Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments

Here then is my initial list of gripes for Final Cut Server.

Apologies for the following moan, but I really wanted FCS to deliver.

Having pounded the beat at NAB this year for a Media/Asset Management solution and following long and eventful meetings with the likes of Dalet, Pharos and VizRT - all of whom are offering varying but very well-implemented methods and degrees of integration to FCP - we felt excited to come home and get our newly arrived copy of FCS going.

We were sure that it would surpass all of these expensive systems in terms of ease of browsing FCP media, topping/tailing, blocking out stories and getting these rough-cut clip lists into Final Cut Pro.

The fact that some important functionality has been removed now places Apple in the dubious position of having the least well-integrated solution of all of these companies in terms of the increasingly common kinds of FCP-centric collaborative workflows.

Sure the interface style is nicely designed, the media import and metadata processing aspects are first class and the admin facilities are incredibly powerful and well though out, but the feel of the app is busy confusing and cluttered .

Some of my main gripes are as follows:

• No way of immediately previewing a file in the main browser window?

• Five separate mouse clicks to get to a clip's annotations page?

• No easy (quick) way of searching through logged clips for annotations?

• Clips which are returned after a search don't display the in point of the annotation as their thumbnail???

• Annotations don't make it into FCP, either as markers or comments??????

Have these guys been paying any attention to the other solutions on the market?

How is one supposed to usefully log or review a two hour rushes tape if it isnt possible to search against existing annotations in the main browser area and have FCS load the in frame into the thumbnail or proxy viewer?

FCS should be thumbnailing every in point of each annotation and presenting the user with that relevant thumbnail when they search for any given thing...

Next up...the Shot Selection was one of the strongest things going for FCS when we demoed it at IBC as it gave producers a method of comping shots into sequences away from the edit and allowing an editor to pick that rough cut up remotely...

As is stands, once the user has searched and found his clip, double clicked to open the editor, clicked again to open the annotations window (you get the picture on the click click click...) scrolled down the list of two hundred odd annotations, clicked on the Goto in button...how are they then supposed to easily mark and send just the relevant portion of that clip to an editor? On every other system, one can simply grab the annotation (or log entry as it is more accurately described) and drag it into a 'bin', 'production' or whatever and created a linked sub-clip which is to all intents and purposes separate from the master clip...

These things are rightly taken for granted by other companies as being essential when dealing with large numbers of media files or long durations of footage.

It's just not intuitive enough and as I say, lagging behind the competition across the board.

Moan moan moan...I am sorry.

Time for some positives (ish)

I believe it will be a great product one day and we would have been happy to pay ten times the price for it to be delivered full-featured and airtight - shot selection tool and all - as it still would be several times cheaper than most of the competitors and truly offer the kind of integration with FCP we had all been hoping for.

I know that the intended uses might have been different when it was Artbox but Apple are pushing this as Final Cut Server and as such I feel that these criticisms are justified because they affect the usefulness and value-added measure of the product into our FCP workflow.

With more insight into the working methods of average day to day TV editors and production staff, (reviewing stuff which hasn't been topped and tailed and pre cut into small chunks by an apprentice, working with long interview rushes or GV tapes etc etc etc) I think Apple will nail it and make it into an industry-leading app, but for now, for our news/sports centred workflows at least, I will have to file under "huge potential but massive disappointment".

This essay I seem to have penned isn't meant to spread doom and gloom on FCS.

It is a huge step in the right direction for Apple and I look forward to it developing and maturing into the best app of its kind in the business and along with XSan, beating Avid Unity into the night with some truly useful collaboration tools.

I just wanted to spark some honest and open exchanges about our and other people's experiences so far with this exciting new app...

And...Go!

Edit: Not only that, but as i type this I see now from the FCS World Tour banners that Korea and Beijing take precedence over London or Europe as a whole in terms of being creative centres worthy of a visit.

"Coming to a country near you", they say...Methinks Apple need to work a shade on their geographical skills, whilst they're at it :)