Best Final Cut Server training.

We are setting up FCS in a educational setting, anybody have suggestions for the best training.

As a trainer cer'd for FCSvr, I do a lot of custom in-house work. Find an AATC that offers FCSvr training. We only have one here in Louisiana. Apple's site has a page to search for AATC's.
The "new" FCSvr book in the APTS series keeps getting pushed back. Don't think it's scheduled for release until April now. Ugh, wish they'd get it out. Those I know who've gotten to see it so far are saying it's really comprehensive and very good.

Similar Messages

Best Final Cut Express Training Program

I'm looking for a good final cut express training program. Preferably a video or maybe a video/book package. Anybody know which ones are the best? Thanks

Many people find one of these books (whichever is appropriate for your version of FCE/FCP) to be the next best thing to personal tuition. The books have lessons with media for them stored on a DVD.
There is also an FCE DVD Tutorial.
http://www.fcpbook.com/Home.html
The author is the main contributor to this forum, so you can always ask him to explain anything that may not be clear to you!

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 + Media Manager Best Practices

Is anyone using Final Cut Server to organize FCP Media Manager?
I don`t want MM and it`s individual contains cataloged by FCS, only a "bundle" from the directory of MM (that has the project and a sub-directory called Media with all medias from that project).
I`ve tried different solutions but always get stuck in some way.
1- Get the directory from MM and put on a Device being watched by a scan production. A production with the name from the directory is created and the project and medias are catalogued as well.
But I don`t want those medias and projects catalogued by FCS. I`ve tried to set the recursion limit to 0 or 1 but the production is not created, neither the bundle (from the directory) asset. Nevertheless you can`t archive productions (with MatrixStore you can), so a workaround would be to archive only the bundle inside the production (if you managed to get only the directory as a bundle inside the production). But to get worse, if you update the directory as a bundle (regardless if it`s inside a production or not) and your archive device is a FTP device it says "ERROR: E_NOTSUPP Sorry, copying a bundle to an ftp server is not supported".
2- Zip with "ditto" (because the 2GB problem with normal zip) the MM directory and put on a device being watched. This won`t be scanned by a scan production to create a production with the name of it contents because it`s not a directory it`s a zip file and even if I forget about productions and only uploads the zip files to get each MM directory created as a zip takes too long and much cpu power so it`s not possible with many MM directories (the case). And to get things worse (always murphy), before I`ve deleted those directories I checked the integrity of zip files and to my surprise some of them were ruined. So I don`t trust compressing anything for my backup. I`ve tried Tar, ditto, archive from finder (that`s the same as ditto) but it takes too long or break the file.
The bottom line: I just want a MM as directory bundle in FCS (preferentially inside a production automatically created) AND being able to archive it to a FTP device.
Thanks in advance

Well it sounds like you have two problems: getting a successful scan production to work and archiving. I think I can help with the first one.
When you set up your device make sure that it is one directory level up from each folder you want turned into a production. So for example - XSAN/Show1/MM/ - if you make XSAN the device and set the recursion limit to 0, Show1 will become a production and Show2, Show3, etc for example. Set the recursion limit to 1 and MM becomes a production - Show2/MM/ and Show3/MM, etc for example.
Here's what I would do. Device 1 = XSAN/Show1 with recursion = 0. In the production info section of the scan production response set the title = Show1_[0]. The [0] will automatically fill in the name of the directory, ie - MM. This way each folder within Show1 becomes a production and the name is preceded by Show1 for easy sorting. This way you can isolate your MM folder and treat it differently.
That should get your productions scanning correctly. I'm not sure about archiving to an FTP device, zipping bundles, or automatically adding bundled assets to productions with a scan. As far as I know, the only way to add a bundled asset is to manually upload a folder. I might be wrong about this though.
Hope this helps even a little.
Message was edited by: Franbot

SLS and Final Cut Server

Hi.
I'm running FCServer on an iMac, and I'm currently looking for the best solution for giving co-workers outside of our office network remote access to our FCS database. The main purpose for this is for remote users to screen and download episode segments and movies from our database.
I was initially thinking VPN would be the only solution, but then I saw Snow Leopard Server has 'Mobile Access Server' built right into the OS, which appears designed to help users avoid having to use a VPN.
Before I go out and buy SLS for the company, I want to be sure it will work. Am I correct that Snow Leopard Server, and the built-in Mobile Access Server, will allow users outside of our network remote access to our FCSrvr database?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!

Thank you for your response.
I posted this in the Final Cut Server forum as well and got this response:
+"Mobile Access Server will give outside access as VPN would, which will be handy if you want to access Final Cut Server using the Java client app. It will also give you VPN access for non-FCSvr uses, like email and Web.+
+If all you want is a subset of your FCSvr database, then you could also publish selected content to a Web/FTP/WebDAV server in your DMZ."+
If anyone else could offer some insight it would be greatly appreciated. I'm just an audio/video post-production guy, so this is all a little outside of my training.
Thanks.

Red Footage and Final Cut Server

Aloha gang-
I am still testing FCS in our studio and enjoy many of the features in this product. I love being able to search for footage and pull it into my FCP project with no waiting (using edit-in-place). But I am looking for some advice and knowledge regarding Red Footage.
My scenerio is this:
We render all our red footage to offline files that we will use in the post production process. I want to tag all those files with appropriate metadata so our edit team can search and retrieve files as they need it. But with red there are 7 files (in our workflow) that correspond to the same thing. Basically there is the original R3D file which can not be used in FCP, there are the 4 quicktime proxies that the camera generates and live in the same folder as the R3D, and these are the files I want to get back to after the production is through and archived. There is the offline quicktime we generate to edit with which we need to tag. There is a log and transfer quicktime we can log and transfer all this data to FCS (but it doubles the data size so I am not looking to use this one and edit performance is okay at best), and finally there is the folder that the 4 proxies and original red file live in.
All of these files should be search able by the same metadata. Imagine the shot is of a blue bird. When I type blue bird I would want all of these files to show up (obviously I could limit my search so I only get the version I need for what I am doing i.e. offline, proxie, etc. I have made metadata lookups for this so this is not the challenge.)
The challenge is I only want to log 1 of these files and have the metadata applied to all of them. They all have almost identical names. The offline, R3D, and folder file have the exact same name. The proxies are identical but with _F, _H, _M, and _P behind them. For the catalog process I only want to transcode proxies for the _M (The _F, _H take way too long and the proxies look the same as _M and the _P is too small
I could make them a bundle but that does not help too much as the offline lives in a different place as the footage.
Any ideas would be greatful. My easiest solution is to tag the files twice, once for the production and once for the archive, but this seems like a waste of time that I could have a computer do instead
P.S. anyone successful in getting the metadata out of the red file, I see the red metadata set, and have it in place, but can not get it to show anything no matter which file I upload.
Any ideas, or help would be great
mahalo
scott

Thank you for your replies. I guess my question is not really answered because of the conundrum associated with red footage
But my workflow to get through this will be as follows: (In case anyone is interested)
Set a scan to bring in the offline quicktimes as they are rendered and have someone tag them with meaningful tags to help us search during the production. I will send those to archive when we are done.
After the project is completed and the files are removed from Final Cut Server I will set a scan to import all the _M files (they transcode faster and quality is not an issue since it is making proxies) and tag them as best I can for the long haul (archive) I can either leave the media on the drive or back it up, depending on the immediate use of the files. This works very well if the media is still there as I can just drag the _M into Clipfinder and render the shot I need as I need it.
I am storing these clips in folders labeled CC_LTOXXX (where XXX is the number for the LTO tape which increases by one for each tape I use. When I import them into Final Cut Server from the LTO folder I have a direct line to which LTO tape the file lives on. It's not easy to get the files back (so with files used frequently I will also keep a copy on an external drive I can just plug in) from an LTO, but it is doable.
If anyone has an easy way to pull a list of files from an LTO tape that would be great, and even better if it could be a list Final Cut Server made, or if Final Cut Server could just pull the files. My LTO is a network drive so I would have to access it through an IP address, but if I could do that I would be golden.
Anyway I know this will all evolve and this is just where I am right now, any ideas would be appreciated.
Mahalo
scott

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.

Applescript in Final Cut Server

Hi all,
I am trying to get an applescript running from the final cut server. I wrote a script to replace all underscores and spaces in the filenames of a specific folder.
I've tested it local and it works like a charm. But when I attached the script to the folder via the final cut server host it wasn't working anymore.
Then I tried to link the script via the administrator panel in the Final Cut Server software. Response > Run an external script or command.
I'm not really that much of a scripter so now I'm having trouble finding the right command parameters. What should be defined in that line?
This is the script:
on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
          repeat with theFile in these_items
                    tell application "Finder"
                              set theFileName to name of theFile
                    end tell
                    set theFileName to my replace_chars(theFileName, "_", "-")
                    set theFileName to my replace_chars(theFileName, " ", "-")
                    tell application "Finder"
                              set name of theFile to theFileName
                    end tell
display dialog theFileName
          end repeat
end adding folder items to
on replace_chars(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)
          set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
          set the item_list to every text item of this_text
          set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
          set this_text to the item_list as string
          set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
          return this_text
end replace_chars
I would like to run this script to a folder on our SAN storage with the following path:
NCRV_XSan > FCS > Production > Afkijk_Gijs
What I would like to know now is how I specify the parameters for navigating to the above location.
All input is appreciated since I'm kind of a noob with scripting..
thanks in advance,
best regards,
Jan-David

Hi
First of all I would recommend to upgrade to version 1.1. You will then be able to delete assets without deleting the media files itself (the primary representation).
Just to make sure.., did you double click the FCP project icon?. My workflow consists of making productions for FCP projects. When uploading FCP projects into a production, you have to double click the FCP icon in order to get to the assets.
On the other hand, in the assets pane the assets (videoclips, audiofiles) show up as soon as the project is uploaded or updated.
Are you sure that there is nothing flagged in any search fields that rules out the assets your are looking for?

How to change Final Cut Server's time zone?

Hello all:
Is there a way to change Final Cut Server's time zone? It seems the software uses the GMT time zone as its reference. Therefore, whenever it runs on a computer located in another time zone, it still uses the GMT based timestamp.
So, for example, as my time zone is GMT less 3 hours, my FCSvr is always stamping the time as 3 hours in advance. Sometimes, this is really annoying.
My best regards,
JP.

I tried resetting Mac OS X's time zone directly in the terminal. Didn't work. After trying several times to set up another time zone, FCSvr suddenly was able to work with the PST time zone.
I was able to have a workaround by setting GMT (or PST) as my time zone, turning off the automatic date&time setting and manually setting the time, all at the date&time System Preferences.
Anyway, I don't think this is a "best practices" procedure, as FCSvr should be able to work normally with the server machine's time.
Any insights on this will be highly appreciated.
JP.

Open Source Final Cut Server

It would make sense to open source Final Cut Server instead of discontinuing it. Many depend on it and have massive asset libraries and workflows that will not be moving any time and need support. QuickTime/Darwin Streaming Server is open source and thriving. Final Cut Server should be given that chance as it still has many uses and a lot of potential in areas that Apple hasn't explored.
Apple please give back to community of loyal users and pro's around the world by open sourcing Final Cut Server and not letting it sit on the shelf like Shake collecting dust when it could be so much more!

I agree with this. We have invested too much to simply abandon our infrastructure and explore other options. Open source would be in everyone's best interest. I encourage you to visit the FCSvr feedback page and recommend this. http://www.apple.com/feedback/finalcutserver.html. Please be constructive - there has been enough temper tantrums and gripes about FCSvr being killed and the new way the FCPX works. Please be detailed about how you use FCSvr, any customization you've done, especially if they involve using the command line tools and scripting in any form. I personally have invested countless hours pouring over bash scripts, scouring the 43 "px" tables in the postgres database looking for ways to improve our setup, and writing libraries of functions to make scripting easy. I figured out how to customize our distribution to make it do what we need it to do, to serve our business and our clients. If the road ends here, was that all for nothing? FCSvr is a great product. I know that it doesn't jive with FCPX new ways of thinking. I know FCPX has range keywording and metadata capabilities. But what of a notification system? What of a transcoding server? What of subscription/responses triggering actions like archiving to tape? What about support for changing metadata with third party solutions? What about publishing the catalog to online services like MediaSilo? There are countless functions that have become part of the workflow of professional production companies. FCSvr has totally changed the way we work and think about our assets. I was just beginning to get somewhere with our producers and editors, and I really don't want to stop now. Open sourcing FCSvr would give developers the opportunity to write their own modules for FCSvr, we could see support for all kinds of functionality. It's not going to happen though if you don't tell them you need it. Send your feedback using the feedback page. Talk to the vendor you bought FCSvr from or the person who installed it in your organization and encourage them to have this discussion with the people at Apple who can make a difference. Please take action, don't just gripe and make broad stroke suggestions here on the forum. Thanks for your time.

Starting final cut server

Hi I am completely new to Final Cut Server and was wondering if I could get some of my questions answered about it. First off some back ground, the company I work for just brought me in recently and at the same time they decided too switch over to using FCP. Well they gave me the job of setting it up on their system, organizing the projects they have been working on to be easier to find and work with on FCS. As well as this I need to find out how Final Cut Server can make their life easier and present this information to them and show how this program can make their life easier.
Know I started off by reading what I can on final cut server and installing it. Know I have it set up, running under default settings, messed around with adding files to it and such.
here comes the big question, how is the best way to organize within final cut server. I and my company are used to thinking of things in a file way where you have the project file and within you have all the smaller files with your media for the project and sound and documents. How is the best way to organize projects?
Their is another part to this answer. we are not starting from scratch and are moving over a huge quantity of projects into FCS. To get the files over I created the file that they had been using to organize before, into an edit in place device. How can i easily and efficiently organize all this data so that it is useable for every one to access and resize what goes with the project that they are currently working on.
Thanks for your time

Zann00000 wrote:
Here comes the big question, how is the best way to organize within final cut server. I and my company are used to thinking of things in a file way where you have the project file and within you have all the smaller files with your media for the project and sound and documents. How is the best way to organize projects?
Their is another part to this answer. we are not starting from scratch and are moving over a huge quantity of projects into FCS. To get the files over I created the file that they had been using to organize before, into an edit in place device. How can i easily and efficiently organize all this data so that it is useable for every one to access and resize what goes with the project that they are currently working on.
Thanks for your time
To answer your first question, there is no "right" way to work with FCSvr. It is highly customizable and you get to bend it to your will (within some boundaries, of course). You should also know, since it sounds like you are new to FCP, that the media is not held within the project. It is stored separately and the project links to it. Therefore, you can have one piece of media that is used by more than one project. How your company should organize projects is something only someone who has spent time with your company can recommend. I can tell you that I decided to organize my files at the filesystem level by file type (documents, captured media, graphics, audio, etc.) and then gathered all related files of all types into Productions within FCSvr. That works for us, but something totally different might work for you.
On your second question, how is your existing storage organized into folders? Does each project get its own column of directories? Some other way? FCSvr can scan your storage using Production Scans to automatically turn folders full of files into Productions full of Assets and assign the folder name to the Production. That is the most automatic way to absorb an existing setup into FCSvr, but it only makes sense under certain conditions.
Finally, the way FCSvr makes life easier is via its automation capabilities. Learn how responses, subscriptions, watchers, and schedules work together. Think about how they can trigger each other. You can, for instance, set up subscriptions that will automatically send an email to a producer when a Production is ready for review. You can set up watch folders that will automatically encode files for use in making DVDs. You can trigger scripts and issue certain Terminal commands. Experienced users are finding a lot of things to improve on (it is a version 1 product after all), but even at this early stage the product is very robust.
After you get the hang of responses, subscriptions, watchers, and schedules you'll have this "eureka!" moment when you suddenly realize the true potential of FCSvr.
Good luck!

Importing Metadata to Final Cut Server from Excel

I'm getting ready to implement Final Cut Sever on an extremely asset-heavy media project, and I'm in need of a way to batch-import custom metadata from an excel spreadsheet.
Does anyone know if Final Cut Server has way to do this out of the box?
Specifically, if I have a an excel doc where column A = file name (of all media files) and columns b-??? = custom metadata, how can bring that information into FCS so that I can search my assets by the custom metadata?
DL

Yes it can be done but with the help of scripts.
If I have to do it today I would try to save those excel into a comma separated plain text files. Then I would build an script to read those columns of data from the text file (easy with awk command) and then write those fields to the FCS metadata. The tricky part is to link the file to the right asset inside final (you need to get the asset ID from the asset to be able to "setmd") The best way for me to do this (without accesing the database itself) is to have the name of the file (the plain text file) to be the same as the filename of the asset. This way you can then perform a "Write XML" from Final and you get an filename.xml where the Asset ID is located. After this is easy to build a custom XML file to fill with the excel metadata and perform a "setmd" to write back to FCS.
Hope this help

Final Cut Server Investment Inquiry

Dear Forum-
I am the new campus videographer/editor for Bradley University, and we are considering investing in a *Final Cut Server* system to help catalogue, search, and archive future media assets. As of now, I am just editing off my MacBook Pro laptop on FCP using an AVCHD workflow.
From reading Apple's online materials, forums, and other resources I understand that FCSvr is ideal for an multi-editor Xsan environment, however, it can be downscaled to a single machine operation. My question is this: Without the complexities of an Xsan over our network, would a *single MacPro tower* with a large capacity RAID drives that is located on the network be sufficient to be the host, and myself (and possible other colleges) on MacBook Pro laptop work as FCP clients? What are the positives and negatives of going without an Xsan and just run FCSvr off a single machine?
If so, would FCSvr work in the following scenarios:
- Catalogue and search through an existing photo archive on a separate server or would I have to move those assets to the FCSvr MacPro?
- Would potential colleagues (Mac and PC) be able to access and edit footage on my FCSvr from various parts of campus and even remotely from home?
- Is FCSvr able serve AVID clients on the network?
Lastly, does any know of a company/institution that is running a FCSvr operation in the Peoria, IL area for me to visit?
Sincerely,
Jon

Jon Greenhoe wrote:
- Catalogue and search through an existing photo archive on a separate server or would I have to move those assets to the FCSvr MacPro?
Yes, provided the photo archive is accessible via FTP, AFP, SMB, or NFS.
Jon Greenhoe wrote:
- Would potential colleagues (Mac and PC) be able to access and edit footage on my FCSvr from various parts of campus and even remotely from home?
As long as they have IP access to the FCSvr host, yes. Best practice for offsite users is to connect via VPN. This gets you access to proxies. Any editing would need to take place after checking out a project and downloading its edit proxies.
Jon Greenhoe wrote:
- Is FCSvr able serve AVID clients on the network?
Not sure what you are asking. They could load the client and search like anyone else, but not much else.

Final cut server not serving java client application

weird situation. today i went to download the java client for final cut server 1.5.1 at my normal address and the webpage came up welcome.. with the ability to download the client application as normal but when i pressed the button to download nothing happened.
anyone have any ideas how to resolve this? manually removed all of the client java cache on the client machine and also reinstalled fcs 1.5.1 on the server with a restore of the database without any change in functionality. any ideas?

hello ben,
thanks for taking your time to help me with the issue i am seeing here. I will do my best to read into what you said and explain.
1. Network User Permissions Problems.
maybe you can explain, but i have not authenticated against anything at this point, just went to the normal.. "http://FQDN/finalcutserver"... the normal fcserver webpage comes up but when i click download it does not give me the ability to download the java applet or run a script that maybe delivers the java applet.
maybe i am not understanding, but what about what i am experiencing looks like a permission issue? permission for fcserver to distribute the java applet to a user who goes to the final cut server web page to download the client?
If that is the case, would you know where to start looking for permission issues?
2. Verfy the web server services and comb through the user permissions and services on the server.
The web services, service is on and when i look at the logs with any reference of final cut server, this is what i see right after when i try to download the client app.
File does not exist:/Library/WebServer/Documents/FinalCutServer, referer: http://FQDN/~localadmin/webstart/content.php
as far as the user permissions, what should i look for? there are very few users, the local admin, the open directory admin and 1 other user in od.
with regard to services running on server 10.6.1 and how they affect final cut server.. checked use of how i would use AFP, DNS lookups, OpenDirectory & network homes, and Web services and appear to be working as far as i can tell.
hope the above information helps. thanks in advance for helping troubleshoot.

Anamorphic Setup - Final Cut Studio Training

I inadvertedly posted this in the DVD SP forum. I'd like to move it here where it belongs.
I just got my Final Cut Pro Studio a couple weeks ago, had to finish a project that I was doing in FCE and iDVD, and am now reviewing the tutorial on the Final Cut Studio Training DVD.
One of the first steps is to setup the session to "DV-NTSC Anamorphic". Since I had already blown past that 2 week ago, I did not see it this time, nor could I find the correct menu to make that setting for the tutorial. So I just blew by it; realizing that I'd find out sooner or later what the cost would be.
I found out: When doing the Motion segment and importing the final "TrailerLowerThirds" back into FCP, that part is compressed horizontally with black side bars on the right and left.
3 questions:
How do I make that setting if I've been running FCP already?
What does that do to the project, the clips, anything else?
If I were to make this mistake on one of my projects, how would I recover?
So far I've only been making projects in DV-NTSC 2:3 (I guess that's the right way to say it). Any insights would be appreciated.
G5 dual core 2Ghz, 2.5 GB, 160, 300GB & 300GBfw Mac OS X (10.4.6) FCE HD, FCSP5.1

My second question was: "What does that do to the project, the clips, anything else?"
The essential thing to bear in mind is that 4:3 and 16:9 anamorphic projects (in the SD world) have the SAME resolution: 720x480 pixels for NTSC, 720x576 for PAL. Because the resolution is the same, but the apparent frame size is different, it can lead to confustion, and it's easy to get it wrong - especially over there in the US where anamorphic broadcasting of SD material never took off, and thus widescreen sets were never mass market before HD.
(The situation here in Europe is different.).
Have a read of this for clarity: http://www.helerab.fi/widescreen/
The anamoprhic easy setup just tells FCP that you are capturing anamorphic material, and that new sequences should be anamorphic by default. You can override these defaults if necessary, but the easy setup just makes it harder to mess up.
The important thing when going to DVD is to keep the workflow anamorphic all the way through: output anamorphic material from FCP, make sure material is transcoded to mpeg (whether through compressor, iDVD or Quicktime) with anamorphic settings intact; and in your DVD authoring application, make sure projects, menus and tracks are created or flagged as 16:9.
The end result is an anamorphic DVD.
Your DVD player has a menu where you tell it what type of TV it's connected to - whether 4:3 or widescreen (and if it's a 4:3 set, how it should handle widescreen material: either letterboxing it or "cropping" it via pan/scan).
I've started noticing in other posts that some people think that if you have anamorphic material you should set your DVD player to 16:9. This is NOT A GOOD IDEA (unless the DVD player is attached to a widescreen TV, in which case you have it set to 16:9 already!) Just set the DVD player once and leave it alone.
Hope these observations help get you started. If you understand what's going on with anamorphic media, you're less likely to make mistakes. Best of luck.

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