Final Cut Server released

After countless delays and the cancellation of Apple's booth at NAB 2008 (which starts next week), many of us assumed Final Cut Server would never materialize. However, today's store-closing Tuesday update changed all of that, and the product is out and available immediately. It's nearly a year late (it was announced at NAB 2007), but we'll take it!

Apple's press release describes Final Cut Server as, "a scaleable server application...allows searching across multiple disks and SAN volumes and enables viewing, annotation and approval of content from anywhere using a PC or Mac®."

The cross-platform nature of the client software is a huge win for production houses that are not fully Mac-ified. Even if your whole production suite is Mac, being able to login from a PC to search media clips or access media from a PC in your Final Cut workflow has great potential.

Read on for the rundown of the specs and system requirements for the server and client software.

Server:

• 1.8 G5 PowerPC or an Intel Core Duo, Core 2 Duo or Xeon (Intel recommended)

• OS X 10.5 or later
  

• 2 GB of RAM (4 GB recommended)

• AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Server is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors -- if you need to run a mobile production server, you need to be on a MacBook Pro)

• 500 MB of disk space

Mac Client:

• 1.25GHz or faster PowerPC G4, PowerPC G5, Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo, or Intel Xeon processor

• 1GB of RAM

• AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Server is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)

• A display with 1024-by-768 resolution or higher

• Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later

• QuickTime 7.4.1 or later

• Java for Mac OS X v10.4 Release 6 or later

• Final Cut Pro 6.0.2 or later for Final Cut Pro integration

• 20MB of available disk space

Windows Client:

• A PC with Windows XP (SP2) or Vista

• 1GB of RAM

• AGP or PCI Express Quartz Extreme graphics card (Final Cut Server is not compatible with integrated Intel graphics processors)

• A display with 1024-by-768 resolution or higher

• QuickTime 7.4.1 or later

• Java SE Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 Update 4 or later

• 20MB of available disk space

Nothing too surprising -- but do pay attention to the graphics card requirements -- Final Cut Server will not run on a Mac or PC with an integrated Intel graphics card. I cannot imagine this being problematic for too many professional users, but if you have any MacBooks in your set-up, be aware they will not work with FCServer.

Pricing is $999 USD for one server license and 10-concurrent client licenses and $1999 US for one server and unlimited client licenses.

Final Cut Server is available now from the Apple Store or authorized Apple resellers.