Tutorial: Setting Up Avid Nexis | pro Shared Storage Platform

有些读者可能知道我是作家, 或者从各种论坛, 或者作为故事片剪辑师, 或者是我的 《百家乐app下载》系列访谈在那里，我与好莱坞的一些顶级编辑交谈. 但大多数时候，我是一个小企业主. 我经营一家小型, 一人制作和后期制作公司, fortified by some great freelancers in the Chicago suburbs.

To be honest, I never thought I was the kind of guy that could use a NEXIS. NEXIS is the rebranding of what Avid used to call ISIS. 它是Unity的下一代产品, the company’s big iron 网work and studio-shared storage and collaboration hardware. That’s not to say I didn't want one; the solution offers tons of storage, the ability to share media and storage and projects between multiple editors, in hardware the big boys use because it’s rock-solid.

I guess Avid has been thinking about me as much as I've been thinking about them, 因为不久前他们推出了 Nexis | pro (下面的图1). This model has all the features that Avid’s big NEXIS solutions have, but scaled down for someone like me with a smaller shop, but the same need for reliability and sharing functionality.

图1. Avid Nexis | pro

老实说虽然, I’ve cut feature films and this has plenty of horsepower and capability to handle the shared needs of a post team on any feature film. It’s just a couple of rack units, but that’s perfect for me. 我没有太多空间了, and I don’t have a big infrastructure or an engineering or IT department to support it. 我需要一些我自己能做的事情. I have a big project coming up where I need multiple editors and systems working together. I've bought a bunch of stuff from Videoguys, this tutorial’s sponsor. I asked them how quickly they could deliver a Nexis | pro, 这批货几天后就通过联邦快递寄到了.

Nexis | pro组件

The Nexis | pro consists of the main Nexis unit with all of the hard drives and a switch. There are more expensive switches and cheaper switches, and they’re expandable if you need more connections. The switch shown in 图2 (below) is a Dell N2024, 也就是说它可以连接24台电脑, 这对我来说已经足够了吗. If I needed more, I could buy another one and connect twice as many.

图2. 戴尔N2024 24机开关(上)

The NEXIS has two completely redundant power supplies. 如果有人死了, the other has more than enough power to keep the entire unit running until the bad one can be replaced. You have to plug in two power cables for the NEXIS, and the Dell needs another one.

操作

The Nexis is pretty much whisper quiet, the Dell is a little noisier. I've had one sitting within 10 feet of me for about a week, and I've done fine. Putting it in a noise-dampening rack unit would be a good idea, 或者只是把它放在某个地方就可以了. It’s all based on Cat5 cables, so you can move it pretty far away. 没必要让小队靠近你.

With the two units powered on, you need to attach the NEXIS to a switch. Avid提供了一种可以处理大量带宽的电缆, 但它相当便宜, and all you have to do is connect this between the NEXIS and the switch. The final hardware connections are between the switch and the computers, 用5类电缆就能很简单地完成.

NEXIS不是专属于avid的. If you want to use it with Premiere Prom FCP, After Effects, or Pro Tools, you just plug them in. 操作系统也不重要. I’m running a couple of Mac-based Media Composers and a PC that has an older version of Symphony, 与ScriptSync和短语查找它, 一切都很顺利, 即使使用Adobe CC套件.

I've got one of the latest MacBook Pros with no Ether网 port, but I can just use a simple Cat5-to-Thunderbolt adapter. 如果你想让吞吐量翻倍, 你可以使用两根5类电缆，而不是一根, and NEXIS can use that to deliver double the data rate.

There are two pieces of software included in the NEXIS. One is the browser-based management program that controls NEXIS, and the other is client-side software that gets installed on each computer that need to connect to NEXIS.

For more information on the Avid Nexis | pro, visit Videoguys.com.