FCP set-up Equivalent to Avid Unity

Hello to all,

Posting for a friend re; the same project with the PhotoJPEG files. They were going to use an Avid house. They are considering using a FCP house, but the post coordinator told them that with Avid they were going to use Unity so they could have several bays going at a time and that there is NOTHING like that in the FCP world. Okay, this does not even sound right!!!!! What is the equivalent --or better :-) -- to the Unity set-up in the Final Cut Pro world?

Thanks everyone!!!!

Peace,
Lisha

Well, they are not right at ALL! Avid snobs.

FCP doesn't have built in project sharing, no. But you can certainly have hundreds of stations feeding off of central storage. Bunim Murray revolutionized that, and is still going strong. I myself am on a 9 station edit situation, all shared storage.

[www.nmr.com]

PROJECT SHARING...that is what Avid Unity has that is a step above. BUT, they are no longer the ONLY game in town. EDIT SHARE does this for FCP rather easily, and FAR CHEAPER than Avid could hope to do.

[www.editshare.com]


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

also (and much cheaper than Editshare) there is the Apace vStor TotalShare solution

Not to mention the fact that FCP is also now qualified now to run on Avid Unity

[www.avid.com]

FCP on Unity, that's cool. But the killer function of AVID on Unity is every one working on the same project with personal bins, assistants being able to digitze into the same project while everyone is working and footage being available with a quick bin refresh. That stuff is built into MediaComposer so Unity on AVID ends up being a solid media sharing system, which is great and mission proven but the really cool features are AVID only.
Plus you get into a very AVID specific paradigm emphasized by the

Quote

Not included:
Qualification of Final Cut Pro versions other than 6.0.4
Qualification of Final Cut Pro on OS X versions earlier than 10.5.4.

Any longtime AVID owner/operator can remember having office desktops with faster chips in them than their AVID systems because AVID hadn't qualified newer CPUs with their board sets. Who's still running 6.04?

Still, I like where this is going.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Final Cut Synergy from Steve Kanter

[www.editdog.net]

You can watch his demo from the Feb lafcpug meeting by going here and subscribing to the channel feed

[opentvnetwork.com]

Michael Horton
-------------------

Yeah, the two areas in which Final Cut really needs to hang its head in shame are media management and collaboration. It's indisputable that outfits like Bunim-Murray have come up with workflows that address a lot of collaboration issues, but it's also (in my opinion) indisputable that those workflows aren't easily adaptable to other environments. I could adopt the B-M way of doing things here, but I'd have to completely change the way we organize, work on and archive projects. It'd be a big change. Which makes one wonder if it'd really be worth it for anybody but a facility on the scale of B-M.

I've looked several times at the EditShare stuff, but to be honest ? and this might say more about my IQ than it does about anything else ? I haven't quite sussed out exactly what their products are. Is their project-sharing thing an integral part of their hardware products, or is it available as a software-only product? Just how intrusive is it? Does it totally take over your workflow, or can it coexist alongside other workflows? What's the minimum investment like, in terms of both cost and integration? Is it something that's easy to drop in and adopt gradually, or do you pretty much have to shut down operations for a weekend and change everything over?

I'm not actually asking you guys these questions, though it'd be nice if one of you had the answers. I'm just saying that I wish I could get at least a suggestion of the answers from the EditShare Web site, but I haven't succeeded in doing so.

I didn't mention Steve's option because he hasn't figured out a way to make it a product yet. An markettable thing to sell to someone not in LA (because he can always go onsite to set it up manually). When he does, I'll mention it.

EDIT SHARE...

> Is their project-sharing thing an integral part of their hardware products, or is it available as a software-only product?

Integral part of their hardware...it is a turnkey solution. Much like Avid Unity is.

> Just how intrusive is it? Does it totally take over your workflow, or can it coexist alongside other workflows?

It is sorta intrusive. You have to launch the Editshare workspace, but then you work in FCP. Basically how it does what it does is it makes a workspace folder that contains several project files. Each bin you open is a project file...this is how they can lock the bins like Avid does. You see, the Avid file structure is a lot of separate files in a project file on the finder level. Each bin is a folder. When a folder is opened, it is locked...so someone else can open it, but not change it. Edit Share does this by making every bin a project file, so people can open it, but the main owership is by the person who owns that project...it is in their workspace.

THis is very tough to describe, and this is a BIG reason to go to trade shows where they are and have them demo it. Their software does make you have to shift your workflow a bit, as there are workspaces, but it allows for full on collaboration and locked bins and all of that. Not as easy as a shared Avid project file, but let's face it, Avid had a while to figure that out, and their project file structure lends itself to work like this. FCP had a different approach, and Edit Share had to work around that. I think they did a BRILLIANT job of it, and will be getting them on any show I can. Unfortunately I am hired AFTER they set up networks and we have to school everyone on the particulars of how FCP needs to do things.

>What's the minimum investment like, in terms of both cost and integration?

I think something like $15k for a 6TB solution? Or was that 8TB? I forget. But this is hardware, software, switchers and all. 6TB Unity? Triple that? 5 times that? Way up there. But then the Avid interface is EXACTLY the same, so the editors don't need to figure out something new.

> Is it something that's easy to drop in and adopt gradually, or do you pretty much have to shut down operations for a weekend and change everything over?

This is something that needs to be done BEFORE you start work. Otherwise you will have to have it installed and your current projects ported over to this system. It is a rather proprietary system. Can't do it gradually...but you can easily upgrade the amount of drives or edit stations you serve after the initial install.

> I wish I could get at least a suggestion of the answers from the EditShare Web site, but I haven't succeeded in doing so.

Yeah, the website is lacking, which is why I talked to the reps. I have a card and number if you want to call them.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]