of little and big things to consider such as:

- Can you start from scratch or do you need to integrate your shared media pool into an existing setup?
- What is the amount of constantly shared storage you will need?
- Do you want all your archive media to be always available on the shared storage or will you only need the SAN/NAS for the projects you are working on and will you keep older project media on a separate backup storage system? This decision will have a huge impact on the price of your system.
- How many users will connect to the media pool at the same time?
- What is the bandwidth per stream you will need for the particular media you will be using? Editing with native media is much more taxing on your SAN/NAS than using proxy workflows.
- How many simultaneous streams will the system need to handle with maximum connectivity? If your work involves lots of multicam projects you will need much more bandwidth per connected user than when working with single streams.
- How fast do you think your media pool and your number of simultaneous users may grow? Expandability is a very important factor to consider when setting up a shared media pool.
- And I could go on for a day or so...

All these details make the difference between only needing to connect a bunch of workstations to a small RAID over Gigabit Ethernet to installing a huge and fast media server over 10 Gig ethernet or Fibre which can cost you anything anything between 30K and 200K or even more. So you need to be prepared and ask around before making any final decisions.

Unless this is a simple setup for 2 or 3 workstations not requiring too much bandwidth the last thing you want to do is set this up yourself or (even much worse) have an IT engineer who is specialized in setting up e-mail servers do this. Setting up a reliable and stable SAN for fast collaborative video editing requiring loads of bandwidth is a job for specialists. Most system integrators apply their own tweaks to make any off-the-shelf system run faster and more reliable, and any serious system integrator will offer 24/7 online assistance in case anything goes wrong. When a single workstation fails it's bad but your downtime is limited; when a shared media system fails your entire production stops.

The best thing you can do is contact multiple system integrators specialized in video, give them a very precise description of what you will actually need (answer the questions above) and ask them what they suggest. I see you are in the US so there are many experienced system integrators you can contact. Also speak with people who are already running SAN/NAS solutions for workflows that can be compared with your specific workflow. Feedback from people working on real-life systems is much more valuable than brochures from manufacturers

As every setup is completely different it is impossible to give you general suggestions. If you have very specific questions feel free to pm me. If you are not on a tight deadline with this: send me some more information about your specific requirements (see the questions above). In August we start preparing a new shared storage system around FCP X at a major television production company. We are looking at a 50 to 100 TB expandable fast SAN with 5 to 10 and more simultaneous users. If your requirements are similar to what we will need I can keep you updated on our progress and share information on the choices we make.

- Ronny