matx.ca

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love Final Cut Server.

Final Cut Server 1.5 added support for image sequences. When you import an image sequence it will create a nice QuickTime proxy for all to see. Very nice, indeed. Manually importing or uploading is one way to do this, but can be time consuming if there are many different sequences to process, such as in an Elements Library. Thankfully you can drag a folder of folders into Final Cut Server and it will process them all.

This is great for certain scenarios, but what if you want to be able to make QuickTimes from a rendered sequence in your favourite 3D application, or process them automatically from a renderfarm? What if you don’t want to upload sequences directly into Final Cut Server? Is that asking for too much?

Thankfully, Final Cut Server has the built-in ability to setup automations with Watch folders. Whether you drag and drop an image sequence into the Watch folder, or you script it from a render farm post script, the Watcher will transmogrify your sequence into a QuickTime with the codec of your choosing, copy it to a new location, email you, and delete the original sequence (if so desired). And, all the while secretly uploading these files to your Final Cut Server.

Does it make me breakfast in the morning? Maybe not, but still, I may be in love.

The ugly truth is that is that there a few setup steps to get this working, but it’s not tricky. There may be other ways to accomplish this, but here’s one that worked for me:

• Using the Final Cut Server preference pane (in System Preferences) create a Device (a folder on the Xsan volume) with associated transcode settings (codecs),
• Then in Automation Setup Assistant, designate a watch folder in that device (watch folder in the device folder) with one of the selected formats selected when you created the device.
• Create a copy response with a selected destination device, and transcode setting. Add an email, and delete response if desired and give it a try.

There are some other minor details, and variations, for device and watch folder setup which can tweaked for QuickTime or image sequence transcode operations. The fact that you can only designate an entity of “image sequence” using the the Final Cut Server administration tool instead doing it all from the Pref Pane is important to note.

I’ll post some screenshots and detailed settings soon. Meanwhile, if you’ve got an Xsan setup, a renderfarm spitting out a constant stream image sequences and Final Cut Server, know this: you are not alone.

UPDATE

If you want to try this with Final Cut Server java based Administration panel, here are the steps:

1. Create a new Device (i.e. a folder on a raid or san volume) by specifying its path /Volumes/RAID
2. Create a new Copy Response (duplicate an existing one, if you like) and specify a destination and transcode setting.
3. Create a Watcher with a name, monitor address (e.g. drop folder), entity type “image sequence” and your selected copy response (from above).

Update #2

After uninstalled FCSvr and reinstalling to correct a 29.97 frame rate issue with all QuickTimes, here is what I’ve determined to be the best way to create QT based on Image Sequeces:

1) Create custom compressor setting with 23.98 frame rate, watermark, TC, etc. Add it in the FCSvr admin panel to Transcode settings. Name it.

2) Create Device associated with codecs in System Preferences FCSvr Pref Pane. Or add new defined codecs to existing device.

3) Create copy response.

4) Create watcher with copy response.

Why go though all this trouble? Because QTs created with default transcode settings were ignoring the 23.98 default video frame rate settings. Only a custom compressor setting would keep the 23.98 I wanted. Other options were the “no conversion” adding the Img Seq to FCSvr, but it would not create a QT in the filesystem.