Avid's MediaShare F/C Simplified by Robert Brakey Avid's MediaShare F/C (Fibre Channel) networking package has been on the market for almost a year now, but many users still find the software end of it a bit confusing. This article should help make sense of the controls and provide instruction on how to manage shared drives and create user profiles to fit your particular work environment. MediaShare F/C serves two functions. The first is to designate which volumes (either entire drives or partitions) in your fibre-channel network are to be shared, or managed, by the software. The second is to assign read and write access to these volumes. Before beginning, though, there are a few basics to remember: All drives on your show must be formatted correctly using Avid Drive Utility v.2.0. The fibre cabling should be correctly connected to all systems. The MediaShare F/C software must be successfully installed on all systems in your network. On most shows with rented Avid equipment, this will have been done by the rental company. Launch MediaShare by double-clicking the alias "StartupMediaShare. class" (unless you have previously renamed it). Select Workgroup in the menu bar to see Volumes and Users in the pop-up menu. Select Volume Management, which will appear to the right of Volumes. The Volume Management window is straightforward. The Unmanaged list on the right is for all volumes not to be shared, the Managed list on the left is for volumes to be shared. Depending on your work environment, put your volumes in the correct list and select Done. Keep in mind that only the drives in your fibre-channel network will show up in this window; drives in a SCSI chain, for example, will not appear. If any of your fibre-channel drives do not appear, try remounting them using Avid Drive Utility v.2.0. Once volume management has been established, you can now assign read and write access to these volumes by creating and configuring user profiles. All of the appropriate controls are located under Profile in the menu bar. Select Create to call up the Profile Configuration screen. From your list of managed volumes, move over the volumes you want to include in your profile. Now select each drive in the Volumes in Profile list and click Volume Setup to assign Read, Write or No Access for your system. Access status is shown with red, yellow and green lights. If you are assigning drive access independently for each Avid on the network, it's important to keep track of which systems have write access to which drives, as only one system can write to each volume at any time. Any number of profiles can be created, configured, renamed, deleted and activated using the Profile pop-up menu. For example, let's say you have two Avids on the network, one for the editor and another for the assistant. The assistant station usually needs write access to the majority of managed volumes for digitizing, while the editor station may only need one or two volumes for rendering effects, backup or transporting. However, for regular Norton maintenance work, the assistant station will need write access to all volumes. It's not a bad idea to make a user profile for this purpose and name it "Norton" or "Write Access All." The Media-Share F/C main window, present upon launching the application, can be used to quickly switch between your user profiles using the pop-up menu under the Avid logo. Underneath the Profile pop-up menu is the main window, displaying all managed drives with their access lights. User access can also quickly be modified here by clicking on the volume name, bringing up a miniature volume setup window. Again, only one system in the network can have write access to any managed volume. If you want to acquire write access to another user's volume, simply ask for write access and MediaShare will attempt to "steal" the volume from the other user. Note that this feature is only available if the other user is not currently writing to the volume - and will not need to do so during the edit session. MediaShare F/C also utilizes the Ethernet network to allow users to communicate with one another. At the program's Communications Center, users can send instant messages, or use the Ping feature to test all Ethernet connections. Fibre-channel hardware allows for more flexibility in your physical network. Similarly, MediaShare F/C is both more functional and easier to modify and use than SCSI MediaShare. After you've established your managed drives and configured your various user profiles, you'll forget all about the little MSScanner box and "Display Available Devices" messages from the original version. One last tip: Making an extra alias of "StartupMediaShare.class" and adding it to your Startup Items folder will allow the software to run almost completely in the background.   Robert Brakey is an assistant editor. If you have any comments or feedback on this column, or an idea or suggestion for a future topic, send him an email Please include the word Avid in the subject of your e-mail.   Reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter Vol. 20, No. 2 - March/April 1999   Guild Home | Newsletter Home | Top of Page   Copyright © 1999, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 700