Any FCP users have experience with VelocityHD?

[Andy Edwards]

Sam,

Sold my DPS system over 4 years ago and moved to FCP. The writing with Leitch/Harris has been on the wall for a couple of years now. They are a great company, but how long can you stay with a end of life product like Velocity and survive. Real-time features or not, your board could go down and your stuck making a move when you least expect it. Sorry to hear your Q was EOL’d 2 weeks after you bought it. But I’m sure you have made your money back by now 🙂

If you can, try to find someone in your area that has a MacPro with AJA Kona 3 hardware and fast raid (important point to making the system truly HD capable.) Take some project elements you built on your Velocity system and put FCP through a test.

I saw your post in the other forum discussing Adobe CS3 suite with Lyn and Matrox Axio. Another viable option if your comfortable on the PC side and want to edit on Premiere. I was on a Matrox system before going to DPS. Got burned by Matrox and have never given their products another look. Axio might be a great product “now”, but I have not regretted going with Final Cut.

Don’t forget, the same Adobe package is ported over to the mac now as well. You do have the option of running Bootcamp on a mac to take advantage of XP based programs if you want…..software wise.

If you do spec out a mac, see about getting the ATI Radeon X1900 XT vs the Nvidia card. Save some money on the ATI card and buy more ram or hard drive space. Seems Color works better with the ATI card. At least that was my impression from some of the folks at NAB and online.

And regarding your HD camera options…..good luck 🙂 The waters in that arena are just as muddy. So many formats, so many choices to consider, what will be the quickest return on investment. Or satisfy your client needs the most.

Go out and get some system demos and come back with questions.

Good luck with your transition.

Andy Edwards

[Sam Roberts]

Hi Andy,

Well truth be known, most of my clients who are now asking for High Defintion really mean 16X9. Almost all my output goes to DVD and I haven’t met a client yet that has a Blu-Ray player. Yes, many play my stuff back on their computers but really, is there that much difference between Betacam 16X9 and High Def on a playing card sized Web window?

But I am still working with a (gorgeous picture) 4×3 Betacam and it’s dumb at this point to move to Betacam 16X9 only to have to change over again in a few years when (and if) Blu-ray is crowned the winner of the high def DVD war and most average Joe’s have HDTV’s.

As far as the MAC system I was looking to but here it is tell me what you think:

I’m willing to go as high as $20,000 to get the best real time power possible at that price point.

Mac Pro
processors: two 3.0GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon
memory: 8 GB
Hard drive: two 500gb (internal bays 1&2
Graphics card: Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 512mb

Input:

looking at the AJA Kona boards. Keeping in mind
my SD/HD hybrid needs (not going high def camera-wise until next spring) and I will be renting high Def once in awhile until then, otherwise I will be inputting standard def Betcam (BVW 75)
which card do you suggest? Will Kona 3 do the job for DS and HD?

External storage:
not sure exactly what I need as far as external storage and card go. I now use the Ciprico Medivault u320
connected to an Atto card which I am very pleased with.

Is 1.5 TB enough for say, three ongoing 15 min projects on the drive?

I am open to suggestions on this (including filling the Mac’s internal drive bays with 750mb drives How does this work as far as video throughput speed goes?) Is one of those drives
dedicated to the OS and software only?

Thanks for the input.