Q: Hardware Configurations for Final Cut Server

RicM asked: I understand that each iMac would need a copy of FCP. Would they all need to be FCP7 to work on the same project at different times?

If you want to use ProRes422 Proxy, yes, you need FCP7. FCP6 isn't equipped.

RicM asked: Would working on a gigabit ethernet network be a bottleneck?

You wouldn't be streaming over Ethernet, you'd be checking out the project and downloading the edit proxies to the iMacs for local editing. Checking the project back in will ink it back to the original media on the server.

RicM asked: Could I ingest video directly to the server?

Yes, but not with FCSvr itself. It does not have any built-in capture capability.

RicM asked: Is there a way to capture 422 video onto the server or would that require a separate copy of FCP on the server to capture from tape?

There are alternatives to FCP7, but FCSvr does not have any built-in capture capability.

RicM asked: If so could I use the older FCP6 copy withot upgrading just for capture?

You'd need to run it on a different machine. Since FCSvr uses Compressor to do all its encoding, the Compressor and Qmaster version mismatch between FCP6 and FCSvr 1.5 could be a problem.

RicM asked: Alternately could I use a copy of FCExpress on the server just to create a project and capture on the server then open and convert to FCP7?

Maybe, but FCSvr would not be able read the FCE project files. I suppose you could use FCE to ingest your HDV to the server's storage and have FCSvr scan that location.

RicM asked: Any suggestions for what to do with the Dual 2.5G PowerPC Tower?

If you want to keep using FCP6 (by the way, not cricket if you leveraged it to use an upgrade license of FCP7) and the G5 make it your ingest rig or you can just make it a Qmaster node (I think you can install the Qmaster that comes with FCSvr 1.5 on a G5).

Well, you could install a BlackMagic card and Tool On Air Just:In app to ingest straight on a FCSvr machine into a watchfolder. For two edits, it might just do it. Or just use your G5 as an ingest station: you just have to make it do with FCP6, since FCP7 is Intel only.

Yes, you can use FCP 6 with FCSvr 1.5. As to different versions of Compressor, you will just have to decide if you want use your edits as a part of the Qmaster cluster. If yes, then you can't send to Compressor straight from FCP ( since your edits will have an upgraded version of Qmaster), you will have to send the asset to FCSvr and then transcode by using, let's say, an export function.

You don't want Final Cut Express, since it doesn't support HDV natively (it converts it all to Apple Intermediate Codec) and ProRes not at all.

You could consider just editing in HDV rather than taking the hit to convert it all to ProRes. Whether it saves you time or visual quality depends on the type of editing you're doing.

Note HDV is very compute-intensive and thus slower to edit than other formats, particularly if you're not on a Mac Pro with a mid-range graphics card.

Some thoughts:

-Stuff the tower full of 4 2TB HDDs; you might as well go big before you build up your FCSvr. You can make a 6TB RAID-5 for drive failure protection if you also get an Apple RAID card for Mac Pro. You can do RAID-0 and have 8TB, but if any single drive int he RAID-0 fails you lose the whole thing.

-You should also consider buying an SSD and OWC's optical bay adapter to use as a boot drive. Faster database I/O for FCSvr and you can dedicate your big drives to media duty. In fact, if you feel you can afford it, order your iMacs with SSD boot drives as well- it is a huge difference.

-FCSvr can only do the heavy lifting in terms of output encoding to WM9 and FLV if you also buy Telestream's Episode plugin for Compressor. FCSvr can automate these encodes as well as uploads to the web (which I assume is where these WMV and FLV files are headed).

-ProRes Proxy for 1440x1080 (38 Mpbs) is about 1.5 times the bitrate of HDV 1440x1080 (25 Mbps). So while you would be gaining a much more optimized codec for FCP to work with in ProRes, you'd be taking a big hit on your storage to do so.

-FCSvr can archive your old footage to any storage it can see, and you can disconnect that storage. This would free up storage while preserving your assets and their proxies for searching and screening. Archiving to FireWire drives has its risks, but it sounds like you're already doing something like this now.

-FCSvr does not help with rendering FCP timelines. If your employee is waiting around for a timeline to render, then the only thing you can buy to help there is faster Macs to work on. However, long-GOP codecs like HDV seriously increase the processing load for renders and transcodes. You'd have faster render and transcode times with a ProRes workflow, but you'd be taking a significant storage efficiency hit to get there.

ProRes wil be much faster for rendering on the client and transcoding on any machine, and will also allow for more realtime effects vs native HDV in FCP. "Full-rez" is a misnomer here, since ProRes Proxy does not sacrifice any resolution and indeed has a higher bitrate than native HDV. You might find that your HDV source looks just as good in ProRes Proxy (it is very high quality, just not as pristine as the higher quality versions of ProRes).

Remember, ProRes 422 Proxy is still a 4:2:2 10-bit codec. I think you'd need to look awfully close to see a qualitative difference. You can choose to use ProRes Proxy at lower resolutions than your source media, but you don't need to. It is designed to work all the way up to 2K and maintain all the color fidelity of a 10-bit codec.

When you check in a project that you are cutting locally with Edit Proxies, FCSvr relinks the project to the original media, but it does not render anything. You would need to open the project on the FCSvr host with FCP to create an flattened QuickTime against the original media (in your case native HDV).

You can recapture, but when you have FCSvr cataloging your clips, you do not want to recapture the same media and duplicate the asset. If you are careful and recapture the clips that were disposed of to the exact same location with the exact same filename as before, FCSvr will re-link the media to the asset automatically. However, that workflow is very human-error-prone and I strongly recommend you not adopt it. Keep your source HDV tapes as a worst-case backup, but if you are going to use FCSvr, use its archive capability to RAID-1 external drives and only go back to the tapes if all else fails. And you'll need to be very careful to match you prior ingest if you do.

Of course, you can always delete an asset altogether when you're done with its media and later recapture the footage from tape and treat it as a new asset. It depends on how interested you are in keeping your asset records and their proxies intact for media you plan to remove from storage.

I'd take a good long look at ProRes Proxy vs HDV for quality. If you can't see a difference, capture to ProRes Proxy and make that your online format. Then you won't be eating up all your storage on the server keeping both the HDV original and a ProRes Proxy for edit proxies. If you don't enable edit proxies, FCSvr just hands out the original media.

There are different uses of the term "proxy." FCSvr creates "clip proxies" for viewing and browsing, and which are H.264 by default. FCSvr can also create "edit proxies" meant for offline editing, which by default are created with the codec named "ProRes 422 (Proxy)."

SSD doesn't help with rendering, it just makes your system snappier and it improves the database I/O performance for the FCSvr host. Also, FCP has always been happier when the render scratch is on a disk other than the boot volume. SSDs are not a requirement, but they are really nice to have and you will notice a difference in how responsive your Macs feel with them as boot drives.

We run several systems with a similar configuration...

Highpoint 2314 eSATA host adapter
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/576434-REG/PROAVIOAC_2314_RAID_HighPoint_RocketRAID_2314Host.html

Sonnet Fusion D500P eSATA Array Enclosure or similar
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/532536-REG/SonnetFUS_D5P_00TB_Fusion_D500P_eSATAArray.html

(5) 2TB Seagate drives

Two of these are hooked to our FCS setup. One is the
Library and one is the Proxies.

Very fast.

Hope that helps
will