Media Studies suite

[BJG]

The school's just decided that the next major project will be a new Windows-based IT suite for the Media Studies Dept., so if anyone's got things going well in this area I'd be interested in any recommendations. The old system was running on their own separate network but I want to integrate this. File transfer has always been a bit of an issue though; long loading times bringing up Adobe Premiere projects from the server. Not sure what the best solution is here...

[mrbios]

The way i've got it, is 1GB network connection per media PC (we only have 9 of them), trunked connection to the building they are in which goes back to the server room where we have a dedicated RAID5 storage just for the media students

 

The way i would do it if i wanted to speed it up would be to have a cabinet in or around the media room and have them connected directly to the storage via a dedicated connection only to that room (luckily we had an old eonstor we decided to use after replacing it with a new fancy one). The students also log on as per normal with a script set to run on those machines only which removes their normal home drive mapping and replaces it with the media storage

 

EDIT: actually thinking about it i could just split the trunk and have the media using one 1GB fibre to the server room and everything else in that building using the other. That said though we'll be on a 10GB backbone to each building by this time next year so theres no need

[RTFM]

In theory Adobe dont support Premiere Pro CS4 being networked, they suggest it is always local. Can't see how this works in honesty for a school but thats what they say!

[mrbios]

In theory Adobe dont support Premiere Pro CS4 being networked, they suggest it is always local. Can't see how this works in honesty for a school but thats what they say!

 

I think he's on about just loading the project files and media from the server not the actual program, that is assuming you were on about loading the actual program from the network....

[tommccann]

We have a suite of Mac Pros (very nice over 3000 each!) and use a network drive that only maps on the macs for storage, we also use dualboot to load windows first so people dont stumble on the media studies work. works very well, and the load time for the drive is very quick as its only used by max 10 macs at once

[dhicks]

File transfer has always been a bit of an issue though; long loading times bringing up Adobe Premiere projects from the server. Not sure what the best solution is here...

 

We have a suite of snazzy all-in-one machines - not the newer extra-small PCs, but cases with integrated monitors that can take full-sized motherboards and half-height expansion cards. These will fit two harddrives, so you can either have one dedicated as local storage for video and images or join multiple harddrives up in to a distributed file system of some kind - if nothing else, just have a central file server that distributes files out to workstations overnight (does imply teachers organising videos a day in advance, though). You could switch to doing video editing on a web based system instead.

 

--

David Hicks

[pwds]

I've played with kaltura.org which I like a lot for straightforward video editing a-la Windows Movie Maker (the capabilities are fairly comparable).

 

As videos are stored on the same server as the editing you can get away with slower machines and network links. Cross-platform as all it requires is a reasonable browser and flash.

 

Not sure how useful that is for media studies though and the tech will need Debian/Ubuntu experience. Documentation can be sparse but follow the read me in the package clearly and it shouldn't stretch people too much.

[john]

We built a dedicated Media Suite this last summer, its got 10 High Spec HP DX7500 PCs with Core2Duos, dual HDDs and 3GB Ram, and using 22" Samsung TFTs. They are connected at 1GB speed and that switch is in turn connected directly to the core switch by 1GB Fibre, they store all the files on my Sun S7000 SAN and they have, but we only twigged the other day, been encoding all year directly over the LAN via the SAN!!!

 

Yes most systems would be failing with that but the Sun kit is just immense its going strong and fine not even breaking into a sweat and no-one has noticed at all which is great news.

 

The kit has been excellent and reliable, very well received and I know the Media Students have enjoyed using it as they have told me so. We use Adobe Premier Elements on it at present (due to lack of funds for Premier Pro) but will use Premier Pro from September instead of Elements.

[BJG]

Thanks - fast switches and dedicated storage sounds like the way to go. What do you estimate we should be budgeting for the network and storage equipment...? (Also be interested in any other recommendations re: suitable switches and storage devices.)

[john]

The best you can buy! Seriously I said I was not cutting corners on it otherwise it would give a poor return, so we got top spec HP PCs with 3 year on-site warrantys, a decent Netgear Swtich with all GB ports in it etc. I think the switch was around £700 at the time, and each PC was around £450 and the TFTs were on offer but were £100 a piece.

[ravenadsl]

our media suit of 20 computers is currently setup like this

 

20 x computers all with 1 x 80GB and 1 x 250GB hardrives

 

adobe is installed on the 250 in a hidden folder so the students cant get to it

 

the 250GB hardrive has permissions for a "media" group

 

students use the same computer for the year.

work is backed up to a server every Friday night and held for 3 weeks

 

 

hope this helps

[BJG]

(Thanks, this is all very useful - will probably print this topic out for the Media Studies Dept...)