Appropriateness of git for digital video production versioning

Appropriateness of git for digital video production versioning

[Charles Earl]

Hi,
Are there past instances of git having been adapted to support version
control of digital media production workflow?
I'm evaluating CMS and versioning systems for the backend of a SaaS
for digital media production workflow.
The bulk of content stored is binary data -- there have been posts on
this about integration of various binary diff implemetations with git.
The versioning of metadata, scripts, project structure seems to argue
for applicability of system such as git -- these fit the paradigm of
traditional scm.
Example content is from media production suites such as Adobe After
Effects/Premier: video, compositions, etc.
I'd also like the object storage to be in S3/Amazon BlockStore or
similar remote stores.
Charles

Re: Appropriateness of git for digital video production versioning

[Shawn O. Pearce]

Charles Earl <charles.cearl@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are there past instances of git having been adapted to support version
> control of digital media production workflow?

You are going to run into scaling problems.  Git works under the
assumption that it can malloc() at least 2 complete copies of a
file at once, in the same process.

Last time I mucked around with digital media production, the volume
of data in a video file was *huge*.  Its workable on modern systems
with terabyte disk arrays and so forth, but modern systems still
can't afford the 100 GB of RAM necessary to allow Git to malloc()
up two blocks of a single 40 GB video file.

Also, since clients pretty much grab the entire repository when they
clone it for working access, its going to suck down the entire media
archive, *all* versions.  That could be well into the hundreds of
TB range and may never complete.

> The bulk of content stored is binary data -- there have been posts on
> this about integration of various binary diff implemetations with git.

You mention later about using S3 or BlockStore to hold the binary
content.  Maybe the large binary data should be stored in S3, and
the Git repository just holds the metadata and scripts, including
scripts to perform downloads/uploads through S3.

> The versioning of metadata, scripts, project structure seems to argue
> for applicability of system such as git -- these fit the paradigm of
> traditional scm.

Yea, that's more typical of what Git was designed and built to store.

> Example content is from media production suites such as Adobe After
> Effects/Premier: video, compositions, etc.
> I'd also like the object storage to be in S3/Amazon BlockStore or
> similar remote stores.

My suggestion?

Use Git for your metadata and scripts.  Include a few scripts that
can download the large media files from S3 when they are needed,
and upload new versions when they are modified.

If you want to store versions over time of the files, sha1sum
the media file and use that as the key name in the S3 bucket,
and store the output of sha1sum into a file within Git.  E.g. a
".media" text file just listing out sha1sum and path names:

  ceba7222551c722836564535697947e8a9b3e7ce big_file.mpg
  75c8f5ecb97ec67c1ec949b16c72e6ba1361a528 other_file.mpg

and use a simple script to edit/read that file, accessing S3 as
necessary for the operations.

-- 
Shawn.

Re: Appropriateness of git for digital video production versioning

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

Hello,

Git is not the appropriate tool. What about using a filesystem with
versioning support? tux3, btrfs, ZFS and NILFS may work for you.

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Charles Earl <charles.cearl@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Are there past instances of git having been adapted to support version
> control of digital media production workflow?
> I'm evaluating CMS and versioning systems for the backend of a SaaS
> for digital media production workflow.
> The bulk of content stored is binary data -- there have been posts on
> this about integration of various binary diff implemetations with git.
> The versioning of metadata, scripts, project structure seems to argue
> for applicability of system such as git -- these fit the paradigm of
> traditional scm.
> Example content is from media production suites such as Adobe After
> Effects/Premier: video, compositions, etc.
> I'd also like the object storage to be in S3/Amazon BlockStore or
> similar remote stores.
> Charles
> --
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>



-- 
Pau Garcia i Quiles
http://www.elpauer.org
(Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)

Re: Appropriateness of git for digital video production versioning

[Christian MICHON]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Charles Earl <charles.cearl@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> Are there past instances of git having been adapted to support version
> control of digital media production workflow?
> I'm evaluating CMS and versioning systems for the backend of a SaaS
> for digital media production workflow.
> The bulk of content stored is binary data -- there have been posts on
> this about integration of various binary diff implemetations with git.
> The versioning of metadata, scripts, project structure seems to argue
> for applicability of system such as git -- these fit the paradigm of
> traditional scm.
> Example content is from media production suites such as Adobe After
> Effects/Premier: video, compositions, etc.
> I'd also like the object storage to be in S3/Amazon BlockStore or
> similar remote stores.
> Charles
> --

for what it's worth (call me crazy, call me sick), I used msysgit only
on the project files from Windows Movie Maker (not on the media files,
but the timeline and my personal cuts, etc...).

it works perfectly, so (whatever system you're using) my advice would
be identify the small files and formats saved by your video editing
software (I see xml files are usually used there), only add these in
the git repository and make sure the video inputs and outputs files
are in .gitignore

doing so, you have a fast and cheap tracker of your timeline edition,
splitting and joining of video files.

HIH

-- 
Christian
--
http://detaolb.sourceforge.net/, a linux distribution for Qemu with Git inside !