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stevenrblake

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Read and encode a video file while it is still being captured.

I am capturing a full day of video content at a meeting into an uncompressed or lightly compressed video file. I have flexibility as to what the final file format will be and onto what storage media I put it. After the first section of the meeting is done I want to get to work editing or atleast compressing the video file to various formats, BUT the file is still in use by the encoder/capture pc  and I need to leave the encoder/capture pc going all day. The file is actually a high res VGA capture so standard video packages may or may not work for me.

Is there a non proprietary shared storage technology such as iSCSI, volume shadow copy, snapshot, DFS, or some sort of file system that I could use to work on a file that is still being written? Or maybe this type of thing is built into a codec or encoder in some sort of transport stream file format? Or could it be as simple as a live encoder that divides the file into seperate files as it writes, like the old fat32 drives used to?

I bought a rackmount server with 4 drive sata raid for this sort of thing and am not sure if I should look into a NAS os like freenas.org or if their is something more standard and tested that people do.

I imagine much of it depends on the file format and the software but I just want to see if there is an existing workflow for this sort of thing. Some sort of video collaboration and shared storage solution.
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GuruChiu
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stevenrblake

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Thanks GuruChiu

That helps. I was hoping for a method, tool, or workflow that would allow this with varying software tools. Maybe something in the file system level.

As a follow up if I simiplify my request - Once the file is split into segments and released, what is a good shared storage architecture that would allow more than one coputer read only access to the file. Let's say I want to edit a DVD in Adobe Premiere on PC1 while I encode a web version with Windows Media Encoder on pc 2. I am just trying to avoid having multiple copies of the same file on each computer as well as avoid the time and network bandwidth it would take to copy those files over to PC1 and PC2.

Maybe some sort of DFS that would copy the files bit by bit or byte by byte as they are written?
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Thanks GuruChiu,

I'll buy what I need to up to $1000 or so. I know the real video sharing SANs are way more expensive than that. I was hoping I could use the server I just bought with a 4 Sata raid as my storage server.

Any specific platforms names would be appreciated, especially if they work with video editing.

- Replication would work, but I hope for a platform that can replicate as the video file is being recorded and not when it is released. There will be times when I will have to use software that won't split the file and I'll have to take whatever kind of copy I can get, repair it if I have to, and use it that way.

- SAN - would be ideal, but I am not sure if it can provide block level access like iSCSI or a local drive.

- Direct Attached Storage - would be OK if I can get into it for not too much money. I wonder if I can do this with a some fiber channel cards along with a piece of software? Or maybe their is a newer ethernet standard for slower transfer rates? I have 2ndary NICs on each machine I could dedicate as a storage network.
After doing some research, I realize the complexities of my question. I am closing this question so that I can try a few solutions and learn a bit more.  

For file replication - I think I'll try Windows server DFS to see how it fares. I may try Unison as well.

For a SAN - I would love to take OpenFiler for a spin along with XFS or GFS (for iSCSI sharing)
Thanks for getting me going in the right direction.