Has anyone migrated existing file libraries into Final Cut Server?

My company currently uses Virage to archive thousands of video clips. Currently we only archive proxies and keep a corresponding tape on the shelf -- it's a big library. We want to move away from tape and keep all the clips on a centralized server but we need to be able to move all the existing files over to FCS via an automated process. The clips we keep in Virage has 5 or 6 fields that we would need to migrate over and the thumbnails are mpg2. Has anyone had any experience migrating huge chunks of data over to Final Cut Server? We ditched our Avids and Unity and purchased FCP. Final Cut Server makes sense. (By the way...for what we paid for Virage, I could have purchased Final Cut Server and a Porsche to drive it to the office.)

My company is implementing FCSrv as a video database. Moral of the story: I did everything from scratch. I took the time to log and digitize all the tapes, creating a file folder structure that corresponds to the tape label. I can say from my experience, you need to organize and have all of your original media ready on the drives that you want the files to live on and THEN upload to FCSrv. I left those drives as Edit In Place devices, created FCSrv assets, and then turned the drives off. The drives only come back on when I want to copy over any of the source files. Also, FCSrv wants to create everything from scratch - its own proxies, thumbnails, and poster frames. Currently I believe the only metadata you could map / migrate over would be fields associated with FCP Log and Transfer media. Another workflow hint I have is to find media that has the same (or most similar) metadata and upload those at the same time (choosing create individual assets). Also, there is a great workflow on the forum for bulk metadata changes that helped me out a lot : http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7522555
Every time I call Apple anymore they try to sell me on purchasing the custom workflow services from an engineer so you could look into that for specific help with your current metadata fields. Otherwise, I'd suggest hiring some interns
Good luck!

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Hi Tom,
I appreciate the thought that the audio is still compressed - maybe it is - I don't know. However, what I do know is this:
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2) The .avi files are being generated using the Sony Memory Recording Unit - the recording unit used with Sony's professional line of camcorders (not your consumer camcorders).
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4) Both the AVI and ProRes 422 mov files work in Quicktime Player - both audio and video
- and -
5) Final Cut X is supposed to be Apple's PROFESSIONAL replacement for the Professional Final Cut Studio 7.
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Fix the product - include the Codec's - make it work!
If it works in Quicktime, it should, absolutely work in Final Cut X or any other professional video product that Apple produces. Simple.
Anyone else with an answer?

Clips randomly won't drop into Final Cut from FCS...

Hello!
Just curious if anyone else has seen this issue...
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nevermind - The user restarted the computer and the issue went away.

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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.
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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.
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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 and FileMaker Pro

Has anyone tried to import FileMaker Pro data into Final Cut Server? I have an FMP database with photos, video and audio files that I'd like to export to Final Cut Server along with the meta data and I'd be interested to hear if anyone has any experience with this.

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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.

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.
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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
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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">
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</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.

Is Final Cut Server is the right software for our company?

I need a software that catalogs and keeps organize our media. Our company is using Final Cut Pro 2 and want to keep stock footage. Apparently, were not doing a good job of organizing our media and files. I'm researching a software that can organize and catalog media and files. Does Final Cut Server is software can do that?
Thank you
Luis

Yes and no.
I know that's not the best answer, but final cut server is a very powerful organizational tool, but you also need to very organized in what you put into it and especially during initial setup.
For example, you say your company is apparently not doing a very good job organizing right now, so lets say you had 300 quick times labeled documentary1.mov, then documentary2.mov and so on, having a piece of software catalogue footage in that manner will not do you any favours in the long run.
However, if you were to say establish a production, "PBS Documentary" and then ensure that all clips are labeled very specifically, then keeping them and being able to search them as a part of a stock footage library could be very useful, as you are not only able to locate clips based on key words, but also preview the footage to make sure it is something you would want to use, and determine the current location of that file.
I suggest you check out apple's videos on FCserver, they will give you a pretty good idea of what the software is designed to do.

Final Cut Server Metadata will not transfer to FCP

Hello,
I am new to Final Cut Server and am encountering a couple of issues. A big one is that the metadata from quicktime clips stored into final cut server will not transfer when I put these same clips from the server into FCP.
Any idea why? The metadata is with each asset in the server but won't transfer when the clips are transferred into FCP.
Any suggestion would be great!
Thanks.

FCP only supports specific types of metadata. What specific metadata fields are you looking to export with the clip? Also, "how" are you getting these clips from FCSvr to FCP?

Has anyone migrated existing file libraries into Final Cut Server?

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