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Final Cut Server, a true solution.

With the release of Final Cut Server, Apple hopes to reach a niche market of video professionals that produce a large amount of content using Apple’s Final Cut products. I don’t think this product is meant to compete with other solutions available in the market, the real user is people that are growing using Final Cut products and need advance organization tools.

If you already have a studio with lots of material and you need to organize your footage without having to spend extra money hiring people to do it for you, this is the software you need. Final Cut Server has excellent Automation tools to classify your media on the fly, just tag your content and it will be organized for you.

Another great feature about this software is the ability to recognize and export your content on almost every popular format available on the market, this is very useful when your sources of video are diverse within one team. With the addition of Final Cut Pro capabilities to accept all kinds of formats and convert them into one single file format makes Final Cut Server a must have application in a production environment.

If you have multiple machines where your store your video catalogs or even better if you have a server in your studio, you need Final Cut Server. This software links to all of your stored media across your network, making a catalog for you to see anywhere within your network. On top of this, you can set up automated backups actions to grab all new content and make a backup on a server or over other storage devices you may use for backup.

Check this out, Final Cut Server is cross platform, so even if you use a PC editing solution on your network, Final Cut Server can catalog and make available that data on the server. What is more you can access your entire catalog from any PC client of Final Cut Server, if you ask me, that’s genius.

Here comes the downside, users have complained that while you have all these network feature you can’t collaborate on one project in more than one computer at a time. Meaning that if one person is working with a project you don’t even have access to it, in a production environment this is a big drawback.

Of course you can see the price tag as a downside too, the best way to benefit from all it’s features is by having Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Studio which can go up to $1,299. Then you have to invest an extra $999 for at least the 10-client option of Final Cut Server. If you compare this pricing with other similar options in the market, Final Cut products are definitely cheaper, so who’s the intended user then.

My point is that a big studios are already using some sort of similar software, new video podcasters like maybe the guys at GeekBrief or the Twit crew, can be the intended market but wouldn’t this be too much for what they need. I’m no expert, that is why I thing the niche group of users that would need this type of software is too short to make of it a great successful product.

If you own Final Cut Pro, I would like to hear your thoughts about Final Cut Server, leave your comments on this post or email me at lmenendez7@gmail.com. Also, if necessary, make use of my forums to discuss in detail or find my at all major social media sites, thanks for reading.