iMovie 10.0.3 on a Network Home Directory network

[TomPearceGeek]

Hi All,

 

I was wondering if anyone can shed any light on inability to save to a Network Home on the new iMovie (10+). We run our mac network just like any other, where the Home directories are mounted from the Mac server and we manage the Macs by Centrify Enterprise.

 

The teachers would very much like to use iMovie 10+ however, it just fails so badly when we try to use it. Is there some sort of work around by using Symlinks or similar? This seems to be the same sort of issue, but not on an enterprise scale ofcourse. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5467989?tstart=0

Any sort of input gratefully received.

 

Tom

Edited August 4, 2014 by TomPearceGeek
URL Incorrect

[3s-gtech]

I believe that it's just not workable, same as when using Logic. You'll need to save the work locally, then the users can copy it from the local disk back and forth to the network storage location. It's a pain, but it's due to the huge amount of disk I/O that it needs. It'll kind of work with one user, but with a class doing it - no.

 

Your options are IME:

 

A beasty dedicated box in the Mac suite connected via Firewire 800/Lightning.

A super-duper NAS (of industry type) that is dedicated to the Macs for this purpose (I looked into this, and the type of device needed is eye-wateringly expensive)

USB/Firewire/Lightning devices for each Mac (the cheapest and easiest)

[TomPearceGeek]

I believe that it's just not workable, same as when using Logic. You'll need to save the work locally, then the users can copy it from the local disk back and forth to the network storage location. It's a pain, but it's due to the huge amount of disk I/O that it needs. It'll kind of work with one user, but with a class doing it - no.

 

Your options are IME:

 

A beasty dedicated box in the Mac suite connected via Firewire 800/Lightning.

A super-duper NAS (of industry type) that is dedicated to the Macs for this purpose (I looked into this, and the type of device needed is eye-wateringly expensive)

USB/Firewire/Lightning devices for each Mac (the cheapest and easiest)

 

We have a Fibre Channel Active storage raid directly on the mac network which is totally dedicated to the Macs if you might call that super-duper?

[Runcoach]

I am not a trained IT person but have taught myself over the years so please excuse any ignorance. Have you found a solution yet? I have the same problem at my school where I setup a iMac Lab with 15 clients connecting wirelessly to the teacher iMac/server through network logins. You are fortunate to have the fiber channel storage. I found a possible solution at:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYKIOql9BXg

 

On iMovie 10 and Network Drives - Alex Zheng

 

but have not had a chance to try them yet.

 

Good luck and please let me know how it works out for you.

[TomPearceGeek]

So, 5 years on... I have moved on and now at my current place we had the same issue. Being the older, wiser and more hansom bloke that I am *sniggers* I actually managed to fix it this time around. I have developed a custom set of scripts that generates a Sparse Bundle for the user in their SMB Home Drive, mounts it, Redirects Music and Movies into it and copys any existing files into the new folder. Mac then treats the Sparse Bundle as a local disk so has zero problems running iMovie on it...

 

Huzzah! Aren't things on macs just so simple! -_-

[mavhc]

Did a similar thing for Windows 10 Home refusing to network backup, iSCSI, file on server mounted as local disk

[Brimstone]

So, 5 years on... I have moved on and now at my current place we had the same issue. Being the older, wiser and more hansom bloke that I am *sniggers* I actually managed to fix it this time around. I have developed a custom set of scripts that generates a Sparse Bundle for the user in their SMB Home Drive, mounts it, Redirects Music and Movies into it and copys any existing files into the new folder. Mac then treats the Sparse Bundle as a local disk so has zero problems running iMovie on it...

 

Huzzah! Aren't things on macs just so simple! -_-

 

Good luck when either macOS or iMovie gets updated and breaks this...and it will

[TomPearceGeek]

Can't wait! So far so good. Firefighting is my middle name... and so is Stephen... but that's another story.

[free780]

Most apple software assumes local storage and a 1:1 device. Also the user is a local admin. The onedrive sync client can get around this to an extent. You'd assume students wouldn't change which mac they use due to settings they may change on the mac.

[mavhc]

Most apple software assumes local storage and a 1:1 device. Also the user is a local admin. The onedrive sync client can get around this to an extent. You'd assume students wouldn't change which mac they use due to settings they may change on the mac.

 

I assume they're not interested in the education market

[free780]

Apart from if they can sell a 1:1 device. But to be honest I think microsoft are leaning that way. Trying to get a budget for that in Edu is going to be tough, though because of VDI etc MS still have to make adjustments. Apple don't have to.

[Brimstone]

Most apple software assumes local storage and a 1:1 device. Also the user is a local admin. The onedrive sync client can get around this to an extent. You'd assume students wouldn't change which mac they use due to settings they may change on the mac.

 

Complete rubbish, macOS is multi user, I think you are confusing this with iOS but that can save files in Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie and Garageband direct to iCloud.

 

If you are using higher end video apps like FCP and Logic Pro you need a fast network to support this but you can now even work with the project libraries across a network, shares must be APFS or MacOS Extended formatted.

 

If you are using iMovie, then this may work for an SMB Share

 

https://geekzone.psd401.net/2016/08/04/use-imovie-on-any-network-share/

[mavhc]

Complete rubbish, macOS is multi user, I think you are confusing this with iOS but that can save files in Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie and Garageband direct to iCloud.

 

If you are using higher end video apps like FCP and Logic Pro you need a fast network to support this but you can now even work with the project libraries across a network, shares must be APFS or MacOS Extended formatted.

 

If you are using iMovie, then this may work for an SMB Share

 

https://geekzone.psd401.net/2016/08/04/use-imovie-on-any-network-share/

 

So if you share an APFS drive over SMB, does it work?

[TomPearceGeek]

Complete rubbish, macOS is multi user, I think you are confusing this with iOS but that can save files in Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie and Garageband direct to iCloud.

If you are using iMovie, then this may work for an SMB Share

https://geekzone.psd401.net/2016/08/04/use-imovie-on-any-network-share/

 

 

This is essentially what I have done but via logon scripts and symlinks.

• First Logon
  
  • Checks for Sparsebundle
    
  • If it doesn't exist, it creates one in the homedrive that can auto re-size up to a limit
    
  • Mounts
    
  • Creates a few directorys
    
  • Create Symlinks in Home Drive
    
  • Moves old data from Movies and Music into new Sparsebundle folders
    
  • Updates Finder Sidebar
    

   

  [*]Every other logon

  • Checks for Sparsebundle
    
  • If it exists Mount it
    
  • Runs firstaid to resize the sparsebundle to the size of the data (Up to the limit)
    
  • Confirm Symlinks exist in Home Drive
    
  • Updates Finder Sidebar
    

 

It works without fault and only contributes to the standard HomeDrive size of our Windows quotas for the students.

[free780]

@Brimstone You've never tried using filevault then. It ties the unlocking key to a user making it useless for a shared device.

[Brimstone]

So if you share an APFS drive over SMB, does it work?

Yes, SMB is now the default for file sharing across APFS, in fact you can't share using AFS.

[mavhc]

Cool, next question, where do you buy a NAS that can do APFS?

[Brimstone]

You have to be careful when looking at shared storage. APFS was really only designed for SSD storage, I have some customers who have implemented an SSD RAID array but these are not cheap, but video post production houses need the fastest storage. Bear in mind that if you buy a run of the mill NAS RAID then it’s best to format it as SMB that way it is compatible with AFS and APFS local volumes.

[Brimstone]

@Brimstone You've never tried using filevault then. It ties the unlocking key to a user making it useless for a shared device.

 

By the looks of your response you’ve never heard of a institutional recovery key for FileVault have you...?

 

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202385

 

Been using this for years with Jamf MDM...

 

https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/articles/326/creating-and-exporting-an-institutional-recovery-key

[Arthur]

Bear in mind that if you buy a run of the mill NAS RAID then it's best to format it as SMB that way it is compatible with AFS and APFS local volumes.

Isn't the filesystem of the NAS irrelevant when accessing it over SMB?

 

For example, I have a Synology NAS with Btrfs formatted HDDs. Macs don't support Btrfs natively, but I can read/write files just fine since macOS is doing it via SMB.

[edufixitguy]

is this fix still working for you in Mojave?

[TomPearceGeek]

Yup! I'm about to start testing it on Catalina too!

[Brimstone]

Yup! I'm about to start testing it on Catalina too!

 

With both FCP and iMovie using libraries now, this should work, I'd be interested in knowing this..

[markwilfan]

Also can you share the script

[TomPearceGeek]

I'm currently re-working it into an Application / Tray utility to publish to make things easier currently. If I give up, then yes!