Final Cut Server for still photo database?

I know that FCS was intended to be use for video production database, but I have heard it could be applied to other database uses, such as a digital photo database. I haven't seen or heard of anyone doing this, but our unit is looking to replace our current database software (Cumulus) with a more user-friendly application. Our unit is a university support office with both video and digital still photography. Our current still image database is over 100,000 files. Has anyone used FCS for this type of database application?

We are currently using it as a Photo/Video database.
I've only put about 3000 images/clips in there so far
but it seems to be working well.
We are running it on a old Quad G5 and have some
custom conversions set up for adding images and
videos.
Our Web team can take our videos and in two clicks
have a WMV and FLV video for their sites and then
select a few images and do a quick convert to web
sized imges..all within FCS
It would be nice to see a open architecture with plugin support
and more file compatibility, but for now it works great
as a database for images and video.

Similar Messages

  • Final Cut Server for audio assets?

    Hi all,
    Anyone have thoughts on using Final Cut Server for managing audio projects? I can see games programmers also needing it big time but can't see much info on how FC Studio handles audio assets. As for managing all material for an album...
    If anyone has any info, I'd be pleased to hear it.
    Thanks!

    We are currently using it as a Photo/Video database.
    I've only put about 3000 images/clips in there so far
    but it seems to be working well.
    We are running it on a old Quad G5 and have some
    custom conversions set up for adding images and
    videos.
    Our Web team can take our videos and in two clicks
    have a WMV and FLV video for their sites and then
    select a few images and do a quick convert to web
    sized imges..all within FCS
    It would be nice to see a open architecture with plugin support
    and more file compatibility, but for now it works great
    as a database for images and video.

  • How do I migrate metadata from Final Cut Server for use in Premiere?

    We're one of many companies looking to move to Premiere Pro from Final Cut.
    We have thousands of tagged clips in Final Cut Server and I'm trying to find a way to export all that metadata so it can be used, and searched for, within Premiere Pro.
    Does anyone know if/how this could be achieved?
    The only thing I've found online that seems to be relevant is this:
    http://www.andre-aulich.de/en/perm/export-asset-metadata-from-final-cut-server-using-built in-tools-only
    This seems to explain how to export the metadata (although I don't fully understand it) but not how to make it useful for Premiere.
    Any help would be greatly appreciated!

    Well... I'm a librarian by training so I use Cat-DV a little differently.
    I use it to make a searchable archive of proxy files for entire hard drives.  I hook up a hard drive (say an old external) and point Cat-DV at it.  It makes a catalog (locally) that has all the metadata (most importantly "date created") and a small proxy or thumbnail if it's a still.  Then I unplug the drive, label it and put it on a shelf.  When I need to find something all I have to do is consult the local catalog.  I can search it (if I included any metadata) or, most likely, I'll just scrub around for date created.  Cat-DV will display the exact path to where the asset is.  I can search across multiple catalogs of drives without ever having to plug one in,  Once I find the file I want, I just plug in that drive to retreive the file.
    I use it mostly for stills and some b-roll that gets used over and over.  For a variety of reasons, we never opted to make it a full replacement for FC Server. 
    And another thing... you can do a heck of a lot with the $99 or $300 version.  You don't need to go the full enterprise server route (though you do have to do that to use the server functions). 
    You might also want to try Adobe Bridge for searching and editing metadata.  In my experience, it's always been slow with video but that may well have changed.  I haven't played with it in a while

  • Final Cut Server is for video and photo archiving?

    Too many products in the last few years. I used to use iPhoto to archive both photos and video and edit them. Now I have moved to the professional line but it gets more confusing.
    Aperture2: archiving and cataloguing thousands of pictures with minor edits
    Adobe CS4: major edits to my pictures
    FCP6: video edit but with no archiving and/or metadata capability
    Final Cut Server: for what? Can it archive/metadata all my video and all my Aperture files and work
    seamlessly between all these four programs?
    Please help. I am considering buying Final Cut Server. I am both a photographer as well as a videographer running many different cameras over many different kinds of shoots. And I am trying to simplify my work process.
    Thanks,
    Brian

    We were in a similar situation as well.
    We use Adobe products for photo and desktop stuff
    and FCP Suite for video.
    We ingest images with Bridge and add keywords.
    The raw files are backed up and the corrected images
    are processed (Photoshop/Image Processor) and dropped
    into a Final Cut Server watch folder.
    This action automatically adds the files to FCS for
    easy access as well as backs up the images to an
    external FTP in our desktop publishing office across
    town. Desktop has its own version of FCS that adds
    the new files and makes them available for designers.
    When we shoot video we shoot mainly with Sony EX3
    camcorders with SxS media. Footage is downloaded
    and tagged in XDCAM Transfer. The folder that is
    labeled "Import" in the utility is also a watch
    folder which added the files to FCS.
    So in other words Final Cut Server has us organized
    and working together much better than we were before.

  • Final Cut Server is Dead

    What a news!
    I am wondering how many FCSvr deployments are out there and what would be our Plan B.
    IMHO, Final Cut Server is still the best asset management system in production space, and it would be hard to replace it.

    Yes, I too would like to start this discussion. We have a highly customized distribution, and have come to rely on FCSvr for our workflow. As people find other solutions, or stick with FCSvr, it would be great to know their thinking and how they'll implement the new or the old. If Apple open sources it, there are a number of people who would love to start developing it more I'm sure.

  • Final Cut Server alternatives?

    Hi,
    Could anyone suggest alternatives to Final Cut Server for media asset management? FCS is very much overkill—I'm a single person editing a film on my Macbook Pro and external hard drive. I have lots of media (600 or so still images, a bunch of movie files, audio for narration, music, etc...) and I'd like a way to keep all that stuff centralized, organized, and tagged with descriptive text.
    For more info here's my post about this in a different forum, which received a response but the suggestion, iDive, didn't seem to fit my needs: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2119117&tstart=0
    Thanks in advance for any advice...

    Ever think of using iTunes and iPhoto? You already have them and they do what you want. Not customizable or easy to automate as much as FCSvr, but they are free and probably already on your Mac. Plus the facial recognition in iPhoto 09 is great if you deal with a lot of head shots.

  • Hardware Configurations for Final Cut Server

    I am a small video production shop, currently running 2 standalone FCP stations; one Intel tower FCP7 with about 3T of firewire 800 Raid 1 storage, and one PPC G5 tower FCP6, on a gigibit ethernet network with a central NAS. I am adding a 3d station and a new employee. The problem we have run into is that many assets seem to always reside on the wrong system, and duplicate projects become impossible to resolve and archive effectively. We shoot exclusively on HDV.
    This is the setup I am considering....
    Convert the Intel Mac Pro tower to Final Cut Server
    Buy 3 27"iMacs for edit stations
    My plan would be to have all projects reside on the FCPServer and edit on 422 Proxy versions on the iMacs. I understand that each iMac would need a copy of FCP. Would they all need to be FCP7 to work on the same project at different times?
    Other questions:
    Would working on a gigabit ethernet network be a bottleneck?
    Could I ingest video directly to the server? Is there a way to capture 422 video onto the server or would that require a separate copy of FCP on the server to capture from tape? If so could I use the older FCP6 copy withot upgrading just for capture? Alternately could I use a copy of FCExpress on the server just to create a project and capture on the server then open and convert to FCP7?
    Any suggestions for what to do with the Dual 2.5G PowerPC Tower?

    ProRes wil be much faster for rendering on the client and transcoding on any machine, and will also allow for more realtime effects vs native HDV in FCP. "Full-rez" is a misnomer here, since ProRes Proxy does not sacrifice any resolution and indeed has a higher bitrate than native HDV. You might find that your HDV source looks just as good in ProRes Proxy (it is very high quality, just not as pristine as the higher quality versions of ProRes).
    Remember, ProRes 422 Proxy is still a 4:2:2 10-bit codec. I think you'd need to look awfully close to see a qualitative difference. You can choose to use ProRes Proxy at lower resolutions than your source media, but you don't need to. It is designed to work all the way up to 2K and maintain all the color fidelity of a 10-bit codec.
    When you check in a project that you are cutting locally with Edit Proxies, FCSvr relinks the project to the original media, but it does not render anything. You would need to open the project on the FCSvr host with FCP to create an flattened QuickTime against the original media (in your case native HDV).
    You can recapture, but when you have FCSvr cataloging your clips, you do not want to recapture the same media and duplicate the asset. If you are careful and recapture the clips that were disposed of to the exact same location with the exact same filename as before, FCSvr will re-link the media to the asset automatically. However, that workflow is very human-error-prone and I strongly recommend you not adopt it. Keep your source HDV tapes as a worst-case backup, but if you are going to use FCSvr, use its archive capability to RAID-1 external drives and only go back to the tapes if all else fails. And you'll need to be very careful to match you prior ingest if you do.
    Of course, you can always delete an asset altogether when you're done with its media and later recapture the footage from tape and treat it as a new asset. It depends on how interested you are in keeping your asset records and their proxies intact for media you plan to remove from storage.
    I'd take a good long look at ProRes Proxy vs HDV for quality. If you can't see a difference, capture to ProRes Proxy and make that your online format. Then you won't be eating up all your storage on the server keeping both the HDV original and a ProRes Proxy for edit proxies. If you don't enable edit proxies, FCSvr just hands out the original media.

  • Best practices for Edit Proxies in Final Cut Server?

    We just bought Final Cut Server, and for the most part are pretty happy with the product. We are a small production facility, and primarily work with DVCPro HD footage at 720P. One feature we'd like to use would be the edit proxies feature in FCS, but they don't seem to be working for us.
    _Hosting Computer_
    We're using a mac mini server with snow leopard server and final cut server 1.5.
    Problem
    Whenever we specify in the Administrator Pane of FCS, Under Preferences and Analyze, we'd like to use a custom transcode setting for the edit proxies, keeping Frame Size, TC, and Frame rate the same, but changing the codec to h264 least quality, the effects are a different compression than expected. We tested out the compression settings using Compressor on the server, and we get the desired results:
    Input: DVCPro HD 720P Quicktime 960X720 (1248 x 702) 23.98 fps
    Output: H264 Quicktime 960X720 (1248 x 702) 23.98 fps
    Also did the same outputs using Apple Prorez, Photo Jpeg and got the following outputs:
    Output: Apple Prorez Quicktime 960X720 (1248 x 702) 23.98 fps
    Output: Photo Jpeg Quicktime 960X720 (1248 x 702) 23.98 fps
    (We also made new transcode settings for these compressor settings and we not able to control the compressions through FCS with these settings as well. Our target codec is H264.)
    After connecting the new compression settings on the Mac Mini Server to a new transcode setting in the FCS Admin Pane, we restarted the Java Client, logged in to FCS as an FCSadmin, opened the Admin Pane, and under preferences/analyze change the edit proxy setting to the New H264 setting that worked perfectly when using Compressor. After uploading a final cut project, with one associated media file (DVCPro HD 720P Quicktime 960X720 (1248 x 702) 23.98 fps), the resulting edit proxy did not match the specification: 384 x 216, 23.98fps, TC matches source.
    Also did not dynamically connect when checking out the project from FCS and selecting edit proxies and keep media with project and saving to the desktop.
    Question 1:
    Does anyone have any best practice transcode setting(s) to create for DVCPro HD 720P using edit proxies that dynamically connect and are smaller size than the original? H264? Photo Jpeg?
    Question 2:
    Why is Final Cut Server's Compressor giving a different output, when the same settings work well with just Compressor?
    Question 3:
    Does H264 work in creating dynamically linking edit proxies (ie, no need to reconnect)?
    I can imagine this information to be very useful to the community, so any input or solutions will be greatly appreciated.
    Thank you.

    H.264 is a puzzling choice of codec for edit proxies. H.264 is not an edit-friendly codec since it is a complex long-GOP structure and will require a ton of rendering just to play back the timeline. ProRES 422 Proxy would be a much better choice for editing. I'm afraid I can't account for the differences between Compressor and FCServer in this case, but my gut tells me the non-I-frame codec you are trying to use for edit proxies might have something to do with it. Maybe for an edit-proxy workflow to operate properly on the server-side the codec must be I-frame? Is there any reason you do not want to use ProRES 422 Proxy? They are about 1/3 the footprint of 720p24 DVCPRO-HD, which is already very efficient. For that frame rate and frame size they would be roughly half the heft of good ol' DV25.
    So my answer to all three questions would be to try ProRES 422 Proxy for your edit proxies and see if everything lines up.

  • Final Cut (Server) as an application server for web-video ??

    Hi,
    we are currently evaluating different solutions to automatically postprocess video files, which are uploaded to a web-server.
    The video files are flash-videos (flv) uploaded from the public internet to our web-server. Each uploaded video has to be postprocessed, (applying some slight color grading and processing the audio with audio-units plugins) and finally converted to a h264 video file. The Webserver and the workstation are connected by ethernet or a fast internet connection.
    Is this possible with the Final Cut (Server) automation features?
    Any feedbacks, ideas or alternatives are welcome.
    Thanks in advance fom Berlin, Gemany,
    Manfred

    Final Cut Server's video processing is limited to what Compressor can be set up to do with a file. The rest of the automation potential lies with communication among teams of users and file movement. FLV is not readable by default (via QuickTime), so you would still need the Episode Engine plugin to be able to process FLV inputs. Final Cut Server does not script the comings and goings of the applications in the Final Cut Studio suite, it is a tool for managing multiple artists and editors all batting work around to each other and feeding it to producers for approval and feedback.

  • Optimal Block Size for Xserve's RAID hosting Final Cut Server

    What would be the optimal block size for the software RAID on the machine that will be hosting Final Cut Server? The default is 36K. Since FCS is essentially a database, would be the optimal settings? Any glimpse what data size chunks FCS write to the disk?

    Actually I meant the block size for the internal startup volume where FCS is installed, not Xsan volumes. As to optimal settings for Xsan volumes it really depends on the type of the data you store on Xsan, and if it is primarily video, what format: SD, HD.

  • Does a QMaster Cluster really make sense for Final Cut Server?

    Correct me if I'm wrong, and I often am, but my understanding of the difference between setting up a "Cluster" and just using "This Machine" is the cluster allows multiple jobs to be processed simultaneously, while an unmanaged system will only do one job at a time. However, when it does that one job, it uses all the system's processors.
    Yesterday I created a cluster consisting of two Quad Core Intel systems, and started Final Cut Server cataloging about a half a TB of data. I noticed that Server submits the Proxy render jobs one at a time, and that the jobs were being submitted to only one processor core, in a rotating fashion. Is there a way to make FCServer submit jobs in "parallel," or am I better off with using just the local system for transcoding?

    The default proxy transcode setting seems to be specifically tuned to work at a small scale, which makes sense if you are asking a box to host the database, serve the app, and do all the proxy transcodes. I observed the same phenomenon, so I made my own transcode setting for proxies and I chose to lower the bitrate a bit to help with file size and transfer time. The upside is the floodgates are wide open when my 32 core Xeon cluster (four 8-cores) goes to town on a proxy encoding job.
    Your other observation is also right, that only one item is encoded at a time across the cluster rather than working on all of them at once across the cluster. So what you get with a fast cluster is shorter encode time, not parallel encodings that all finish at the same time.
    If you have the spare machines to dedicate to cluster work, I strongly endorse setting up that way. I would not recommend Quick Clusters for Final Cut Server encoding duty. Either set up a dedicated Managed Cluster that FCSvr can use or none at all.

  • Rough Cut Editor for Final Cut Server

    Hi everyone,
    we are working on a Rough Cut Editor for Final Cut Server.
    I'd like to know what you think about it and put a short video about its usage on my site at
    http://www.andre-aulich.de/en/perm/consol-rough-cut-editor-video
    Any feedback would be very much appreciated!
    Regards,
    André

    Hi guys,
    in addition to getting in touch with you personally, I'd like to answer some questions in public:
    LAN vs WAN
    ==========
    The RCE in its current form is primarily built to be used in a LAN.
    This is because you need both the Final Cut Server client as well
    as the RCE client to connect to a central server using the ports
    3000, 80, 8821, and 8891.
    In addition, we currently suppose the Edit Proxy folder to be an
    edit-in-place device, so you need to open port 548 if you use AFP
    for that. We might change that, but you still need the FCSvr client
    to connect to your server.
    That said, we currently consider the RCE to be run in a local network.
    FEATURES
    ======
    We are not planning to build a server ingest app, as there are other guys
    building these kinds of apps.
    A standalone version of the RCE without Final Cut Server connectivity would
    be easy to write, yet, we like to use FCSvr's proxies for preview, as this way
    low bandwidth (meaning non-Fibre Channel) to the viewing stations is
    sufficient.
    So today there's the RCE in its current form...
    AVAILABILITY
    ===========
    We are doing our final testing and hope to release the app within
    the next two weeks.
    As we need to install some tools on a server and have a look at its
    environment, we would currently install the RCE ourselves, usually
    through a remote connection.
    Yet, we already consider having selected partners to implement the
    RCE as well.
    Currently there's no beta program being planned, as we do our
    testing at a customer site, where we hope to evaluate the app
    quite comprehensively.
    I hope that answers some questions.
    For more questions, please feel free to get in touch with me.
    André

  • Small Office Network Solution for Final Cut Server - Proxy Storage Etc.

    Hi,
    I haven't been able to find any answers for this question by googling, So I would love if anyone here had some advice. I have the 10 License version of Final Cut Studio with 5 clients at the moment. I would like to set-up our office in the most effective way, however we are a non-profit organization, so we are working with a limited budget.
    My question is, does anyone know of any networking solutions for Proxy Storage and Media storage, that wont bottleneck, but is not as high budget/high tech as using an Xserve/XSan system?
    Right now we would be looking at running Final Cut Server off of our 24inch Intel IMac (Going to beef up the RAM). We have a Gigabit Switch, 4 more intel machines running final Cut pro, and a direct attached Drobo for Media Storage. I know this is not an Ideal set-up, but it's what I have to work with right now. So, I'm looking for any kinds of tips and tricks to make this set-up work for us, and am looking at purchasing either a Network Attached or iscsI storage system for the Proxy Storage.
    I hope this is a decent description of my situation, and would love some advice.
    Thanks Very Much,
    MacNomad

    Hi,
    I haven't been able to find any answers for this question by googling, So I would love if anyone here had some advice. I have the 10 License version of Final Cut Studio with 5 clients at the moment. I would like to set-up our office in the most effective way, however we are a non-profit organization, so we are working with a limited budget.
    My question is, does anyone know of any networking solutions for Proxy Storage and Media storage, that wont bottleneck, but is not as high budget/high tech as using an Xserve/XSan system?
    Right now we would be looking at running Final Cut Server off of our 24inch Intel IMac (Going to beef up the RAM). We have a Gigabit Switch, 4 more intel machines running final Cut pro, and a direct attached Drobo for Media Storage. I know this is not an Ideal set-up, but it's what I have to work with right now. So, I'm looking for any kinds of tips and tricks to make this set-up work for us, and am looking at purchasing either a Network Attached or iscsI storage system for the Proxy Storage.
    I hope this is a decent description of my situation, and would love some advice.
    Thanks Very Much,
    MacNomad

  • Storage issues for Proxies using Final Cut Server

    Hi there,
    we have a fairly high amount of material that is just being put into Final Cut Server to be archived again.
    I dont mind the Xserve being busy to create these proxy files, but they tie up too much space!
    (Maths: 500 GB / 40 h of DVCAM footage result in more than 100 GB proxy files).
    We have those 40 h running though more than once a month plus a whole LOT of material from the last 2 years - and our Xsan is only 7 TB in size.
    Although we could theoretically buy another fiber raid this solution is not really future proof - it just pushes the time when we have to buy the next one a couple of months forward.. on top of that I cannot afford to have expensive, fast fiber channel storage used for proxies of files that are long archived and have only very limited use (and IF we need them, stick in the archive device and done).
    Any ideas how to get rid of proxy files from archived assets?
    I dont really want to take pen and paper and delete the proxies of the files by hand from the bundle.. dont think FCSvr will like this either.
    thanks for any advice
    tobi

    So I'm not sure how your math is adding 100GB of proxy files
    Are you creating VersionS and/or Edit Proxies of everything?
    I ask because using the default Clip Proxy setting gives you file sizes similar to the ones below. These numbers aren't accurate because the default Transcode setting uses Variable Bit Rate (VBR) encoding for both video and audio, but assuming you had a relative constant 800kbps stream here's how large your Proxies.bundle file should be
    800kbps * 30secs = 2.4mb
    800kbps * 60secs = 4.8mb
    800kbps * 60secs * 60min = 280.8mb per hour
    280.8mb per hours * 40= 11.2GB
    Also note, that deleting an asset from FCSvr doesn't delete the proxy files so you could have a lot of proxies left over from a few historical scans.

  • HT1338 i want update for final cut server 1.0 ????????

    hello .
    i want to update my final cut server 1.0 i didn't find it are you reset it steve jobs don't do that for us

    The update to 6.0.5 (6.0.4 is not available from apple any longer) is included in a Pro Apps update or something titled along those lines. It is not named "FCP update".
    It can be found here:
    http://support.apple.com/downloads/ProApps_Updates_2008005
    x

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