A question about capturing videos to a Samba share... When Apple's Final Cut Pro captures video files, it pre-allocates file space on the destination volume.
If you capture to a local volume that's physically attached to a Macintosh, or if you capture to a network volume via AFP (Apple File Sharing Protocol), you can see that Final Cut instantly creates a file of the anticipated size on the destination volume at the moment just before capture begins (the anticipated size is based on the maximum capture time limit set by a user). However, when capturing videos to a Windows or Samba share, Final Cut actually will write out "dummy data" to a file, and then presumably it replaces the dummy data with real data as the capture moves along. Effectively, this makes Samba and Windows shares useless for capturing Final Cut videos. Because, for instance, if you expect to capture a 20-minute DV clip, it will take approximately 10 minutes to create the pre-allocated file before capturing even begins -- even when you are connecting via a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet link. The process seems to chug along unbelievably slowly. And if you were capturing uncompressed video (which has about 5x the data rate of DV video) well, the wait would be interminable. Can anybody on this list see a way to allow Final Cut to instantly create that pre allocated file space that it wants to create on a Samba share? Are their any Samba settings that could make this possible? It would be a coup for Samba! BTW, Apple's IMovie doesn't go through this pre allocation business. But, alas, IMovie doesn't capture timecode data, so Final Cut users who want to work with Samba shares can't simply switch to IMovie for capturing their videos. Hoping for an insightful reply, Andy Liebman -- To unsubscribe from this list go to the following URL and read the instructions: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/samba