We don’t support Macs officially at NewPointe as of yet, but I still want life to be as easy as possible for our Mac users.  One of the challenges I’ve been faced with over the past couple weeks is file syncing between iBooks and our file server.

While looking for a solution to this, I stumbled across ChronoSync.  It’s got a few nice options to it, like the ability to start a sync as soon as you log on…nice if you just need to sync before you head out of the office.  Another nice thing is that once you buy a license for ChronoSync, you’re entitled to upgrades for the life of the product.

Is this the best Mac file sync software out there?  I don’t know yet, but it seems to be working so far.  I’m going to be installing it on another iBook next week, and if it continues to work well, it will become standard issue for any new Mac user.  The biggest issue so far has been training the mac user to sync their files up…especially when said user has an iBook and a desktop PC.

One of the big issues we have in the control room right now is this:  How to scale DVI video from our Keynote and Pro Presenter systems to HD/SDI, add sync to it in the process, and not break the budget?

Why is this a hot issue right now?

Pro Presenter:  Our CG computer is using a Blackmagic DeckLink HD to genlock the system’s output and send it to our switcher in HD/SDI.  I would LOVE to move to version 3 of Pro Presenter (we’re using it in other locations and it rocks), but because there is no way to get it to utilize the DeckLink’s HD/SDI output, I’m stuck using version 2, which, while it is still nice, is miles behind version 3 in terms of functionality and ease of use.

Keynote:  We use Keynote to put graphics (announcements, message notes) up on the screen, keyed over live video by our switcher.  We’re using a Blackmagic product here as well (a Multibridge Pro) to output HD/SDI from the computer, sync it, and feed it to the switcher.  The problem here is that since the Multibridge doesn’t support Core Image, Keynote has to be set up to do software rendering…. at 1920×1080.  This leads to very slow slide changes and makes it impossible to do any sort of smooth transitions or motion graphics on the slide.

Note that this is NOT a knock on Blackmagic Design products.  They are what they are, and they do exactly what they’re designed to do (and they do it well).

I’m looking to bump things up a level in terms of functionality and user-friendliness.  I’ve found 2 items so far that can make this work, and there’s a good chance we’ll get to trial both of them:

Miranda DVI-RAMP 2:  I’ve had my eye on the DVI-RAMP 2 for some time now, and we will actually have a demo of it showing up next Thursday.  The unit is capable of scaling and converting from DVI to HD/SDI.  The unit can also sync to a reference signal and act as a frame sync at the same time.  As an added note, the DVI-RAMP 2 is platform-independent.  Mac, PC, whatever; as long as it’s DVI, you’re good to go.

Matrox MXO: I just stumbled onto this piece of gear a few days ago.  The MXO has got the same basic principle as the Miranda unit, except that it will only work on Macs (which is fine for us).  The one thing that catches my eye is the fact that the MXO is about 22% of the cost of the DVI-RAMP 2.  Does that mean it’s only 22% as good?

Any video people reading this that have gone down this road before?  I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on this matter and what you’ve done to get around it.

I’ll post more on this as things pan out.

I’ve seen this posted on a couple different forums and TUAW as well.  It looks like Microsoft has set up a site to show off the upcoming Office 2008 for Mac.  From a first look, it looks like MS is just showing off the new look of the software and talking about functionality from a very general standpoint.

Now if you’re an IT dude (or dudette) and you deal with Macs, I’ve got a pretty good idea what you’re thinking.  What about Entourage?  Well… the site doesn’t mention anything specific about Entourage functionality as of yet.  I myself am REALLY ANXIOUS to get a look at any improvements in that part of the package alone, especially with PC-to-Mac user conversions on the horizon.

Here’s hoping…

My adventures with the Norco disk system have continued throughout the day, and after some more tinkering and some software-aided intervention, our storage array for the editor seems to be back up and running.

Apple’s Disk Utility program failed to do any sort of repair work on the array.  After many repair attempts, all I could get were directory errors.  After browsing around for some Mac disk repair utilities, I landed on one that showed promise:  DiskWarriorby Alsoft.

I fired up DiskWarrior, pointed it to our now-unmounted disk array, and watched it go to work.  It identified the array and cleaned up the directory structure, various file attributes, and various other things, and in about 5 minutes the array was back online.  SWEET!  This was WELL worth the price tag (about $80).

Thinking things were back to normal, I went ahead and shut everything down so I could install a UPS in front of the Mac and the resurrected RAID box.  After plugging everything in, I turned on the Norco drives, powered the Mac up, and watched in utter astonishment….as the system failed to recognize five of the twelve installed drives.

At this point I was about at my limit with this RAID array.  Not really knowing what else to do, I went ahead and shut both the disks and the Mac completely down, and then restarted the RAID after about a minute.  I let the disk system run for about 2 minutes before powering up the Mac.  My thought on this was that if the backplane or anything else in the RAID box has to run a POST or anything, I’m going to give it plenty of time to do so before restarting the computer.

I pushed the power button on the Mac, and lo and behold, I heard many drives starting to spin up all at one time.  In a few seconds, all 12 drives had spun up, and the RAID seemed to be back on its feet.  A quick look through the Finder revealed that all of our stuff on the array appeared to be intact.

So is this over?  I really don’t know.  I really haven’t felt like testing to see if I can replicate the issue by starting the Mac “too soon” after the RAID array is powered up.  What I am going to do is exchange our eSATA controller card for one that has been tested and is more compatible with the unit.  If that clears things up, then I’ll feel more confident about marking this down as  a hardware issue.  At this point, it makes sense that 2 different chipsets wouldn’t play well together.  But at the same time, you’d think there would be more consistency to it.

Maybe the constant here is just sheer unreliability.  Time will tell.  Until then, I’ll be copying our FCP project files onto a safer hard drive.

Well, after playing around with the RAID array throughout the wee hours of the morning, it’s pretty apparent that something went seriously wrong.  A massive power flux?  A dicey hard drive?  I really don’t know at this point.  S.M.A.R.T. status on all the drives shows that they’re running just fine.  So far 2 ideas are floating around in my head:

1. The system suffered a massive power fluctuation that totally ticked off the Mac, or the RAID unit, or both.
2. There is a major compatibility problem with the RAID unit and the HighPoint Technology card that I had to use in place of the bundled controller card.  The only thing I can think of is that there might be 2 different chipsets between the RAID unit and the controller that don’t like each other at all.

Either way, I’m glad this problem decided to rear its head NOW instead of later, when we’ve got the drive populated with irreplaceable data.

Speaking of which, it just so happens that most of the files that were on that RAID5 array are still sitting in other areas!  THAT is letting me breathe so much easier right now.  However, there were quite a few Final Cut project files that were only on that array, which is still a bummer.  I’m in the process of looking through data recovery software to see if there’s anything decent that I can try.

In the meantime, I’ve got a UPS set hook into that system immediately.  Plus, if I can’t make the array work after another rebuild, I’m doing to set a separate PC up there and connect it to the MacPro.  Since the PC has a PCI slot on it, I can use the Norco’s bundled controller card.  I’m not exactly thrilled about putting a PC up there JUST to act as a bridge between the editing system and the RAID, but I may find that I have no choice.

More updates as the plot unfolds.

There are some days when I come in to the office and get so into a project that I don’t pull myself away from it until I’m near exhaustion.  It doesn’t happen often, but it happened on Wednesday night.

When we put our control room together back in November, we didn’t really have much structure as far as file sharing between the Macs (we run an Apple control room, y’all).  There was no set location for incoming media files to go, and every machine was wide open, always logged on as Admin.  After taking some time to plan out what computers needed access to what, I headed upstairs on Wednesday afternoon to start re-tooling things.  Somewhere between 3:30 and 4:00am Thursday morning, I finally had things working how they needed to be… shares are being auto-mounted at login, the machines automatically log into accounts that don’t have admin privileges, and all the software (Final Cut, Pro Presenter, Keynote) all seem to be working fine.

On Thursday afternoon, we were able to put the new setup to the test.  Cindy and Jane headed to the control room to assemble song lyrics and message graphics.  So far, everything seems to work great!

This is probably the most important thing that happened for me this week.  The more I learn about systems and how they need to function (and I’ve got so much to learn), the more I realize that these systems need to work their best when I’m NOT around!  The Macs in the control room are a huge part of what we do on the weekend, and I’m feeling pretty good that Wednesday night’s project turned out as well as it did.  It was worth every ounce of lost sleep (which I didn’t start to regain until late Thursday afternoon).

Since I’ve come on staff at NewPointe, the only Macs that I’ve purchased have been for production use (Pro Presenter, Final Cut, etc.).  To this point we only have ONE staff member at NPCC that is a full-time Mac user, and he bought his iBook before I came on board.

I’ve wondered now and then how long it would be before I’d get an actual request to purchase a Mac.  A couple weeks ago, I got my answer.  One of our end users has requested a MacBook to run Final Cut on, as well as ProTools for both offline and live use.  This unit would also serve as their “working” system, i.e. they would be checking email, writing Word docs, and doing everything else they did on their previous laptop, on this MacBook.

Now I don’t know if this request is going to go through or not, but it did get me thinking about support issues for Macs.  When do you actually begin to support Mac desktops and notebooks.  Do you wait until you have a certain number of them deployed?  Do you just wait until your users are so frustrated that you no longer have a choice? 

And what about getting your Macs to play nice on a Windows network?  Do a lot or organizations bind them to the windows domain, or are they just free-roaming machines that wander around on the LAN with no external management?

Let me get this out of the way.  I’m not AGAINST Macs.  Those who know me know that I’ve been editing on Final Cut for a few years now, so I could actually sit on either side of the fence on all the Mac/PC issues (cost aside, of course).  What’s on my mind right now is this:  On a Windows network, how much support time do you dedicate to your Mac users, and where do you draw the line on Mac support (if you have a line)?

I know many of you have different thoughts on this.  Share them if you have time.