Monthly Archives: January 2019

Backup and Archive setups for media professionals

Posted on by
3

I recently did an online presentation on my Archiware P5 backups and archive workflows for media professionals.  

I use Archiware P5 to backup and archive media productions to tape. In this workflow I describe how original material, work in progress and conpleted projects are backed up daily and archived as needed.

This presentation goes into some detail of what two different storage setups look like and what similarities exist in my Xsan (fibre channel) and Jellyfish (10GbE) backup and archive workflows.

Despite the storage differences, the common workflow is that they all use the P5 Archive App to allow the Final Cut Pro X editors to archive completed projects. The simple way to do this is by right-clicking in the Finder and they will go to tape and get replaced by stub files (small files with the same name and negligible file size). When the project or any of the footage or assets needs to be restored it is another right click to restore. No IT people need to be involved. It’s magic. Almost.

Useful resources:

– Case Study: WorkSafe BC

Using P5 and the P5 Archive App

https://p5.archiware.com/solutions/worksafe-bc-hs-video-production

– The P5 Desktop Edition

Aimed at small teams and single users: P5 Archive and P5 Backup to a single LTO tape drive.

https://p5.archiware.com/desktop-edition

– P5 and Xsan

https://p5.archiware.com/solutions/xsan

– P5 and Lumaforge Jellyfish

https://p5.archiware.com/solutions/lumaforge

– Watchman Monitoring

https://www.watchmanmonitoring.com

– MunkiReport

https://github.com/munkireport/

– MacAdmins Slack:

https://macadmins.herokuapp.com

– MacDevOps:YVR Conference

https://mdoyvr.com

Best of 2018: the conferences

Posted on by
2

Part of a series of blog post on the “Best of 2018”

Part 2: the conferences

There was NAB in April and the FCPX Creative Summit in November (see more in my previous best of 2018 post here)

New conferences were the theme this year and I’ll start with one I couldn’t attend but really wanted to:

Query conf

⁃ all about osquery

⁃ Great group of people got together in San Francisco to discuss security with open source project originally from Facebook and now a verifiable industry (Kolide, uptycs etc)

⁃ Videos of the talks were posted on their site.

⁃ I had to miss this conference last year because it was just before MacDevOps: YVR and I could not be I two places at once.

Objective by the Sea

⁃ Awesome location. Maui. First time conference and my first time in Hawaii and it was spectacularly beautiful.

⁃ Great people. What a wonderfully diverse group of IT, Security experts and vendors

⁃ Patrick Wardle love fest. Everyone love Patrick and his Objective See free security tools. Look forward to his future projects with Digita Security

⁃ Looking forward to seeing how this conference evolves in the future. Especially if they end up doing more than one a year in different locations. Mahalo to the organizers for putting this together. As a fellow conference organizer I know it is not easy. It takes lots of love and Patrick and his team have lots of love to give. Thanks everyone!

MacDevOps:YVR

Disclaimer: I am the organizer

In 2018 we had our fourth annual conference and it was an amazing group of speakers and attendees. Many people took up my Quick Talk challenge. It is my firm belief that everyone has solved a problem and has knowledge they can share. I love it when people step up, literally step up on stage, and present a story, a solution to a problem, a tech problem they solved. We cheer them on.

What is MacDevOps:YVR?

Just the facts:

⁃ June 2019 will be the 5th annual conference

⁃ Inspired by DevOpsDays held everywhere all over the world this is an inspirational conference to bring together the creators of open source Mac projects and those in IT that use them.

⁃ Bringing a diverse group from around the world to learn about participating in software projects to manage Mac, the aim is to dispel the fear around version control (git), cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) and various programming languages (Python, Swift, PHP etc)

⁃ Learn about what’s new in various open source projects we depend on: Munki, MunkiReport, Crypt, etc

⁃ Be inspired to share your our own solutions to problems with Quick Talks

⁃ 2019 will be partly security focused with a diverse group of security talks

⁃ Diversity and Inclusion will be front and centre of our IT panel. We are bringing in an amazing group to discuss.

⁃ Hack night. Working on gathering a team of MunkiReport contributors together to help organize some collaborative hacking and programming.

– Workshop. Learn how to make munkireport plugins. MunkiReport server is in PHP but the plugins are written in anything : bash, Python etc

Speakers for MacDevOps:YVR 2019 are on the MDO website.

June 12-14, 2018 join us in Vancouver, Canada for the firth annual MacDevOps:YVR conference.

Many thanks to the crew that that helps me organize this every year and makes the live event as good as it is. Without you I could not make it happen. Also many thanks to my awesome sponsors for helping us pay for bringing in speakers from around the world and paying for the event. Last but not least, thank you for all those that have attended and spoken at this event in the past. I love you all. You are amazing!

Resources

Use Git/GitHub to contribute to these community resources:

⁃ List of all conference videos Conference videos

⁃ MacAdmins Podcast community calendar GitHub repo

– Charles Edge has compiled a list of conferences and it is a great long list. Thanks Charles!

Best of 2018: FCPX and iMac Pro

Posted on by
1

Part of a series of blog post on the “Best of 2018”

Part 1: the iMac Pro and FCPX

The year started off with the new iMac Pro and Final Cut Pro X 10.4. Both new hardware and software were released in December 2017. New awesome hardware and software to start of 2018.

FCPX and the iMac Pro have proven themselves to be a great combination that has been amazing for FCPX editors everywhere. The new colour grading tools and other enhancements were warmly received in FCP X 10.4. The power of the iMac Pros was not exaggerated. Excellent pro hardware.

FCPX works great on a MacBook Pro and internal storage, with Apple’s Xsan and fibre channel or with Lumaforge Jellyfish 10GbE over NFS. I worked with all different setups in 2018 and happy to report that editors kept editing and left the storage and backup worries to me (and I didn’t worry since I’ve got Archiware P5 watching my back).

Working with the Jellyfish I installed the P5 Linux agent to backup and archive to tape. Getting the Jellyfish to back up to my P5 server running on a Mac Mini couldn’t have been easier. Through the year I worked with Archiware to make improvements in the P5 Archive app so that my editor clients can archive and restore more easily on their own. Works well and look forward to working more closely with both companies to help make awesome setups for FCPX editors and creative professionals everywhere.

NAB and FCPX

The week before NAB 2018, Apple announced a new version of Final Cut Pro X with support for closed captions, and the brand new ProRes RAW codec.

NAB in April is always a busy month with announcements from all companies in the media production and media asset management world and Apple’s public talk at NAB showing off new features so soon after their last major release was unexpected but very warmly received.

Of course there was one more major event in the 2018, in November there was the FCPX Creative Summit.

I attended this year and it was awesome. Apple released a brand new version with 3rd party integration in the form of extensions. This is huge. This will be amazing for FCPX editors who want to stay in FCPX and do their editing work but integrate with other apps.

What was the FCPX creative summit?

⁃ rendez-vous in Cupertino with Final Cut Pro editors, studio owners, plugin authors, creative apps vendors

⁃ Visit to Apple HQ. With Apple Pro Apps engineers, QA, managers and everyone involved.

⁃ In depth discussion of the next version of FCPX extensions which allow third party integration deep into the app for example: Frame IO for review and approve or Keyflow Pro or Cat DV media asset management apps.

⁃ Great team of people organizing. This event had multiple tracks and lots of great sessions for everyone. Well done. Enjoyed it immensely. Everyone using Final Cut Pro or involved in this creative universe should be there.

2018 was great year for pro hardware and software. The iMac Pro and the constant stream of FCPX updates kept us grinning from ear to ear. Great stuff. Awesome year.

Next up: best conferences of 2018