Anyone?

Anyone in the Los Angeles Area?

Should I? Any specific reason?

Should I? Any specific reason?

Should you what, answer the question or use FC Server?

Other than people complaining about FCServer on the Apple forum I have not been able to find anyone who has actually deployed FCServer.

We really need an asset management solution to track the process of our productions, anyone have any suggestions?

I would be interested in hearing from users as well.

I also would like to hear if there are any MPEG2 server systems for the Mac as well.

We really need an asset management solution to track the process of our productions, anyone have any suggestions?

At a FCPUG in Montreal a few months back there was a demo of a forthcoming application that did asset tracking. I'm blanking on the name and the company at the moment, but I'll try to dig through some old emails at home to find it later. I remember it looked VERY promising in its beta stage...

At a FCPUG in Montreal a few months back there was a demo of a forthcoming application that did asset tracking. I'm blanking on the name and the company at the moment, but I'll try to dig through some old emails at home to find it later. I remember it looked VERY promising in its beta stage...

Was the application Flow from Grid Iron Software?

If so the demo was quite impressive at NAB but they have not been able to ship yet either. There's no doubt that asset management is not an easy problem to solve.

Was the application Flow from Grid Iron Software

Yes, that was it! It hasn't shipped yet, eh? Too bad. I was looking forward to folding it into my personal pipeline. Where I work, we developed our own pipline from scratch. Currently we are redesigning it to include a few additions such as Temerity Pipeline (http://temerity.us/products/pipeline/product-info.php).

It seems to me like no one wants to talk about final cut server on the forums... too bad, we are considering it at work but want to know if it is going to be overkill for us.

FC Server hasn't seen great implementation in the industry as most of it's benefits aren't realized unless you're also using XSAN which also has it's downsides that many big post-houses aren't willing to deal with and instead are using in-house tactics or other competitive products.

If you're looking for asset management options for FCS I'd suggest getting with one of the forum sponsors who sell Apple Pro apps such as Omega Broadcast or Abel Cine LA who have a lot of experience implementing these kinds of tools.

We installed FCserver at work in the hopes we could use it to edit a project from any of our six workstations. It will work that way, but it's too slow to use it for that in a deadline news situation. We never really got it up and tweaked and have never really made any use of it (more because of staffing cutbacks in IT than because of the server itself).

To include "Final Cut" in the server's name seems to me to be a misnomer. It is a database (albeit one that handles video and almost anything else) and if you need to access and re-use graphics, clips, logos, etc, it's a great thing. It's a library tool, basically, and not an 'edit-over-the-network' tool. From my limited experience, when you feed stuff into FCserver, things get rendered to make proxies and this is WAY slower than working locally.

Setting it up requires a database expert, not a video expert. Once things are loaded into server, though, they become displayable on a web interface from any platform - including PC's - and it could be really useful in an approval process.

My understanding of it is pretty rudimentary.

Chucks overview is spot-on: Unless you're in an XSAN server environment FC Server is little more than a preview tool for workstations, not a direct-edit. Only in an XSAN environment can you use the assets in real-time and without corrupting other workstation projects.

As I say, there are other more well-rounded tools available in various cost structures; best to get with the experts who implement these solutions on a daily basis to get solid advice.

I think Final Cut Server is one of the most poorly named apps ever. In no way would someone guess FCSvr is an asset management program just by hearing it's name. Most people I've talked to think it's a shared storage system like Avid's Unity because of the 'server' in the title.

Chuck,
I'm in LA and working on adding FCSvr to our workflow here. We're still in the kicking the tires phase but I'll answer any Q's that I can.


-A

We looked at purchasing a SAN network from ProMax about 3 years ago. At that time they had a system that for an additional $10,000, would allow us to connect both our FCP edit suites to one central drive. But the big hurtle was that both users couldn't write to the drive at the same time. One would have to log out to allow the other one to log in and ingest footage. With as many graphics, logos, etc....that are created during the project, that was a deal breaker for us. We'd both be constantly logging in, logging out, etc... I guess there was a more expensive solution that allowed more than one user to be logged in, but that created another problem. I can't remember exactly what it was though.

I think everyone is looking for a simple solution to have multiple edit systems hooked to one central storage drive. But as far as I know, a simple solution is just not available yet.

One of our competitors is using a gigibit ethernet network to connect all their edit suites to their server. I guess it works, but he's editing HDV. I'm not sure if it would be fast enough to support something like ProRes 422 HQ. Dunno....

One of our competitors is using a gigibit ethernet network to connect all their edit suites to their server. I guess it works, but he's editing HDV. I'm not sure if it would be fast enough to support something like ProRes 422 HQ. Dunno....

You'd be lucky to get over 100 mbs with GigE- so no ProRes HQ there.
We have two Facilis Terrablock products and they will have an updated software which will allow both users to simultaneously write the same volume. It actually uses the SMB protocol much like the GigE network connection does.

But back to the FCP Server, I'd be interested in this product if it scanned the media directory and located duplicate video files based on file size. Also, if FCP server could be used as a house cleaner, much like Media Mover for Avid, I'd get this in a second.

Searching through 12 TB of volumes, all with different (and sometime erroneous) capture scratches, is painful.

A function like "Remove all Render Files and clean up volumes" would go a long way in FCP media management- all this without the certified database technician.

-C

Chris,

Editshare has some solutions that will do ProRes HQ over Gig-E so it is possible. They also offer asset management as well. A big catch I'm seeing w/FCSvr is that to really get the most out of it you need someone who is very familiar w/the back end to do all of the customization for you.


-A

Our workstations are connected to a fiber router with dual gig-e ethernet. The router goes to our video storage server via fiber. It's way faster to copy a file over to the storage than it is to copy it to another SATA drive... I have no idea how it's configured, but it's fast.

The setup for Final Cut Server is pretty complicated and like most databases, it's got to be right from the beginning. The documentation at the time we installed it was not very thorough.... you need a pro to set it up.