Chapter 11 n Editing Gear |
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Figure 11.7
A keyboard with custom-colored keycaps designed for your editing program of choice can make learning a new editing app much easier.
In addition to backing up your media, you should also back up your project files. Project files created by editing systems are usually very small and can easily be backed up to a USB key, DVD, external hard drive, or uploaded to Web-based storage, or an email server. If you have carefully organized all of your files, then your project file contains a database that tells exactly where each clip is on your original storage drives. If your system crashes, you can simply restore it from your backed-up project file and your off-site backup media drive, and then tell your editing system where to find all the duplicate footage.
Networked Systems
Now that you’ve hassled out the details of picking a single computer, you might consider picking up a few more of them. Large projects often require more than one editor, and having multiple editing systems on a network allows for instant access to shared resources, and consequently less downtime while waiting for files to transfer. High-end systems, like Avid’s Media Composer, offer special network solutions, like the Avid Unity network, which includes hardware and special software. But just because you’re not using Avid Unity doesn’t mean you need to stay out of the loop if networking will benefit your project. However, be aware that the limitations of your editing software will be a factor in terms of just exactly how and what parts of your editing workflow can be shared over a network.
Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
Storage area networks (SANs) and network-attached storage (NAS) let you share drives (and media) between multiple workstations. As with local storage drives, the key to choosing the right system is bandwidth. You want to be sure that you can move media quickly enough through your pipeline to maintain real-time video and audio. A high-bandwidth format, such
248 The Digital Filmmaking Handbook, 4E
as uncompressed HD, will require a network that uses Fibre channel. Creating your own SAN will require special software, such as Apple XSAN, Charismac Fibre Share, or Studio Network Solutions SANmp, to help manage your drives and your media across multiple workstations.
Cloud Storage
Storing your media on the “cloud”—in other words, on a remote server via the Internet—is an exciting idea, but not likely to help editors of full-resolution HD video at the present. Data rates and bandwidth are just too slow for real-time functionality. But if you are working with very low bandwidth media—video that is intended for Web or cell phone delivery—then this might be a great option for you in the near future.
Render Farms
If you plan to do lots of effects work, or if speedy workflow is an absolute essential for your production needs, a “farm” of networked computers will let you distribute your rendering tasks across multiple machines. With this type of system, separate ranges of frames are distributed to each machine for rendering. As each computer finishes its batch, the rendered frames are returned to the host system, which assembles them into a completed piece.
Most 3D applications offer network rendering, as do most high-end compositing programs. There are few editing programs that are able to distribute their rendering tasks, but these rendering chores are not usually as time-consuming as 3D and compositing rendering, so distributed rendering is not as critical.
If you want to build a render farm, you’ll need networking gear in addition to a bunch of computers. Because they are so computing-intensive, 3D programs see a bigger performance boost from distributed rendering than do compositing programs. Fortunately, because 3D project data is so small, you don’t need an especially speedy network to create a rendering farm.
Using a render farm for compositing tasks usually requires the movement of a fair amount of data, which means you’ll need to use computers on your local area network. These can be connected using a standard Ethernet network or wireless network.
No matter what type of distributed rendering you want to do, you’ll need to install special client software on all of the computers that you want to include in your render farm. Most programs that provide a distributed rendering option include a license for installing render clients on an additional number of machines, or nodes. How many nodes you can install varies from package to package; check your particular software for details. Purchasing additional rendering nodes is far less expensive than having to buy a full copy of the software.
Battery Backup
Many editing systems include a battery backup in case of a power failure. These batteries act as a central power switch for the system, and in the case of a power failure, keep the system running long enough for you to save your work and shut down properly.