Final Cut Server Usage Question...

I have just started researching this product and confused a little about it. I am the IT dept at a small advertising agency that does quite bit of video work.
Mostly all of the workstation in the office are PowerMac G5's that clock in at dual 2.2GHz or above with 4GB of RAM
We also have an Xserve G5 (Dual) with 4GB of RAM a 2GB fibre card installed and an apple RAID system as well. The office is all wired with 10/100.
With final cut server - will they be able to actullay edit video over the network on the RAID through the Xserve. Is that what this software is for? Sorry for such a lame question. If not is this basically like Adobe's Bridge application?
Let me know.

Yes it does do basically what your saying, You can leave the source media on the server and just edit from your local machine. You can also download proxies (lower res version of the source media) and edit on a laptop or with a PC without having to move the large source files.
I cant imagine any reason why any company or small business using more than one editing machine wouldn't go for this solution
Does that answer your question?

Similar Messages

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

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

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 (FCSvr) missing the Edit Proxies Device in the Advanced Administration Pane.

Final Cut Server (FCSvr) missing the Edit Proxies Device in the Advanced Administration Pane.
If for any reason an Admin has mistakenly or purposely deleted the Edit Proxies device
from the FCSvr Java Admin, and you'd like to restore connective to it following the instructions below.
Note verify these symptoms, open the FCSvr Java Admin, Go to Preferences and the Proxies Pane and inspect
If the field and drop down for Edit Proxies is missing please backup your FCSvr DB manually and following the steps below to restore connectivity.
1. From the Terminal from the following command
          cd /Library/Application\ Support/Final\ Cut\ Server/Final\ Cut\ Server.bundle/Contents/MacOS/
2. Next run the following command
           ./fcsvr_client getmd --xml /prefs/0 > ~/Desktop/prefs0.xml
This will output a XML file containing the Final Cut Server Global Preferences to the Desktop folder of the currently logged in user.
3. Using for favorite XML Text Editor (mine is TextMate) open the file that was output
4. Notice the XML element and attribute values between lines 29 and 31
<value id="PROXY_CLIP_EDIT_DEVICE">
   <address>/dev/3</address>
</value>
5. From the command line run the following command to determine the Device ID for you Edit Proxies device
./fcsvr_client search /dev
You should get an output similar to what's below.
Address        DEVICE_NAME                   DEVICE_TYPE
/dev/20        Edit Proxies                  contentbase
/dev/9         MEDIA                         filesystem
/dev/1         Proxies                       contentbase
/dev/2         Version                       contentbase
Record the new Device id for the Edit Proxies device.
6. Open up the file /Desktop/prefs0.xml and XML attribute in line 29
   <address>/dev/20</address>
to the value of the Edit Proxies from step 6.
7. Save the /Desktop/prefs0.xml
8. From the command line run the following command
sudo ./fcsvr_client setmd /prefs/0 --xml ~/Desktop/prefs0.xml
enter you admin password if prompted.
9. Close and reopen the FCSvr Java Admin, Go to Preferences and Proxies and inspect
The field and dropdown should reappear.
If for some reason this didn't work, feel free to contact me offline.
Nicholas Stokes
[email protected]

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.

Keyword order in Final Cut Server

Hi there,
I have a question about the order of keywords in Final Cut Server. It seems that I can only search and bring back results for clips if the keywords are in the same order that I search for.
For example, I have a clip with the keywords:
weights gym
So if I search
weights gym in the search box, the clip appears. But if I search
gym weights
the clip can't be found.
What am I doing wrong? Also, I'm not putting commas in between keywords, does this affect things at all?
Thanks for your help.

Hi Oliver,
This documentation might help you out:
http://documentation.apple.com/en/finalcutserver/usermanual/index.html#chapter=4 %26section=2%26tasks=true
~D

Respect original media creation date in final cut server ?

my question is...
is there any way for final cut server to respect the original finder creation date of the media? I do understand that the file is being newly created in the database and thus will have a creation and modification date of when you put it in, but is there a way to tell the database to change the data.
Why am i trying to do this?
I have a bunch of old footage that has a creation date reflecting the actual date the footage was created off the camera. I use this date created to find footage in my database such as all footage from a shoot between 10/2/09 and 10/8/09.
What i have tried:
I have tried using the A Better Finder Attributes application to change the date created after i have imported the footage into final cut server. this caused issues with the proxy and thumbnail creation when i went to reanalyze the footage to see what it would do. I saw that final cut server does not look at the file itself to know when it was created and only logs this creation date in its own database without looking to the original file for this information.
I currently have a field in final cut server to manually enter the date but this is yet another step that someone needs to take when importing footage to server and the less steps the better.
do i have any options for final cut server 1.5 to respect the finder creation date of the original media? or change it after the import into fcserver?
What good is the creation date in fcserver if you have amassed years of old footage to be put into your database and find footage based on date it was originally created?
or what good is the creation date if you are on a shoot and do not get to ingest the footage until you get back, say maybe a few weeks later? how would you know when you shot which footage on what day?
Thanks for your help

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 Make Link Not working. And I could almost swear this wrkd

I am trying to create a link to a new primary representation of an asset ( I am using a script to move it due to space constraints) and I cannot relink to the new file with:
sudo ./fcsvr_client make_link --llinktype 2 /asset/4387 /dev/19/Set%20Test%201.mov
CODE = E_DATABASE, DESC = ERROR: null value in column "childentityid" violates not-null constraint, SRC_FILE = PmsTask_Db.C, SRC_LINE = 295
I cannot create a link of ANY type.. Even if I try a link type of 15 for edit proxy it wont complete... Now here is something interesting thought.. I one time accidentally hot the return key before I had completed type out the movie name and it created a link to /dev/19 successfully .. Of course that doesn't work because it is a device not a movie...
Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks

Hi -
I have recently dealt with this issue - the command line error is because FCS is trying to "make" the link, but cannot link to a file that is not already associated with some kind of Final Cut Server "entity", be it on the parent side of the link, or child side.
I would ask, if you're replacing one primary rep with another, why you can't simply replace the file on the device, with the exact same filename?
At any rate, if you need to run make_link, you'll need to have the file associated with an FCS entity already, before running make_link. For some proxies in our workflows, this is accomplished by creating a "proxy" asset to be the entity in question, and then running make_link as you described.
I hope that helps!
- James Heliker

How do I uninstall Java 7 on my Lion, so that I can run Final Cut Server again?

One of my fellow employees thought he was doin me a favor yesterday and upgraded my java on my Lion machine... now I cannot access my Final Cut Server any more.
How can I get back to a java version that works..... after all the java site is somewhat useless when it comes to this question.
Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

Boot Camp allows you to install Windows on the hard drive of a Mac. It's more difficult and you must be very careful with the Windows installation. If you do something wrong, you may lose Mac OS X.
Some Macs support Windows 8 > http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US If your computer is supported, you can install Windows 8.
You can install Windows 8 from a DVD or a USB drive. If you want to install Windows 8 from a USB drive, you have to buy Windows 8 in the Microsoft Store, which will allow you to download Windows 8 in a ISO file, that you will be able to burn to a USB drive using Boot Camp Assistant (it's in /Applications/Utilities).
Apple has got official steps to install Windows on your iMac > http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/boot_camp_install-setup_10.8.pdf

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!

Final Cut Server on Apples Promise or Isilon

Two questions:
One: Where can I go to learn about these two types of drives and comparisons?
Two: Does anyone have any insight as to which system is better/more dependable?
I work with one arm of a very large organization that edits various material. We currently work in SD but are planning to be all HD by January. We have purchased the Final Cut Server to replace Artbox which we currently use. We are trying to decide between Apple's Promise Xsan drives and Isilon. I am hearing that Isilon might be a bit slower????
Any advise, thoughts would be much appreciated. Better yet, if you know a place where I can go and get some good unbiased information - so I can educate myself, that would be great!!
Thanks in advance,
Ken

It's true that both solutions are not very well documented online with respect to more than their basic specs. What you need is some contextual advice that will weigh the pros and cons of each solution against your business requirements. You need a good consultant that is not trying to sell you either solution. A tall order, I know.
Maybe if I share the considerations I used to chose between the two it will help:
I chose Xsan/StorNext because I knew I wanted to take advantage of its ability to span disk and tape. LTO is still unmatched for price and performance for nearline storage. Disk is catching up, but you can't take a disk out of an array and put it in a vault like you can with an LTO. The reason I was so focused on having tape as well as disk is because I knew that eventually we'd fill our disk and still want to keep mot or all of the data somehow. You can't just add disk forever, so having a tape tier to migrate data onto is key. Bandwidth is also very good for the disk side of Xsan, but you still need to make sure you have enough disk aggregated to support however many editors cutting however many streams of whatever format. An Apple sales engineer can help you figure that. Fibrechannel storage like Xsan is unmatched for video editing due to its extremely low latency and high bandwidth.
The downside of Xsan/StorNext when you start using Storage Manager for backup and tiered storage is the support requirements. You simply must have a good admin on staff. The system is like a racecar- it is very sophisticated and finely tuned so it needs constant attention from the mechanics. But look how fast it goes!
If you only want disk and don't need to keep your data forever, Isilon is a less-fussy solution. It is truly redundant disk (unlike Xsan) and it expands more easily than Xsan. You also don't need to buy client licenses to connect to it. Even laptop and iMac users could get at it (unlike Xsan). It can provide enough bandwidth for all but the most grueling applications, but it is a lot more expensive per TB than Xsan. Several major cable networks use Isilon for editing and play-to-air storage. It is no slouch. Just make sure your format fits though a 1 Gb pipe because that's the maximum bandwidth to each client (Xsan can do 4 Gb).
So the bottom line in comparing the two really depends on your workload, format, number of clients, budget, and data management priorities. Both will work just fine with Final Cut Server.

Final Cut Server on Local EXT. Drive

Ok, So i'm looking for some help here and hopefully you awesome guys will be able to help me. Now I totally could be in left field here but i figured I would ask.
Ok so I have an EXT Drive on a MacPro that has about 80 GB of footage on there. I want to make this drive my main location for Final Cut Server and have my editors work from that device. I want to be able to import the proxies in Final Cut Server.
My question, is there a way to do it and if so How would i hook up this device to Final Cut Server to read.
Like i said, I'm new to Final Cut Server so I could be talking non-sense here.

You need to create a Device with a Scan to make the media (and their proxies) accessible to editors. This is covered very well in the introductory chapters of the new Final Cut Server book as well as in the included and online documentation.
Note that you probably won't be able to have your editors "work from that device" if you mean interactively edit, since editing over Ethernet is not practical, and the connection to a FireWire or USB external drive is much slower than an internal drive, and not to mention that with multiple editors doing multiple streams you'll have lots of dropped frames.
The editors will have to cache all media locally, so if they have to do so often, you will have better performance if you move the footage to an internal drive.

Final Cut Server - Webserver Communication

Hi,
My name is Hendrik and I am currently designing a Final Cut work flow for a German WebTV Station. Of course (you might have guessed that because of this board) the Final Cut Server will be a part of that. My question is:
Is it possible for the Final Cut Server to communicate (via AppleScript) with an SQL Database behind a website? To give you an hands on example, this should be the work flow:
The clip is shot, edited and handled in the manner of Final Cut Server. For delivery the clip is being converted into FLV and uploaded to our webserver.
After that the metadata is beeing inserted by one of our editors into the database of our website, so the page knows the clip is there and what the contents are, etc.
The question is, could this last clip be automated? Meaning, all the metadata is beeing edited on the FCS and then sent automaticly on delivery to the web database?
Thanks for your time,
Hendrik

Hi Hendrik,
yes, this is possible. You can set up your own metadata set within FCSvr, which fits your website's needs and fill your assets metadata.
FCSvr can then e.g. write an XML file which you can then parse using an external script to prepare it for your website import.
If you need any help doing this, please feel free to get in touch with me.
Regards,
André

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