Avid Fibre Channel Stumbles But 7.0 is Right On Track by Tony Solomons Over the past year, many advances have been made in digital editing. Many of you who are working hard on long term projects may not be aware of what is going on in other cutting rooms around town. Most of us have experienced the feeling of diving head first into the black hole of post production only to emerge ten months later to discover that worlds have changed, planets have collided and Avid has developed eight new versions of the Composer software. Earlier this year I wrote a review for the Newsletter on Avid's newest Composer software, Version 7.0. Much of my early excitement was generated by the new features, but the software was slightly buggy. Since then, the software designers at Avid have been working hard to eliminate the bugs and increase confidence in their Composer software. Many of you are hesitant to use brand new software releases. This caution is usually wise. But now that 7.0 has exper-ienced several metamorphoses, you may want to try it out on your next project. Currently, I am working on a feature for Universal Pictures. We struggled with many of the early editions of 7.0 before installing Composer 7.02v1 which is stable and considerably less buggy. The editor has vast digital editing experience which made him comfortable being a pioneer in utilizing the latest technology. In addition to using the latest composer software, this is one of the first features to use Transof's redesigned shared storage software FibreNet Lite (formerly known as StudioBoss). We are successfully running two workstations both sharing a couple of towers. Our dailies are delivered pre-digitized on an R-mag which we transfer onto our fibre drives. Our systems and our telecine are being provided by D.E.S. in North Hollywood. Last week I talked with Dennis Hoffman, Director of Infrastructure Product Management, and Douglas Hynes, Product Line Manager, at Avid Technologies in Tewksbury regarding the status of Avid's fibre shared-storage system. Avid's launch of its much anticipated Media Share Fibre Channel (MS F/C) has had a very shaky start. When Avid launched its first MS F/C product early this year, significant limitations caused problems connecting multiple workstations to large quantities of storage. Avid has been struggling to compete with Transoft's Fibre Channel which has been on the market since last year. On July 10th, Avid recognized the need for further testing when they stopped shipping their fibre shared-storage system. They immediately instituted a rigorous product revamping and quickly resumed shipping the improved MS F/C on July 29th. Avid is now confident in their product and hopes many productions will choose their shared storage system. The MS F/C is capable of connecting nine workstations to 540 gigabytes of storage or three workstations working at AVR 77. Avid continues their work to improve this new product with plans to expand its capacity and make the administrating software easier to use. There are no plans to link 7.0 with SCSI Media Share. Avid explains why: The difference between MS SCSI versus MS F/C is equivalent to editors going from a Quadra 950 on NuBus to PCI. The capabilities of Fibre Channel-based shared storage far exceed those of MediaShare SCSI, in bandwidth, reliability and performance. Therefore, the decision was made to go forward with a technically superior product that would best serve Avid's customers in terms of overall value and future investment protection.   Tony Solomons is an assistant editor.   Reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter Vol. 19, No. 5 - September/October 1998   Guild Home | Newsletter Home | Top of Page   Copyright © 1998, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 776