I’ve seen a few instances where an upgrade caused Final Cut to run kinda’ strangely. To resolve, I’ve just been doing a quick reinstall of Final Cut. To do so: First move the Final Cut application to the trash (it’s in the /Applications folder). From your home folder, go to ~/Library/Application Support and move the Final Cut folder in there into the trash. From Library/Preferences in your home folder, put com.apple.FinalCut.plist, com.apple.FinalCut.LSSharedFileList and com.apple.FinalCut.UserDestinations.plist in the trash. Finally, trash com.apple.FinalCut directory from ~/Library/Caches. Once done, go back to the Mac App Store and reinstall Final Cut and open it. Those folders you just tossed out will get re-created. Your toolbars and other customizations…
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Scripting Video Changes in Lion: avconvert, pcastaction & podcast
The avconvert command is a new addition in OS X Lion that allows administrators to quickly and easily convert video from one format to another using presets for video conversion. The presets are mostly common Apple formats tuned to specific devices. In its simplest form, avconvert uses a preset, a source and then an output to convert the source to the output using the preset to define the format to use for conversion. A useful preset is the 640×480 one. To convert this using this idea: /usr/bin/avconvert --preset Preset640x480 --source /Convert/test.mov --output Converted/test.mov While some of the presets are pretty self explanatory, I haven’t gone through them all to see…
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Integrating Final Cut Server with MediaBeacon
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Amazon S3 File Size Limits
Back in November of 2008 I did an article awhile back on a way to use Amazon’s S3 to hook into Final Cut Server. At the time though, S3 had a pretty big limitation in that it wasn’t really suitable for backing up large video files as an archive device for Final Cut Server. But today, Amazon announced that S3 now supports files of up to 5 terabytes using multipart upload (previously the maximum file size was 5 gigabytes). This finally means that files do not have to be broken up at the file system layer in order to back up to Amazon’s cloud. However, this does not mean that…
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The Xserve Has Been Discontinued
The Xserve has officially been discontinued by Apple and will no longer be sold after January, 2011. Mac OS X Server will still be available on Mac Mini and Mac Pro (which will be the only option for Metadata Controllers on Mac OS X). Apple has produced a transition guide, available here. I do like the Mac Mini server, I just can’t seem to fit a fibre channel card into them. Before the Xserve, we used to buy Marathon rack mount kits for G3 and G4 systems. I would anticipate that a new business will spring up that takes the place of the Xserve, putting Apple logic boards and CPUs…
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Archive & Restore Assets with fcsvr_client
Final Cut Server has an option to archive and restore assets. When archiving an asset, the asset will be moved to a file system path that is represented by the device ID. The archival and restore can be done using the steps shown in this video: The process of archival and restore can be kicked off from the command line, which will initiate the movement of the asset. To archive an asset, you will use the archive verb with the fcsvr_client tool. This will require you to provide the asset ID number along with the device that you will be archiving the asset to. For example, to archive an asset…
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Scripting Productions and Assets in Final Cut Server
When you’re integrating Final Cut Server with other products, you often find yourself writing scripts to perform various tasks. One of those tasks might be to create a new project, or a production as it’s called in Final Cut Server. Because a production can have a number of attributes, a great way to do this is to create a template production and then make copies of it (or clones) when you want to create subsequent projects. To do so, you’ll use the fcsvr_client command, along with the clone verb. The -name option will allow you to set the name of the production which would then be followed by the unique…
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Analyzing Assets with fcsvr_client in Final Cut Server
Sometimes Final Cut Server can’t create proxies as part of the analyze phase of ingesting an asset. Maybe it’s busy, maybe it’s doing too large a batch or maybe it’s just having a hard day. Either way, sometimes it just doesn’t analyze like it’s supposed to. Therefore, you can analyze an asset using the fcsvr_client command. This allows you to find assets that currently do not have a poster frame or a proxy and regenerate them. Typically, you would right-click on the asset from the GUI and then click on the Analyze button to re-analyze, but what if there are a lot? Then you’d want to automate it. You can…
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Asset Paths In Final Cut Server from the CLI
Final Cut Server devices are locations where files are stored. Locations are then set using that device as a relative path within Final Cut Server. For example, if you have a device called MySAN it might end up being /dev/3. When you import an asset into Final Cut Server, the asset is given an asset ID. For example, you might upload a movie called Rudy.mov that might have an asset with ID number 318 (asset numbers are assigned from Final Cut Server when the asset is imported. But once the asset is imported the location path in the database is then stored relative to the device. So for example, Rudy.mov…
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Mac OS X Server Groups on LinkedIn
In case you haven’t seen them there are a number of groups for Mac OS X Systems Administrators on LinkedIn: Mac OS X Server: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?&gid=138085 Final Cut Server: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=138082 Xsan: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=138084 MacEnterprise: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1774398