A future blog post about using AI tools in production is coming up soon, but in the meantime building apps to solve everyday problems continues in my post-production video creation creative world. I’m the storage, workflow, backups, Mac management, techno healer. My clients are the creatives. They make cool stuff, so we have to safeguard it.
And yes, that’s a joke because my clients backup and archive everyday and restore just as much. So keeping the P5 servers healthy is my job. And to help with this I made a P5 Health Check menu bar app (as well as mac app and bash script). To check drive cleaning status and uptime and a few things. In case anyone wants to be alerted of these things in the Menu bar. I know I want to know.
And for the fancy new Media List restore feature in P5 v.8 (which is very useful!) I created a FCPXMLD to FCPXML converter because the File -> Export menu in Final Cut Pro will give you a directory with XML inside of it, but I wanted to find those and rename them for use in P5 Archive, So yeah another app. Useful tools I use, my clients use, and now you can too.
Thunderbolt Xsan in a box. I’ve written about the Accusys T-share in 2020 (and in 2015 when I first found this cool tech). What’s different now? New year, new macOS. And a new challenge: can we build Xsan only using Terminal? No apps. It’s the journey that counts, right? One nerd’s journey to make an Xsan with macOS 11 Big Sur cli. Destination adventure with family fun, next stop a blinking cursor on a command line prompt.
make Xsan
make —Xsan —-bigger
reboot
Sudo make me an Xsan sandwich. I wish it were that easy! Stick around for the two or three commands you do need.
Xsan goes Terminal
Important commands for using Xsan have always been cvadmin and cvlabel (cv is short for centravision the original creators) but more recently xsanctl and slapconfig are important for creating the SAN and the OD (Open Directory) environment. Read the man pages, search the web, read some help documents. This blog is for entertainment and occasional learnings.
Lots of interesting cv (CentraVision) and sn (StorNext) commands in macOS (this list is from 10.15 Catalina). Besides binaries, what else is there? Examples. A ton of example files:
If you don’t have a fibre channel switch and fibre channel hardware RAIDs do not worry. You can build a useful Thunderbolt based Xsan with a little bit of effort. Just a little bit of peril It’s not too perilous, don’t worry.
Apple includes Xsan for free in macOS. Xsan is Apple’s fork Quantum’s StorNext SAN software. Want large fast storage made for Final Cut Pro editors, just add Xsan. Download Server.app from the Mac App Store and make your Xsan. Easy peasey. Right?
Why? Why are we doing this? Nothing beats fibre channel or Thunderbolt SAN speed for editing. Network attached storage (NAS) at 1GbE is barely usable. NAS at 10GbE is much better but still has road blocks for editors. Fibre channel or Thunderbolt with a big enough raid behind your SAN then life is great. Xsan can be shared by a small or media sized team of editors, producers and assistants.
Oh, ok. There is one problem. Apple did a major upgrade of Xsan (now version 7!) in macOS 11 Big Sur but apparently they took out the Xsan config in Server.app. (Note: This is what I was told early on and what seemed to be confirmed by Apple’s recent Xsan cli guide. It turns out that Xsan’s disappearance in Server.app to not be totally correct). Xsan is there in Server.app if you upgrade to macOS Big Sur but when you install Server on a clean macOS there is no Xsan visible in the app. Hmm. What do we do? Apple published a very nice handy guide about how to build Xsan in Terminal. So let’s get started. This is fun.
Accusys T-Share is a Thunderbolt SAN. Connect Macs with Thunderbolt cable.
What do we need? 1) Hardware raid. Ok check I have an Accusys T-Share. It’s a raid with Thunderbolt switch built in. 2) Mac. Ok I have a Mac Mini. 3) A network. Some cables, a switch and a DNS server. Ok I have a new raspberry Pi. That’s perfect.
Raspberry Pi 400 (the amazing linux computer shaped like a keyboard).
Step 1. Hardware raid. With the Accusys T-Share I just have to plug in some clients with a Thunderbolt 3 cable. Let’s fill the RAID with drives. I picked two different sizes. One group of larger disks for a data LUN (main production storage) and two smaller disks for a raid mirror to be used as metadata storage.
Step 2. A Mac running macOS Big Sur 11.5.2. Download the Accusys Mac installer on your Intel Mac (M1 is not supported with the T-Share yet as of this blog post).
Step 3. The network. Ok. This is the fun part. Let’s set up a DNS server. Ok, how do we do that? Remember that raspberry Pi you bought yourself for Christmas but never opened because you have been so busy and well you know life. Ok just me? Well, that one. Let’s use a raspberry Pi. A small inexpensive Linux computer. Install dns masq. It’s perfect for this.
The raid. Not only a great movie it’s the central part of this production media network for creatives. Once the drives are in the raid we have to make raid sets which become LUNs for Xsan. RAID5/6 for the data LUN and RAID1 (mirror) for the metadata LUN.
Read the label. Using Xsan cvlabel
Normally after we create RAID sets in the hardware raid utility we would open up Server.app and label the LUNs for Xsan use. But since we are now hardcore SAN architects we can use Terminal and the cvlabel the command to do this the hard way. Well, it’s not that hard but it can be intimidating the first few times. It’s much easier to label new LUNs than stare at a broken production SAN that has lost its labels. StorNext fun times. More about in another blog post.
Whether using Server.app in the good old days or cvlabel to label your LUNs now you should all be familiar with the command to list available LUNs. For larger SANs that won’t mount the first thing I’d check is see if the LUNs are all there. You don’t want a SAN to mount if it’s missing an important piece of itself.
cvlabel -l
This command lists available LUNs. It’s handy to know. Do this before trouble arises and you will be a cool dude when trouble happens. It does that occasionally. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best, IT motto.
To create labels for newly created RAID arrays use cvlabel to output a text file of the unlabelled LUNs, make some minor changes then label those LUNs. Create the template files first:
cvlabel -c
Edit the file. I like nano. Maybe you like vim. Or BBEdit. Or text edit. Change the name of LUNs from CVFS_unknown to whatever you like. I like to name LUNs based on the hardware they originate from so that I can find them, remove them, fix them or whatever I need to do for troubleshooting. Trust me. It’s a good idea.
cvlabel ~/Desktop/cvlabel
*WARNING* This program will over-write volume labels on the devices specified in the file "/Users/xavier/Desktop/cvlabel". After execution, the devices will only be usable by the Xsan. You will have to re-partition the devices to use them on a different file system.
Do you want to proceed? (Y / N) ->
Requesting disk rescan .
Congratulations this is the hardest part. You’ve labeled the RAID arrays as usable LUNs for Xsan. Ok, just kidding that’s not the hardest part. Have you ever heard of Open Directory? Do you fear LDAP and DNS? Well, maybe you should. It’s always DNS. Just saying.
DNS (domain name system) is just a fancy word for a list of IP addresses and host names. Using the raspberry Pi with dns masq installed we can populate the list of hosts for the Xsan and then we are golden. Hopefully if we did it right. Turns out we can make mistakes here too. Don’t use “.local” domain names. I did. It was late. I blame being tired. Changing them to “.lan” worked better.
Next up we finally create an Xsan in terminal. Or do we? let’s check the hostname first. It’s always DNS.
scutil —get HostName
CrazyMac.local
scutil --set HostName XsanMac.lan.
And now we make very big Xsan using the Xsan guide example
It was at this point that it started falling apart. It was late. I had messed up my DNS with “.local” and the Xsan wouldn’t go past this basic OD setup. I did what I always do and reach out to my Xsan colleagues and I got some curious feedback. “What do you mean Xsan isn’t in macOS Big Sur Server.app?” Hmm. I don’t see it on a fresh install. On an upgrade from 10.15 Catalina I do. So, uh, Where is it? And then it was revealed. In the View menu. Advanced. Ugh. It’s right there. Almost staring right at me. When I opened the app it said it couldn’t create an Xsan with my “.local”. That was helpful. Fixed that and Xsan with my pre-labeled LUNs was super quick to set up.
Xsan configuration in Server.app. “Ignore ownership” is the best thing ever for creatives. Trust me,
I’ll have to play with the cli set up again soon. Because there were some strange formatting it recommended to me when I tried some variations of the xsanctl createSan. I’ll dig into another day when I have more sleep. Ha ha.
There’s a lot of useful commands in macOS Big Sur Xsan which was upgraded to v7. You can check which version of Xsan you have in macOS with the cvversions command.
In Catalina (macOS 10.15.7)
File System Server: Server Revision 5.3.1 Build 589[63493] Branch Head BuildId D Built for Darwin 19.0 x86_64 Created on Tue Jun 22 21:08:03 PDT 2021 Built in /AppleInternal/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/XsanFS/XsanFS-630.120.1/buildinfo
In Big Sur (macOS 11.5.2)
File System Server: Server Revision 7.0.1 Build 589[96634] Branch Head BuildId D Built for Darwin 20.0 x86_64 Created on Wed Jun 23 00:32:35 PDT 2021 Built in /System/Volumes/Data/SWE/macOS/BuildRoots/d7e177bcf5/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/XsanFS/XsanFS-678.120.3/buildinfo
There’s a lot of cool new binaries in Xsan v7. We will dig into those next post. For now enjoy this and go forth make some Xsan volumes with Thunderbolt or fibre channel storage. It’s fun.
Great news everyone. Hedge has acquired PostLab and with this news the main developer Jasper Siegers joins the Hedge team. Great things will come of this collaboration. The brilliant idea of using version control for FCPX project sharing simplifies the whole process that has usually been left to huge media asset management systems that control data and projects. This is project sharing simplified and it’s about to get a lot more awesome with more developer time and a company to support it.
I am equally excited about Jasper coming to MacDevOps:YVR in June to talk about how and why he developed this app using GitLab and Docker and how version control for editors is useful and necessary.
Hedge is a small company in the Netherlands that makes the Hedge software to securely copy camera cards. I’ve incorporated this software with my Final Cut Pro X clients to secure their original footage on location as well as back in the office. Workflow post explains more.
Quick post to talk about some fun I’ve been having with the new Hedge API.
Background: Hedge is an awesome app for securely copying Camera Cards to multiple destinations to ensure data integrity and safety of the original footage. Hedge is one part of a workflow I build for my clients. Hedge is the first step in ensuring an easy and convenient transition from the cameras to the SAN to the tape archive powered by Archiware P5.
TL;DR
Using AppleScript and Automator I have built some apps to quickly set the file naming and data integrity preferences as we want them to be. Â And also quickly change them to something else depending on the needed workflow.
API or Clickety click click
Copying camera cards copies is what we use Hedge for. Certain preferences like logs or receipts are great to have to ensure the copy succeeded. Also file naming conventions are good to have. Set and forget, right? But what if you did forget? Or if you’re new and don’t know the convention or you don’t read documentation. What do we do? One way to solve this is build an app that launches Hedge and sets the correct preferences. And if we want to copy USB sticks or something else then we can launch another app that prepares Hedge with a different set of preferences. Â For extra points we just ask the user what they want with a nice dialog box and just do that.
Automator
Automator is awesome. Create workflows, apps, or services amongst many other things. For more info on Automator check out Apple’s official docs or this unofficial website of resources.
For this quick testing I used two AppleScripts with different preferences and settings defined. One for camera card copying and another for USB sticks that need different preferences set. The fancy automator app just calls the needed AppleScript. Make two apps and you have two different workflows without having to explain to users which prefs get set for what, or how the file naming should go to be consistent.
Example 1: Cam Card script (snippet)
Example 2: USB card copy (snippet)
Automator can do many things. Call AppleScripts, Run shell scripts, pop-up dialog boxes etc and this is just a simple example of building single purpose apps to set Hedge via its new API. Very cool and so many possibilities.
AppleScript
What if we could just build one app which asked the user what they wanted to do? We can do that!
Choose “Cam” and the appropriate preferences are set and file naming conventions applied.
Choose “USB” and a different set of preferences are set. Magic.
How do we do this? This piece of AppleScript chains an action to a response or button choice. Run a script or choose an action. The possibilities are endless. And thanks to the Hedge API we can set preferences on or off, and set destinations or many other things. We can do them programmatically and we can ensure they are set correctly. Fun times!
AppleScript vs POSIX:
I updated my AppleScript code with the POSIX path of the scripts it wants to load. It’s a major improvement! I had packaged up my scripts and my Hedge Setup app with munkipkg then deployed through Munki but when I demoed it — nothing worked…. because the start up disk drive was named something else. The fix: set a variable to be the POSIX path (Unix path in AppleScript friendly format).
[wpvideo HfiKMSct ]
Scripting and App Building
I hope that helped. We can do a lot of the same things with Python and in my testing I was working with a script written in python3 but since that’s not shipping on Macs in the current version of macOS by default (not yet!) then AppleScript was the quickest way to get this done. This is not restricted to AppleScript. Using Automator and your favourite scripting language you can build apps for your clients, co-workers, friends and family.
A note about the Hedge API:
There are two major calls I use in my scripts “setDestination” and “setPreferences”
The “setDestination” call looks like this:
open ‘hedge://actions?json=[{“setDestination”:{“path”:”/Volumes/LaCie/Testing/Test1″}},{“token”:”1234567890123345555″}]’
Note: the token is generated for you when you have a Pro license.
The “the setPreferences” call uses plist keys.
Note: I’ll have more say about using the actual Hedge API after it is officially announced.
Apple released a new update for Final Cut Pro X, v.10.4.4 and this adds many new features. Many were on the wish lists of Final Cut Pro editors. Also some surprises were included with the update: the inclusion of third party extensions which allow integrations unlike we’ve seen before. Excited to see what’s going to develop in that area.
Editors from around the world are gathered in Cupertino at the FCPX Creative Summit for news about the updates and to share ideas, workflows and learn from one another.
To find out more about the recent updates check out these blog posts and videos made by members of the Final Cut Pro X community. Enjoy.
I’ve been playing with PostLab the last few days. It’s a free and open source app that lets you use GitLab with Final Cut Pro X to do version control of editing projects. Yes, this is very cool. Shared Projects, Read only versions of projects. Versions. Of. Projects. Commented. Makes it awesome to work on projects together.
Of course, like any workflow app it can be annoying to those who don’t want to play along. But I like the price and the simplicity of it. Using GitLab means you can have free private repos for shared project sharing. You can use their website on the internet to act as your gateway or you can setup your own internal GitLab server. For Free.
PostLab is pretty awesome with its Final Cut Pro X project sharing and it’s not $100K app that is expensive to setup and everyone hates it. It’s free and some people might not use it, but it could allow for effective remote workflows and nice finely grained version control for projects that need it even in an internal on site production SAN environments.
Install PostLab, and the Xcode cli tools. Then launch PostLab, agree to the license, authorize accessibility for PostLab to enable it to launch FCPX. And you’re on your way.
All that’s left is to configure a GitLab account. Set u a group and a project. Configure token in GitLab to Enable PostLab with GitLab account access. Then start sharing projects. Enjoy.
Lots of cool set up videos on the PostLab website. Robot narrator says Jit-Lab instead of “Git” Lab, but it’s still worth watching. Do it now.
