Backup, backup, backup.

[slowtiger]

I'm back, but still feel like something was amputated.

One of the 4 discs in my Mac died on Wednesday, not completely unexpected since the Mac froze several times the week before. I can be glad it waited until Wednesday because I had a job to be finished until Monday (will be on german TV soon, some medical animation). Unfortunately the disk didn't just die gracefully but froze every machine it was put into. Thanks to Apple's Mac Pro design which allows for very easy mounting and unmounting of drives!

So the Mac didn't start at all. I noticed funny noises from one of the drives - the startup drive, the one with the system and all software and most important mail and business data. Take out that drive and insert a DVD to install a system on one of the other drives. DVD will not start up. Shutdown, unmount DVD drive and replace with working one from other Mac. Reboot and install system on remaining drive. 40 min later: it works, but I don't have any programs now. Go to bed (this was 3 in the morning).

Next morning: buy a new drive, mount, format. Connect backup drive and open TimeMachine (ha!). Last backup from Monday, hooray! Tell TimeMachine to restore complete volume on the new disc. 360 GB, about 8 hrs to go. Start to chew nails.

8 hrs later try to reboot. Will not do. Freezes everything. New drive shows same symptoms as old one. Test buses by switching drives in the bays back and forth, works. (I haven't counted the reboots.) Decide to format new drive again and install system from scratch. Works. Update system, works again. Open TimeMachine and now restore folder by folder. Data is no problem. Programs ... well. Lost some. Drivers - aww no!

Trying to restore Library content only works folder by folder, if at all. Often aborted by "you don't have permission". Workaround: create new folder, restore to that as much as possible, copy to correct destination later. Problem: you can't see inside your file system as long as TimeMachine runs, I connected from another Mac just to look into folders and compare content.

In the end there was only 1 item stubbornly not restored: my GarageBand instrument library, which is funny because they gave away that program for free.

I had to install the Sentinel driver (I keep my TVP downloads!), then TVP worked with all my settings. Had to install a new Wacom driver (of course), but no problem either.

I can only say: use some backup system, have multiple drives ready with a system (I didn't), keep stuff on different drives.

[Elodie]

Poor of you ! And welcome back

[ematecki]

And don't buy the newish "Trash Can" Mac Pro....

[slowtiger]

I didn't. Bought a second-hand 12Core Mac Pro. But I'm curious: why not the Steve-Jobs-Memorial-Urn?

[ematecki]

You can't add ANYTHING inside.
Everything you want to add has to have it's own enclosure, which means one more wall-wart, one more switch to turn on when starting to work (and off later...), and a lot of (very expensive !) Thunderbolt wires.

You have 4 drives in your current Mac Pro ?
That means one inside the trash can, and three (!) enclosures with the disks, with each having all the aforementioned crap attached to it.
See the mess ?

It's just the Mac Mini concept with a very powerful processor and chip set.
Nothing "Pro" about it.

[slowtiger]

Exactly my thoughts. I long decided I wanted a Mac Pro 12core, but then it was banned in the EU because of power consumption issues or whatever - the hell, of course a working machine comsumes power!

The Mac Pro "Cheesegrater" design was one of Apple's best decisions. A maintenance-friendly machine with a lot of power onboard. Unfortunately I feel neglected by Apple's later decisions, especially what they did with Quicktime, but also with some components of the OS which in later versions give me less options.

(Anybody interested in what happens when you still insist on using Quicktime in production?)

[Fabrice]

(Anybody interested in what happens when you still insist on using Quicktime in production?)

I'm interested.

[Thierry]

(Anybody interested in what happens when you still insist on using Quicktime in production?)

I don't want to have nightmares this night

[Sewie]

So what do you suppose would be a good, rigorous backup plan?
I've read somewhere that you should at least have two backups at your studio and another elsewhere in case something unfortunate happens at (or to) your studio. That means, including the disk you work from, three copies at home and an additional one abroad. Seems like a bit much, doesn't it?

For the copy outside, a cloud service seems logical, but for some reason I don't like to have my work floating around cyberspace were I can't really control who has access to it.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I have backups in Carbonite's cloud, a very good and even great, support oriented, company, I have TVPaint send a cycle of 20 of my increment backups of every save to another drive on the same computer but which I don't let Carbonite backup, and finally I have my entire project folder with hundreds of projects created over a 5 year period on a single film backed up on an external drive, which I copy about once a week manually and that too is beyound Carbomite's reach.

Why so many protections against Carbonite, which I would never want to work without anymore? When I run into a problem, which means that I have made a grave mistake and inadvertently deleted a file I never wanted to delete I instantly freeze Carbonite. Carbonite can either be too quick in synchronizing files or too slow. It becomes too slow if I let it synchronize every save file in TVPaint's cycle of 20. Sometimes it can slow down to becoming a week or more behind my actual production, which then isn't much help at all. Therefore I hide my cycle of 20 to Carbonite and I hide my weekly updates of two hours worth of projects to Carbonite as well.

On top of all of this, I have Carbonite continuously update my entire system image in the case of the catastrophic disaster of fire or a helicopter crash on top of my house. Just once did we experience such a catastrophic event when torrential rains from a hurricane flooded our entire basement where I had my editing equipment and stored my negatives in our analog production days.
But I don't want Carbonite to do this nonstop, which they are very good at and recommend because this means it can synchronize a flaw before I get to it. I have it set now to once a week.

If this seems overtly complicated to you, it perhaps is but that's the nature of the beast known as good insurance. I must say that at one point or another every one of these storage areas has become the last source of a successful rescue.

EDIT: The least I have to worry about, actually never even think of, is who can get hold of what I keep in the Carbonite cloud. What is there to steal and who would be interested since anyone who wants to can wait for our work to get finished and just take it all at once. I say this because I have just in the past few days of readiness to release our biggest and most valuable job discovered that NO ONE will offer you guaranteed protection against piracy. Actually pirates have become so sophisticated that Vimeo doesn't even make an attmpt anymore to pretend they can protect you.

[slowtiger]

I work on 2 machines right now. One is the old MacPro Quadcore with OS 10.6.8, the other is the new 12core with OS 10.9. Right now I use the new machine for rendering only since I haven't switched the Cintiq to it (and no TVP yet). I create my scenes on the old machine, then copy their folders over and render on the new one which saves quite some time since I can continue animating.

I use TVP, AnimeStudio 9.5, and FinalCut Express 4 on the old Mac, and AS 11 and FinalCut Express 4 on the new one. As you know I shovel lots of files between AS and TVP back and forth, for which I use PNGs or Quicktime with PNG codec. Here's what codecs QT offers me (blue dot indicates what I use):

QT_workflow1.png (7.42 KiB) Viewed 38686 times

Exporting from FinalCut gives me some more options:

QT_workflow3.png (11.66 KiB) Viewed 38686 times

Please not the differences: in OS 10.9 I have less choices.

And now the choices I have in AS 11:

QT_workflow2.png (9.36 KiB) Viewed 38686 times

I can choose either from the list of "new" codecs, or choose QT with a very limited list of codecs and no further settings.

OS 10.9 behaves strange when I try to play any video which was made with one of the older codecs: it converts everything to ProRes4444 first, then plays, then asks me whether I want to keep that converted video. AS 11 also takes its time to open any project containing old video, and since I usually use Quicktime PNG codec this can take minutes to open all linked video files. Any project containing old video will render on only 1 core, whereas projects without video or with new videos (wich the codecs OS 10.9 accepts) will open immediately and render with 4 cores.

I rendered the final scenes on the new Mac to ProRes4444, imported into FinalCut and exported to the final format Uncompressend 8bit 4:2:2 - which was the one required by the german TV station I worked for. They said "We don't work with Apples" when I asked for format choices, as if Apple was a bad word. Fortunately this final conversion didn't take long.

Long ago QT was a framework which provided identical capabilities to each program, so I could use every codec everywhere. Now it seems application-dependant and makes me jump through hoops. Oh, and on the old machine, when I re-installed FinalCut yesterday, I got a software update automatically for that. On the new machine I get offered software updates for other stuff, but not for FinalCut, and it's not a clean list anymore but the fucking App Store.

[schwarzgrau]

That quicktime-stuff and the new macs are some of the reasons I consider move back to windows, after 11 years of OSX usage.

[D.T. Nethery]

That quicktime-stuff and the new macs are some of the reasons I consider move back to windows, after 11 years of OSX usage.

Me , too. Why Apple decided to ruin Quicktime is a mystery to me.

[Fabrice]

I read a long time ago that they want to use an other system with more protection mostly in order to secure the AppleTV. Not sure though.

[ematecki]

I found the perfect illustration why you should NOT buy a new mac-pro :