Creating a FCP Online System

[Shane Ross]

I think 6GB of RAM is overkill. 4GB should do you nicely. More if you plan on having more than one application open.

SATA Raid like the Silver SATA V by Weibetech, or the Sonnet Fusion 500P that gets you about 2TB @ 200MB/s for about $3000. Or an XServe Raid, Ciprico (formerly Huge Systems) MediaVault 4210 which are both Fibrechannel. But they pretty much start at $6000 for about 1.25TB – 2TB and get you about 350MB/s…depending on how many drives you have.

Then you need the Capture Card. Good ones by Decklink and AJA run about $2000. Both are good performers and will do you well.

HD Monitor. YOu can cheat a little and get the Sony PVM-14L5 for $1500, and then the $1400 HD SDI card for it for $2900 total. It has 800 scan lies of resolution, and I’m telling you, I saw one next to the Sony 34″ HD CRT and the image looked exacty the same to me.

Then you can either color correct with the FCP tools, which are good, or get Final Touch for $4000 or Color Finesse for about $500 (FCP Plugin) – $2000 (HD Standalone application).

Then you need to rent whatever deck you will be outputting to…so your $10k gets eaten up fast, and ONLY for the equipment. That doesn’t even cover the talented operator who you need to pay.

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net

[Don Unverrich]

Thanks for the info Shane. About the SATA, I have thought about those but have heard that when they get more than half full, they start loosing their transfer speed causing dropped frames. I guess you can get a large enough array so you don’t fill it half full, but have you come across this? Thanks again.

Don

[Shane Ross]

Half full…no. But approaching 80-90%, yes.

But this is true of ANY drive. Even the huge fibrechannel Raid arrays

Shane

Alokut Productions
http://www.lfhd.net