Final Cut Server Storage
by Keith Rocheck
on
Oct 28, 2009 at 6:22:10 pm
Hello,
We have a mixed shop of Avid(10) and Final Cut(6). Our old Unity just died on us (5 years of flawless uptime then kaput). That track record of uptime, performance, nearly zero maintenance/headaches leaves me with the desire to go with Unity again. We have a pretty extensive user(100s)/group(~20)/workspace(15+) setup that Unity handled flawlessly. The Unity served only the Avids and the Final Cuts are still without shared storage. The new Unity would serve all workstations (Avid & FCP)
Besides the production side of the shop, we have an extensive photo operation (three geographically diverse departments) that I'd like to get asset management/sharing for. FCSvr came up as a potential solution for that, plus we could leverage some of its workflow tools for the video side.
Final Cut Pro is 'qualified' to run on Unity systems, but I'm curious if anyone has tried integrating Final Cut Server into a Unity environment. Could I use Unity Workspaces as 'Devices' in FCSvr? In theory it would work, but I have no experience there. Yes, I understand that FCSvr will not manage Avids projects at all. I'm not looking for it to.
Re: Final Cut Server Storage by John McVey on Oct 29, 2009 at 1:41:30 pm
There are three different device types that FCS uses. Forget about Contentbase, it's really down to an FTP or a Filesystem device. So it will only be able to interact with a Unity if it were somehow mounted as a drive on the actual FCS server machine. Then it's just another drive that can be scanned for assets or involved in a file watcher scheme.
I would seriously consider the Final Cut Server option, but why not try and ease into in? Got a decent Mac platform? Go get yourself a cheap USB or Firewire external drive and plow a version of OS X onto it. Then, boot it up off the external drive and install a basic FCS. I just did this recently, it's actually very easy. Then start messing around with it. At some point, if it looks like it will work in your environment, you can always ditch the science experiment and go get yourself a XServer. It's not going to be all that hard to replicate the metadata structure and the workflows. And think about how much you will learn about the system in the process.
Re: Final Cut Server Storage by Keith Rocheck on Oct 30, 2009 at 1:24:36 am
We're not going to buy the new Unity tomorrow, but I'm fighting to keep that option on the table even though there's talk of other systems, FCP, and the like. Unfortunately I can't test FCSvr like you suggest on Unity since our old system is dead and we never had a Mac on the Unity (so I can't verify how it mounts).
From a usability standpoint, research standpoint, you make a good point and I will try to make it happen.
