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Final Cut Server released

by Christina Warren Apr 8th 2008 at 10:15AM

After countless delays and the cancellation of Apple's booth at NAB 2008 (which starts next week), many of us assumed Final Cut Server would never materialize. However, today's store-closing Tuesday update changed all of that, and the product is out and available immediately. It's nearly a year late (it was announced at NAB 2007), but we'll take it!

Apple's press release describes Final Cut Server as, "a scaleable server application...allows searching across multiple disks and SAN volumes and enables viewing, annotation and approval of content from anywhere using a PC or Mac®."

The cross-platform nature of the client software is a huge win for production houses that are not fully Mac-ified. Even if your whole production suite is Mac, being able to login from a PC to search media clips or access media from a PC in your Final Cut workflow has great potential.

Read on for the rundown of the specs and system requirements for the server and client software.
Server:
  • 1.8 G5 PowerPC or an Intel Core Duo, Core 2 Duo or Xeon (Intel recommended)
  • OS X 10.5 or later
  • 2 GB of RAM (4 GB recommended)
  • AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Server is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors -- if you need to run a mobile production server, you need to be on a MacBook Pro)
  • 500 MB of disk space
Mac Client:
  • 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo, or Intel Xeon processor
  • 1GB of RAM
  • AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Server is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)
  • A display with 1024-by-768 resolution or higher
  • Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later
  • QuickTime 7.4.1 or later
  • Java for Mac OS X v10.4 Release 6 or later
  • Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 or later for Final Cut Pro integration
  • 20MB of available disk space
Windows Client:
  • A PC with Windows XP (SP2) or Vista
  • 1GB of RAM
  • AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Server is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)
  • A display with 1024-by-768 resolution or higher
  • QuickTime 7.4.1 or later
  • Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 Update 4 or later
  • 20MB of available disk space

Nothing too surprising -- but do pay attention to the graphics card requirements -- Final Cut Server will not run on a Mac or PC with an integrated Intel graphics card. I cannot imagine this being problematic for too many professional users, but if you have any MacBooks in your set-up, be aware they will not work with FCServer.

Pricing is $999 USD for one server license and 10-concurrent client licenses and $1999 US for one server and unlimited client licenses.

Final Cut Server is available now from the Apple Store or authorized Apple resellers.

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After countless delays and the cancellation of Apple's booth at NAB 2008 (which starts next week), many of us assumed Final Cut Server...
 

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rvanet

Where can I get the beta version for this?

April 11 2008 at 4:56 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daniel

Finally released. I have waited for this moment for the last 12 months! No more delays! I can finally have it!

Daniel
http://www.palluxo.com

April 09 2008 at 12:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
andrew

Apple updated their specs.

MacBook, MacBook Air, and the Mac mini can run the client software to access the content. But to run the server itself requires a Mac with a dedicated graphics card.

You'll want to have the server running on its own Mac anyway so as not to have a performance hit while it's making proxies and serving media up.

April 08 2008 at 6:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris Summers

Yes Robert, I'm quite sure the next time i need to collaborate on a big HD project I'm going to opt for the web option. ?!!??!?

April 08 2008 at 6:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
thedude

id buy it just for the box

April 08 2008 at 5:32 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Allan White

When looking at the requirements, keep in mind it's a client/server app. The clients are cross-platform and will run on most anything, as I recall. The server part, yes, needs an Xserve.

April 08 2008 at 3:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Todd Bradley

You wrote, "It's nearly a year late (it was announced at NAB 2007), but we'll take it!"

What do you mean you'll take it? Do you seriously intend to buy this product? From the demo I saw (a year ago), it looked and sounded like it would only be useful to maybe the top 5% of Final Cut Studio users.

It's nice they did a product for big media shops, but I didn't get the impression there is much value here for the independent video professional and it sounded like there is none at all for the amateur user.

April 08 2008 at 2:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Todd Bradley's comment
Christina Warren

No, absolutely -- and for my own personal uses, this is not a product I would have the equipment nor the need. Having said that, in the digital film lab at school, this could be a godsend, especially for collaborative work (being able to access stuff from other drives connected to other machines, so that portions of the project could be worked on by different team members) and I will likely use it in that environment, assuming our lab integrates it.

April 08 2008 at 3:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
lin2log

"It's nice they did a product for big media shops, but I didn't get the impression there is much value here for the independent video professional and it sounded like there is none at all for the amateur user."

Oh come on... you obviously haven't much of a grasp of what this IS or MEANT FOR for that matter, huh? Quite *obviously* it's not targeted at amateur's or the likes! And I doubt they meant the "We'll take it!" that literally, sheesh...

April 09 2008 at 6:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
someshow

Do you still need to have XSan to run the fibre channel shared storage? or does this program handle that too?

April 08 2008 at 12:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jlakser

will this work with a macbook pro? or powerbook g4?

April 08 2008 at 11:54 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to jlakser's comment
lin2log

What more can they do, other than post the SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS?? Are people just here to POST or does anyone actually READ?

April 09 2008 at 6:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Carlos

I was wondering if FCS will work on my macbook with integrated intel graphics...

April 08 2008 at 11:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Carlos's comment
Christina Warren

Final Cut Server WILL NOT work. You can run Final Cut Studio (extensive Motion stuff is a problem, but I use it as my primary editing software with no problems at all and I'm on a 2.16 MacBook), but Server requires a non-integrated card, even for the client software.

April 08 2008 at 11:19 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
lin2log

Dude... try reading the article??! Helløøø?

April 09 2008 at 6:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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