FCP X in Shared Storage Environment – XSAN, etc

[Andrew Richards]

[Brandon Kuchta] “I’m having trouble seeing how FCP X’s approach to organization fits into this (fairly common) workflow. From what I can tell, all projects have to live together in the “Final Cut Projects” directory at the root level of the drive.”

This is true for projects you want to open. I could argue that even on FCP7, best practice would be to edit from a local project file and copy to the server a few times a day rather than opening them in place, but I know a lot of places just open in place. That used to be a big technical problem depending on the way your connection protocol, but in latter versions of FCP it really wasn’t.

I could also argue you can copy your projects in and out of your existing file structure, but that is also kind of wonky if you are used to opening your projects in place on the server.

Bear in mind the Events and Movies folder-at-root concept is there to make the FAR more common sneakernet approach to sharing something editors can very easily deal with by duplicating Projects and/or Events from within the FCPX interface. You plug in a drive, you drag your Project onto it in the Project Library, and FCPX gives you very straightforward options for placing exactly what you want on the drive. The next editor plugs in the drive, it shows up in FCPX, and they can open and edit with all media, renders, and organization in place. This is good stuff, just not what we want to see for SAN situations. Like so many other aspects of 10.0, Apple tackled the most common use cases first and lest the more niche stuff for later.

Certainly the ideal would be for some kind Event and Project sharing support to be implemented, but it isn’t clear how that could be done yet. I’m certainly keeping my fingers crossed. I think multiple users being able to tag the contents of the same Event simultaneously would open up some seriously powerful workflows. I would also love a shared Project Library with per-user-locking for open projects just like Avid Unity has had for years.

Best,
Andy