Getting FCP X to recognize network drives

I was facing this issue yesterday after installing a Buffalo Linkstation ethernet drive, which I was hoping to use as a fast data drive for FCP X. As it turns out, FCP X does not recognize NAS storage.

I scoured a few forums, the closest I came to an answer was at dvxusers. I didn't really understand the solution from the previous posts, but through experiment I believe I figured it out.

This ought to work with other configurations -- such as a networked computer you want to use as a central FCP Data server -- as well, and the access speed ought to be comparable to firewire, always assuming you have a gigabit network, a switcher, moderately low traffic and are not also using NAS as a Time Machine at the same time . I suppose alternatively you could configure your NAS unit to plug in directly to the computer running FCP until thunderbolt storage becomes more affordable, and then "downgrade" it to backup.

Anyway, here are the steps as I understand them (note I haven't tested this extensively; I can't be responsible for any data you might lose as a result -- I'll update the post on stability etc. in a while):

Create a dedicated folder on the NAS if you want, using that device's configuration utility or webaccess (I did this for convenience, don't think it's required, though).

Open Apple's hard disk utility (it's "Festplattendienstprogramm" on my system, I don't remember the english name ). Click on "Create new disk image."

In the pop-up, select a LOCAL folder (doesn't matter if that drive has the space you will specify for the disk image); at "save under", name your new image (this will become the name of the sparse image), the other settings (below that):

Name: of the partition you're creating, what will show up as the "drive"
Size: own setting, maximum free space you have or want to use on your NAS (you could create several of these for archiving purposes as described elsewhere in this thread; also, max. per partition is 2.15TB)
Format: Mac OS Extended (default)
Security (or whatever that's called in english): none (default)
Partitions: Apple partition (default)
Image-Format: scalable (?) bundle image

Create the image. Unmount it. drag, move or copy it to the NAS folder. Mount it again.

Start FCP X. The new "disk" should be in the events & project lists, but empty. Create a new event and a new project on the new "disk".

Now you can use it as you would any other attached drive.

If you copy existing events & projects over, you might have to start them the first time by double-clicking on the "CurrentVersion" file within the events directory to get FCP X to recognize them, I'm not sure.

If I run into any problems with this approach, I'll keep you posted, but that's it as far as I know.

I think this is essentially what Time Machine does to prep a drive for backup.

Note that I was using OS X Lion, so I don't know if it's exactly the same under 10.6.

Cheers and good luck!

Goesta.

Hey Goesta, thanks for the info!

I have one problem stopping me from doing this to it's full potential...

When I make a disc it only lets me make it as big as my LOCAL hard drive (which is about 300GB) But my NAS has 4TB of usable space which I want to use.

When asked the size of the disc, if I put in 4TBs, or even 1TB it says "The image size was changed to 300GB because the volume selected can’t hold a 4TB image"

Do you or anyone else have a solution for this problem?

Thanks

Hi, I had the same issue and got around it, though I can't quite remember how. I think I actually resized the partition once it was moved to the Network drive. It shows up as having 2.2 TB capacity (so you might need to create two to fill 4 TB, I'm using the rest for non-FCP net storage), of which I've used 1.3 so far, even though the local drive I created it on only had about 500 GB available. So I must have resized it after.

In the recent (still horribly unstable) FCP X update, the network protocol has been improved, you might want to research whether you can use that directly. I haven't been able to , but haven't tried very hard, since shifting that data around is impossible for me until the project is over, so I have been using the disk image technique for a while and so far have had no failures (but I am backing it up every day - using Carbon Copy Cloner - to a 2 Gig Firewire drive just in case).

Drawbacks: it can only be mounted on one computer at a time. If both the Network drive and the backup volume are mounted, FCP X gets confused and spouts error messages because of duplicate events etc.

Hope this helps. Cheers, G.

Great thanks again for the response.

The fact that you said that the disc can only be mounted on one computer at a time means the whole reason I bought a NAS Raid is pointless. I was hoping to be able to edit in FCPX from the NAS with several computers accessing the same footage at the same time. It was possible to do this in FCP7 but not FCPX.

The new update of FCPX allows you to work with SAN, when I saw this I assumed that it would also recognise NAS but it doesn't. I'm not to familiar with the whole NAS/SAN but I'm realising that they are a lot more complicated than I first thought.

Do you find that your NAS is fast enough for editing?

I think I might have to take it on the chin and buy a pegasus thunderbolt drive...

If anyone knows how to edit with multiple computers in FCPX from a NAS let it be known!

As far as editing with your group here are a couple of thoughts I had:

1 - you could create disk images for each project or client, that way you would have an easier time sharing with your group. You could also create multiple images for a single project so as to divide up the workload. It's a good idea to create an empty disk image and then duplicate that as needed.

2 - you can indeed share media among your group just like FCP 7. Just use that option in preferences or import and don't copy it into your event and your media can reside on your NAS in your own organizational structure. Just realize that this looses some of the benefits of FCP X managing your media for you, plus depending on the speed of your network you could get some dropped frames.

3- At our place we have one main edit station, and then other art directors that generally make rough cuts. So we have external drives that we shuttle around. While this is not ideal, it lets us edit offsite and not have any issue with loosing clips.

I hope this helps.

So whats the next best drive to get that allows more then one device to mount in at a time?

Not exactly sure what you mean by "device".

FCPX has limited network capability at this time. Are you asking about Ethernet or XSAN?

Ethernet

This actually works great assuming you have the speed over the network. The way we do it is have a Sparse bundle for each project which really allows for a lot of safety between hand offs. Here's a video that really breaks it down well.