Article:		Final Cut Server: An Introductory Overview
Subject:		Useful for me?
Date:		2009-02-24 10:36:14
From:		Steve Mebs
Hi Charlie, thanks for the article, nice overview. We are looking at adding FCS to our office. There are 3 of us here, but I'm pretty much the only one that does the editing. The reason I want to set it up is that we're doing a large project right now, where we'll shoot 3-5 solid days on 2 cameras. There's a lot of downtime following each shoot where I log the tape for 30 minutes, then have to wait for an hour while FCP captures the tape, then I repeat... right now I have 24 hours of tape that need capturing. Once the editing is complete I export 4 files of each sequence (about 35 10-minute sequences per week of shooting) for web (mp4 and WMV) and DVD, which is again a lot more downtime, each export of the four clips takes just over an hour. I was thinking of setting up FCS on a G5 (we have one available). I would log and capture through a MacBook Pro, and then could keep editing on my MacPro while the MBP does the capturing to FCS. I would then also not need to tie up my MP for transcoding. Does that make sense? Good plan or not? Any alternate suggestions? Another question to go with that workflow... would the MBP need a separate FCP license? Thanks!

Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• Useful for me?
  2009-02-24 13:01:52  Charlie Miller | [Reply | View]
  
  
  Steve, I'd say FCSVR could help your workflow out by helping to distribute some of these tasks across multiple machines – ingest, editing, transcoding, etc. Yes, you will need a license of FCP for each machine. Also, Compressor (the engine that FCSVR uses for transcoding) doesn't support WMV encoding out of the box. You'll need Telestream's Flip4Mac plug-ing.
  
  Also, be sure to budget for cost and time of integration... as I mentioned in the article, installing FCSVR is easy, but customizing it to work the way you want can take some patience. If you think you'll need some help, you can check Apple's website for authorized integrators in your area.
• Useful for me?
  2009-02-27 09:53:33  Steve Mebs [Reply | View]
  
  
  Thanks Charlie.
  
  In your opinion, is a G5 adequate for our setup where there'd be only one, maybe two people connecting over GigE?
  
  For the laptop that I'd be logging/capturing with, would an older version of FCP work, or do we need the latest version? We have plenty of old versions in the closet.
• Useful for me?
  2009-03-01 21:49:05  Charlie Miller | [Reply | View]
  
  
  The place you'd see a performance hit with a G5 vs. a modern Mac is with transcoding in Compressor. I couldn't say for sure, as I haven't used Compressor 3 on a PPC Mac.
  
  Regarding capture: the Apple website specifies Final Cut Pro 6.0.4 or later for compatibility, so you'd likely want to upgrade your client workstations.
  
  Charlie