Q: Videos to URL

Final Cut Server does not present its proxies via web out of the box. It is certainly possible to build an automation that publishes movies to a web server and sends links via email (I've done it), but it involves custom scripting. You could also look at MediaSilo, but it might be a little expensive depending on your context.

Final Cut Server can call executables like shell scripts, Perl scripts, Ruby scripts, command line programs, or even just shell commands with the response type "Run and external script or command" or "Script response" for short. In my case, I have a subscription that runs several Copy responses, a few Script responses, and an Email response, and results in delivering a payload of movies and HTML to a web server as well as an email with the URL to recipients defined in a particular metadata field. As FCSvr automations go, it is relatively complex.

To boil it down more generally, FCSvr is capable of producing compressed media via Copy Responses (which can produce anything Compressor can), and it's capable of sending those files to any host that it can connect to via FTP, SMB, AFP, or NFS (as a device). The missing link for serving for the web is the HTML, which I wrote a Bash script to produce.

Hi Leh21,

I actually work for MediaSilo, and what you are looking to do is exactly what we are designed for, online collaboration and review and approval.


Check out our site and our final cut server integration at www.mediasilo.com/fcs

if you have any other question please feel free to call

best,

Erik


Erik Freid | VP, Product Management | MediaSilo, Inc
207 South Street | Third Floor | Boston, MA 02111
t. 617.423.6200 x 7013, m. 617.306.8632, f. 617.507.8577
www.mediaSilo.com

Leh21 --

There are a few options open to you --

First and foremost Final Cut Server has a built in annotation system for internal network use, Install the final cut server application on everyone's machine that will use the review and approval system, create them a log-in, and teach them how to search for the video, view it, and make annotations. -- this is the simplest & cheapest way to solve an "internal network review of your clips".

Second you could set up the FCS server to host a website, then compress and offload your movies to this site -- mainly just put them in the root folder of the site & as long as everyone knows the filename of the video, you can just have them type in the server address and the filename to the browser to view the videos.

Third you could use a third party on line application like MediaSilo or RemoteMyProject, which allows you to offload the videos (set this up once, then it's automated after that) from your Final Cut Server machine to a secure application on the web. Once on the web you can use the applications to create access to the videos -- in a purpose built viewer for viewing in a browser.

Let us know how you progress!

Thank you,
Jason Kemmerer
CTO, RemoteMyProject.com

Leh21,

Apple does not provide any documentation to execute Jason's suggestion. He was just pointing out that it is possible to use the FCSvr host as a web server as well, and that you could serve out a custom site from it that is fed media and metadata by FCSvr. This would still be a fully custom automation, and unless someone out there has a successful example of this and is kind enough to share, there won't be any documentation to be had.

Just emailing a link to a video is pretty trivial.

For a link to be clickable and viewable in a browser (http://...) you need to have a web server running. It can be on the same machine as is hosting Final Cut Server, or it can be different, as long as fcsvr has write access to it. Create that as a device, publish to it, and create a link to the file in an email response, using the hardcoded http://server/foldername/ with the filename variable appended.

What you don't get with this is custom built web pages. The FinalCutServerIntegrationSample on the ADC web site shows you how to do this with Ruby scripts.

Or you can use the solutions above like MediaSilo to give you a ready-made full-featured sharing service.

Leh21 --

If you're up to the challenge -- the link for the R&A developer sample is on the final cut resources page:

http://www.apple.com/finalcutserver/resources/

It's a fully separate application to install and integrate to your system. It's really just a developer sample, not really a full application designed for deployment & will need quite a bit of time and resources to get running. And much more if you want to secure it.

Let us know how it goes for you!

Thank you,
Jason Kemmerer
CTO, RemoteMyProject.com

If you look at the solution Podcast Producer uses, you'll see that they check whether you have permission to view a file and then use an Apache xsend to push the file to the requester. You could either do this with a special web device or use the clip proxies bundle. I would almost go so far as to say that the paths in Proxies.bundle are cryptic enough that one could simply share that folder and pass links to it. But don't quote me on that. At your own risk.

If you're getting a 404, check your web server's logs to find out what request caused the error. Either it doesn't have that path available to it, or there are permission problems, or the file never really got created there or has a different name.

By device I meant a FCSvr device. It may be local if the web server is the same machine, or a network device if you're publishing to a remote server.