Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments
by Charlie Tear
on
Apr 25, 2008 at 8:02:16 pm
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 :)
Re: Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments by Andy Mees on Apr 26, 2008 at 2:11:30 pm
Thanks for writing up your reax, Charlie. Good to see an objective if less than positive look at this first release.
As for the additional geographical bias I'm not so sure. That Apple are addressing these markets directly is extremely god sense and shows a level of commitment to non-US markets hitherto far too often lacking.
The European dates are listed separately ... a quick search shows London is on May 29th, Paris on June 3rd and Berlin June 5th
http://www.apple.com/uk/finalcutstudio/tour/
Re: Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments by Paul Figgiani on Apr 26, 2008 at 4:37:09 pm
Hi Charlie,
With regards to your initial three gripes:
• No way of immediately previewing a file in the main browser window?
Are you saying you don't think the accessible proxy copy and/or it's method of access is not efficient? Are you clicking the film-strip icon, top left of a logged asset in the main browser to view?
• Five separate mouse clicks to get to a clip's annotations page?
Previously applied annotations are easily accessible by control clicking [or right clicking] on a logged asset in the main browser. You'll see an Annotations option, as well as a numerical reference that specifies how many are currently applied to the asset.
• No easy (quick) way of searching through logged clips for annotations?
If you expose the advanced search features in the main browser you will see an Annotation field with custom search options and criteria. I'm able to quickly access clips based on applied annotations.
Re: Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments by Scott Thomas on May 1, 2008 at 5:18:04 am
Thank you for the thoughts Charlie. I'm hoping that more people will post their thoughts here. I'm at a TV station that seems to be standardizing on FCP for post work. I've had FCP in my art room for a few years now, the Accom Affinity has *finally* been replaced with an 8-core FCP system, and we have two older (poorly configured) FCP systems that were acquired in the purchase of the local CW network affiliate. We really need a way to share assets, and FCP Server was talked about last year after NAB. What the management here doesn't realize yet is the investment that will need to be made to build a proper system.
One question I have is about FCP Server's support of assets for *other* devices. I was talking to the Proximity people a few years ago about asset management for clips going to our Avid (nee Pinnacle) Thunder. They had a solution, but it cost over $20,000. I kind of get the feeling that those "Artbox" features are probably no longer part of FCP Server. Does anyone know if they made it to the new product?
Re: Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments by walter biscardi on May 1, 2008 at 8:47:01 am
[Scott Thomas]"They had a solution, but it cost over $20,000. I kind of get the feeling that those "Artbox" features are probably no longer part of FCP Server. Does anyone know if they made it to the new product?"
You never know. Final Touch 2K used to cost $25,000 and Apple just rolled that app into Studio 2 as Apple Color, essentially giving it away.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.
Re: Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments by Scott Thomas on May 1, 2008 at 3:30:37 pm
In looking the information on Apple's website, there is mention of sending clips to a play-out server. Now I have to find the list of supported servers.
Re: Final Cut Server - Initial Thoughts and disappoinments by Mike Jennings on May 15, 2008 at 4:11:47 am
I've been installing and configuring FCServer all week. It's full of surprises, definitely.
I absolutely agree that it's a nuisance how far you have to go just to scrub or play an asset. The filmstrip icon is OK but it opens in QT Player instead of in place. All of my clients just sort of expect a play button whenever they have a clip selected.
It's also to clicky-windowy in other areas. For example, if you search on annotations, there doesn't appear to be a way to quickly see the annotation in the results. you have to get info on the asset, then open the annots window (by aiming at that tiny icon), then find the search result by eyeballing it in the list of annots (no filter). Then when you double-click the annot, it doesn't automatically seek to the in point of the annot; you then have to click on another tiny icon at the bottom left. Sheesh.
I'm also surprised that the rough cut editor they showed last year is gone, at least for now. Everything from CatDV to Microsoft's IMM had one, and exported to FCP. And the Final Cut Studio project didn't buy me as much as I thought either. Pretty much the only difference between working with Final Cut and Premiere is that it knows which media assets you need to copy from the server for the FCPS project.
I can't seem to check out a multiple selection of assets. I have to check them out one at a time.
All of my clients think that the mark in and out buttons in the annotator are supposed to head/tail the clip. They never figure out by themselves that it marks the in and out of the annotation itself. This is probably because they only open the annots window to play the clip, they aren't thinking about the annots.
Several operations encourage you to export, copy locally etc, spawning a dangerous number of asset copies. I'd prefer to avoid that; I'm hoping edit in place will work, but I haven't gotten it working. I'm not using my SAN yet, but all the clients have access to the server by gigabit ethernet. Not sure how to troubleshoot that -- I might call support.
I was REALLY disappointed that it doesn't handle native, unwrapped MXF files from a Panasonic camera. My intended workflow was to set up a watcher and have it suck in from the P2 cards more or less unattended but that's kind of broken. I'll need additional software and steps in between.
If I try to drag a clip to an app or the desktop, nothing appears to happen. Going back into the client app we find a dialog saying it must be cached first. I'd prefer it if it just cached it for me.
I'd like to see a list of clips in the cache and be able to sort and filter them for deletion. If you don't remember they're there it's hard to figure out where your disk space went.
Also, and I'm sure this must be user error, when I drag a clip into the NLE it always brings the high-res version, not the proxy. That can be annoying, I want to control it. I'm hoping for a low-res edit, high-res finish workflow here.
From a UI perspective I feel that it is exceptionally inefficient with screen space. Even with a 30" monitor I have tons of overlapping windows. there are lots of places that look like they should be clickable (notably the Jobs In Progress indicator and the resources list for the Assets) and that I could do interesting things with them (open the job monitor or the alert it's showing me, or select/rebuild/delete the selected resource, respectively).
I'm always surprised that the clip playback window is small even for HD material. I guess what I want is a player window that is used by whatever the frontmost window is, with the selected clip. Put the player window on a 24" monitor and then preview clips from the asset browser, Asset info panel and annotator, at full size. Good for critical evaluation.
I don't even know if it's possible with a Java app but I'd love some kind of URL that immediately fires up the client app and shows the asset or set of assets, to quickly go from an email to the asset. There are ways around it by assigning it to a person for review, but maybe you don't want to do that. Or maybe you want multiple people to take a look -- optionally.
Tip for those of you setting up a server: Don't change the IP address of the server. The client app often won't launch afterward, and you have to hunt it down, delete it, and re-download the client app.
Another tip: You may want to start with Leopard Server so that you can easily use Open Directory or Active Directory to manage user authentication.
