Avid Shared Storage

Avid Shared Storage

by Greg Cameron

Shared storage for non-linear editing has taken several forms over the past decade, from the basic shuttling of hard disks from system to system, to current high-speed networking schemes. Unfortunately, although the price of drives has decreased, the cost of sharing them has not. This is due in part to the limited choices available. With the exception of Avid’s Unity MediaNet, most shared storage solutions are not compatible with modern Media and Film Composers. A Unity solution can scale successfully from a simple editor/assistant team all the way to a post facility hosting multiple editors, assistants and projects. But this flexibility may make Unity cost-prohibitive for some projects. Transoft also offers Avid-compatible



Almost an antique – the disk stack from an old Micropolis 3.6 GB drive.

storage networking and has done so since the mid-‘90s. A few new hardware vendors are also entering this market, at price-points that are lower than Avid’s.

History

Let’s take a look at shared storage solutions that have been available in the past. The first was MediaShare SCSI, introduced in 1995 when Avid Composer Version 5.2 was released. It was a simple system that allowed up to four Media or Film Composers to connect to a single bank of storage, initially limited to 49 nine-gigabyte drives. The system used MediaShare software to arbitrate read/write access and, though limited in its capabilities, was very simple and easy to use. This was a huge workflow improvement for the feature film community. Several editors could now work on the same footage, while assistants handled digitizing and outputs on their own systems. It eliminated the need to have multiple copies of the same material on separate disks for each editor’s use. At that time, the disks and the hub used to connect the Avids were an added expense, but that was offset by convenience and simplicity and the fact that only one set of drives was needed.

MediaShare SCSI had its weaknesses, some of which still plague shared storage solutions. A crash on one system could take down the other systems on the network. The drives required frequent maintenance with repair utilities to prevent crashes and corruption. MediaShare SCSI became particularly unstable and crash-prone when Avid introduced the PCI-based Media/Film Composer Version 6.

MediaShare SCSI was superceded by MediaShare F/C (Fibre Channel), rolled out during the release of Composer 6.5 in 1997. It promised to eliminate a lot of the problems with SCSI on the Mac PCI platform, as well as increase the number of simultaneous users. The increased data throughput of Fibre Channel also allowed the use of higher resolutions. Unfortunately, while MediaShare F/C did increase the number of users and resolutions available, it did little to improve the stability of the sharing software. Over the next few years, software and hardware issues would improve somewhat, but basic stability remained adequate at best. After only a few revision cycles, the company writing the MediaShare software dropped development and ended its relationship with Avid. This left the rest of us stuck with mediocre software to drive this relatively high-end Fibre Channel storage for our Avids.

Not long after Avid introduced MediaShare F/C, Transoft introduced its own sharing solution, FibreNet (formerly known as StudioBoss), to work with their own Fibre Channel drives. Its overall stability was improved, but it still suffered from some of the same software and hardware issues. Improvements have since been made to Transoft’s solution, and it’s also cross-platform-compatible between Macintosh and Windows NT. In addition, the company has a RAID option available that prevents data loss in the event of a drive crash by striping video across multiple drives. (20% of your storage is sacrificed to make use of this option.)

Avid’s MediaShare F/C and Transoft’s FibreNet are in wide use today, mainly with Avid’s Version 7.x Composer software. But MediaShare F/C is not compatible with Avid Version 10. FibreNet is compatible up to release 10.5 for Mac, but not 10.5 running on Windows 2000 (the company promises an upgrade soon). It remains to be seen if Transoft will be able to maintain compatibility with future Avid releases.

A few newcomers also make good Avid-compatible shared storage, including Archion, Rorke, EMC and others. But the situation is confused by the fact that they all need third-party software, running on all machines in the network, to function, and Avid-compatible software choices are limited.

Unity MediaNet

When Avid introduced Composer Version 8 in conjunction with their new Meridian video board set, they also introduced a new, managed, shared-storage solution, Avid Unity MediaNet. It is the premier shared storage solution for Avid and will run with Composers all the way back to version 7.2. Unity is a powerful and stable system based on a separate Windows NT server that feeds video to all client workstations. In a full-blown setup, Unity allows more than 20 users access to the same material at the same time at reasonably high resolutions. Individual editing system crashes will not take down others connected to the network. Unity can also mirror all the data onto redundant drives, so if a drive fails, you can keep working without loss of material (but this doubles your storage requirements). Very large amounts of storage can be installed. Unity allows both Mac- and Windows NT-based Avids to share media, and projects can be shared as well, in a Version 10 environment. It is simple for editors and assistants to use, and it doesn’t require utility maintenance like older systems. But Unity is more expensive — beyond the budget limitations of many feature films and television shows, at least for now.

Most of the Hollywood feature and episodic community is still cutting on version 7.x Avids. A key reason for this is the cost of shared storage. MediaShare F/C and FibreNet are widely available and relatively inexpensive to rent. But the release of Version 10 narrows the compatible storage options and changes the price/performance equation.

The Future

In mid-September Avid released a pared-down, Ethernet-based version of Unity called ‘LANshare.’ It allows for lower-cost media sharing at offline resolutions with up to six machines. It’s less expensive than Unity and should be available late this year. By releasing this product, Avid is moving into lower-cost media sharing for smaller workgroups — something the Hollywood market has needed for some time. If it works and if the price is right, everyone will benefit. Productions will order more Version 10 Composers, editors will get new systems with the storage they need and vendors will sell more products.

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