Asset Management

[Ben Holmes]

I can’t offer you many examples, but a facility I’ve worked at (small broadcaster) had nothing but problems with FORK with 3 FCP suites. That was, however, a couple of years ago, and who knows where the problems lay.

FCS not well liked by anyone that’s used it. It only appears built (to me) for episodic TV – and not suitable for most uses. It also is a product not well supported by Apple or third parties AFAIK.

I’ve been steered recently towards CATdv by several people – it seems more customisable for specific uses, and offers versions suited to your scale.

Edit Out Ltd
—————————-
FCP Editor/Trainer/System Consultant
EVS/VT Supervisor for live broadcast
RED camera transfer/post
Independent Director/Producer

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/casestudies/detail.asp?case=therydercup

[Michael Kammes]

Hands down, it’s CatDV. It is what Final Cut Server should have been. 😉

There is a forum here on the ‘Cow, or check out https://www.squarebox.co.uk/

It’s been far and away, the most reliable, yet cost effective asset management solution.

In the interests of playing fair, apace has an integrated storage and asset management solution, as does Avid…

But for FCP it’s really only CatDV or FCServer. And FCServer is far from easy to learn and administer.

~Michael

.: michael kammes mpse
.: senior applications editor . post workflow consultant
.: audio specialist . act fcp . acsr
.: michaelkammes.com

[David Gagne]

Cool, I’ll look into CatDV. I think I was interested in FORK because of the multi-cam ingest/tagging capabilities — are there other products to handle that? Can CatDV do some of that? Also does it work with After Effects at all?

[Michael Kammes]

CatDV will not ingest from multiple sources concurrently, that is, unless you have multiple capture stations (FCP, Avid, etc) and a watch folder that CatDV can monitor and them pickup the files when they are done recording.

CatDV has nothing specific for After Effects, but it can certainly be used along side of it.

~Michael

.: michael kammes mpse
.: senior applications editor . post workflow consultant
.: audio specialist . act fcp . acsr
.: michaelkammes.com

[Dave Snowdy]

I too have been looking for a solution to archiving and asset management. I haven’t found quite what I want.

I’m looking for something that will expedite archiving projects to LTO5 tape. It would be great if it worked from within Final Cut. Plus asset management with searchable database and tracking of assets on archive.

We’re not a big house but have 4 FCP stations that crank out a lot of work, FibreJet connected to about 30TB storage. Field footage is XDCAM optical and we don’t care to retain footage on those disks. Longform live to tape comes from our Omneon server.

I’m used to the functionality of a SGL FlashNet archive with a Sundance Archive Manager for our broadcast center. LTO5 is the medium I want to use because it is cheap and robust and fast.

I’ve gotten some solutions from vendors, like FCS with ProMax ProjectStor. Another wouldn’t dare sell me an FCS since it’s thought to be on its way out. I think the ProjectStor is looking for all drives having write access. Our FibreJet is a many read/single write setup. Lots of issues. I’ll probably get a quote with SGL software also but I can imagine the cost of it $$$. I’m having a hard time finding a solid solution. I have a feeling a lot of folks are out there with no asset management. Even this thread is pretty short.

Anyone familiar with something that might serve my needs?