Our Matco servers have been acting up lately. Our original one is several years old and acts up now and then. A client of ours got a Matco more recently but has stopped using it so we switched over to that one but that too has been going or driving us nuts. When to clips are back to back the second one does not play for some reason. the server just stops and we switch to the default input on the switcher.
We are planning to have one or the other serviced by Matco but the decision was made for us by PG&E, when we lost power (see next post or two) it killed the power supply on our Matco. So it’s down.
But a friend of mine has been looking at a newer server company called Cinegy, a newer automation / video server software package. I saw them at NAB 2012 and they seems very friendly and helpful. They offer a free demo, it comes with no limitations, just a key over the output channel. This way you can really get to know the product before laying down your bucks.
My friend has been looking at the product and likes it, which makes me think it could work for us. It can do several output channels at once and you can get a CG program for it but thats a bit pricey for us.
Maybe even use the old Matco box to run this in, but I think I would prefer a new box with lots of storage.
We could sell all our old equipment and just have a couple of these with a network to ship files around the studio. I think this could work out really well.
It seems that Seagate had achieved a breakthrough in magnetic information density, they have reached 1 Terabyte per square inch. What this means is that they can start making 6 TB 3.5″ hard disk ands 2 TB 2.5′ note book hard disks. The current density is about 620 Gb per square inch which give us the 3TB hard disk. Remember with 6TB on one disk that means you can loose 6 TB with a single drive failure so backup becomes even more important.
