Wellington based Factorial Ltd released ClipTouch 1.2, an update to their Final Cut Server client for the iPad. ClipTouch connects directly to any Final Cut Server without requiring any additional configuration, and lets you browse, share, collaborate, and present your media assets in a totally new way. Browse, review and approve your video assets, taking advantage of the mobility of the iPad, and its unique MultiTouch interface.

ClipTouch also supports playback of audio files including MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV and more. ClipTouch includes built-in preview of iPad-supported image and document types including PDF, PNG, JPEG, TIFF, Camera RAW, iWork, Microsoft Office, CSV, TXT, RTF and more. ClipTouch also allows you to send documents and images to other apps on your iPad.

New in ClipTouch 1.2 is support for Final Cut Server deployed under OS X Lion or Lion Server. Also ClipTouch 1.2 now authenticates directly to Final Cut Server without the need for an external authentication helper service or internet access.

Please note that although Final Cut Server installs under Lion, neither the Final Cut Server Java Client, nor ClipTouch can authenticate without making some configuration changes on your server.Factorial has published a brief guide on how to install Final Cut Server on Lion and offers support and consultancy for transitioning existing deployments.

For enterprise deployment Factorial offers ClipTouch Pro, a customised version displaying your custom metadata, and branded for your organization.

Fiprecon is a connector for Final Cut Server and Archiware PresSTORE. I've been working on extending fiprecon to especially support these new features:

• recursive archiving and restoring of productions and FCP projects
• stores id, label and barcode of the tape on which an asset has been archived in the asset’s FCSvr metadata
• sends a mail to an administrator, if a tape needed for a restore process is not available. Includes a list of missing tapes, supports authorized mail sending

It's available for free at http://www.andre-aulich.de/en/perm/extended-fiprecon-version-available-for-free including a pretty manual step-by-setp setup instruction.
It's slower than the original fiprecon version, as it needs to extensively talk to Final Cut Server on the command line, though, but this shouldn't be a problem in most environments.

If you implement your Final Cut Server 1.5.2 system into a Windows 2008 Server based Active Directory environment with Mac OS X 10.6 and Windows 7 clients, there are a couple of settings to consider both on the FCSvr system and the AD servers.

First of all, Windows 7 clients are not officially supported by Apple's Final Cut Server. Yet, I have installed enough Windows 7 machines talking to FCSvr to say that this works smoothly.

And this is how you do it: