[Samba] Samba and Preallocated Files

[AndyLiebman at aol.com]

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