On Nov 15, 2018, at 10:24 AM, Stephen van Vuuren <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

> Yeah, I'm not sure how we'd effectively have a team of artists working on a bunch of different shots simultaneously on the same project if the files had to be synced locally before they could use them. 

 

I did this many thousand of times on my IMAX film. It’s just getting the workflow right and because you’re only copying a file once or twice across a LAN, instead of hundreds or thousands of times, the speed improvement and cost reduction is very large.

 

>>using Render Garden to distribute a render that's going right to an editor, etc. and all of that needs to happen immediately -- it doesn't work for something to sync overnight. 

 

It’s just a question of what gets distributed where and when – and during my heavy years on the film, I had hundreds of syncs and mirrors happening a week – dozens on busy days.

 

>> We sometimes even sync entire projects from our network drive to Dropbox so remote freelancers can work on them as well.

 

You just argued for working local solution. A remote freelancer is functionally identical to a network workstation which is remote from central server. Just much greater latency and poorer bandwidth, so the issue is painfully easy to see. But that does mean this issue vanishes when someone is inside the building. The identical structural issues are all there, just short enough duration that we put up with it.

 

But just because something only takes seconds or minutes longer working network workstation then working locally in the most conservative examples, that means over time, months, years, we are talking about massive effects on cost and performance as well increased risks of problems.

 

>> I'm all for things going faster, but that seems impossible without working off of central storage on a network.  I'd be curious what kind of infrastructure and workflow design could get around this.

 

Again, I’m in the final stages of my IMAX film. We had 100+ volunteers but the bulk of the work was done here, primarily by me but due to the slowness of working with the files, I normally had three workstations plus a laptop running around me (while one machine was previewing frames, move to the other) so that’s 4 workstations plus 15 render boxes all rendering projects from the three workstation, 2 nearline servers and two archival servers and 2 cloud backup services.

 

We have three main teams of volunteers all working remotely and using both Dropbox and Gdrive to sync projects and assets but for some on slow connections, FedEx and hard drive was the way to go.

Never was a file worked over the network. 33 Million files at peak, 700 TB at peak.

The scope of how is both beyond email discussion and would vary widely based on the biz.

 

 

From: After Effects Mail List <AE-List@media-motion.tv> 
Sent: Thursday, November 15, 2018 11:30 AM
To: After Effects Mail List <AE-List@media-motion.tv>
Subject: Re: [AE] Constant hangs when switching between apps

 

> Then every VFX studio I've worked at, between 4 and 400 employees, is doing it wrong apparently.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure how we'd effectively have a team of artists working on a bunch of different shots simultaneously on the same project if the files had to be synced locally before they could use them.  We're constantly updating an asset, bringing in a new version of the 3D render to comp while it's still rendering, using Render Garden to distribute a render that's going right to an editor, etc. and all of that needs to happen immediately -- it doesn't work for something to sync overnight.  We sometimes even sync entire projects from our network drive to Dropbox so remote freelancers can work on them as well.

 

I'm all for things going faster, but that seems impossible without working off of central storage on a network.  I'd be curious what kind of infrastructure and workflow design could get around this.

 

On Wed, Nov 14, 2018 at 11:27 PM Brendan Bolles <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

 

On Nov 14, 2018, at 12:01 PM, Stephen van Vuuren <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

 

Workstations working directly off network storage is slower, more expensive, more prone to failure and a huge waste of time and money.

 

 

Then every VFX studio I've worked at, between 4 and 400 employees, is doing it wrong apparently.