Equipment Advise

[Shane Ross]

[Shane Ross]

Sorry for the blank post…my toddler hit the keyboard with her stuffed hippo.

Save your money on the Apple 23″ and get the Dell 2405 24″ LCD. Cheaper, and BETTER (www.barefeats.com/lcd)

For HD work you are going to need a RAID of drives…8 drive SATA RAID minimum…not just one or two external SATA drives…but a RAID tower. And really, for uncompressed HD work a fibrechannel RAID is recommended.

Look at my profile to see my setup, for mine is currently set up for DVCPRO HD and uncompressed SD work. For uncompressed HD work, I am looking at getting a Kona LH and Fibrechannel RAID array.

-shane
http://www.lfhd.net

[Steve Eisen]

Pat,

For editing Beta SP with FCP you have a few options. The most inexpensive card is the Decklink SP from BlackMagic Design. That will run you $600.

AJA’s LA, LH, and IO will all do the same.

For editing 8 or 10 bit uncompresed, you will need very fast hard drives.

You might want to consider a DVCam deck for DV work. The DSR-11 is an excellent entry level deck. The DSR-45 is great if you want to connect your Beta SP deck to it via Component.

As far as places to buy. Midwest Media Group in Schaumburg and ProMax in Irvine, CA are very good system integrators. You can save a lot of money building the system yourself. To save yourself on sales tax, stay away from CDW and Mac Mall. You can purchase directly from Amazon.

The Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group is also a great place to get expert advise. I’ll send you a personal e-mail regarding our party tomorrow night.

G5 Dual 2.5 160GB System 400GB Media Drive ATI 9800 256MB 6 GB RAM
Dual Gig Quicksilver 1GB RAM 80 GB System drive (3) 250 GB internal media storage
15″ Al Powerbook 1.25 1GB RAM
OS 10.4.2 FCP 5, DVDSP 4, QT 7.02, Boris Red 3GL 2.45 TB External Stor

[Tony! Hulette]

You might consider just getting an Io or Io LA for right now. It’ll give you what you need for SD and you won’t have to worry about PCI/PCIe compatibility issues while Apple is evolving the Mac’s, into whatever it is they are evolving into.

Later, when you need HD, you can just add a Kona 2, Kona LH, Decklink or whatever is the ‘hot” card at the time. You’ll still have the Io for SD and conversions, plus the HD card and the Io can coexist in the same machine.

Just a thought,

Tony!

[Pat Defilippo]

Thanks very much to Shane, Steve and Tony! Excellent cost saving ideas that make the most sense for a newbie like me (even though I’ve actually been in the field since ’83)!

Would you guys have any advice as to which G5 to shoot for? I’ve heard that I should buy the most machine that I can afford (the Quad) while others believe that even an oldest G5 dual 2.0 is fast enough and meets their needs. Everybody seems to tell me that 4 GB of RAM for Final Cut Studio is a good amount at least to start with.

Also, how about storage? I saw that Lacie is about to come out with a new product called Biggest Two Sata II 1TB for about $1200. Then, I saw that Firewire 800 based storage seems to be a hit. I can’t imagine doing much different work than what I’ve been doing for a while (commercials and corporates originated on Beta-SP) at this point, so perhaps a reliable SD setup would be more effective for now as compared to one that will be fast enough for HD?

Thanks again for your input!

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[Tony! Hulette]

[PDPost] “Would you guys have any advice as to which G5 to shoot for?”

Tough call right now. With the Intel Mac’s being the future its hard to justify any of the current Mac’s. Many of us will just stick with what we have, until the Intel based machines, make their appearance (probably more than a year away for the pro machines). But, at the same time those new Quads are looking pretty tempting for current Mac users. I would go with the Quad if you can. You don’t need it to have an effective & useful FCP system. But they are going to be viable much longer than the non PCIe machines.

You’re right, that you should always buy the fastest machine you can afford. If you go with the older style Mac, then I would strongly consider the AJA Io, because it will work with the new PCIe Mac’s and the Intel Mac’s when they are released. That way, when you do upgrade your Mac, you won’t have to replace everything (like the capture card).

I don’t think there’s really a wrong decision here. If you go with an older style system, with a Kona or BlackMagic card, you’re still going to be able to do what you want right now just fine. You’ll just be obsolete and need to upgrade sooner, than if you go with a newest Mac.

4 GB of RAM is a nice comfortable amount to have on your Mac. Its not only for running FCP, but because we/you will tend to open other applications at the same time (After Effects, Motion, DVD SP, Safari, Mail, Word, Excel, etc). You can get away with less memory (maybe half if you had to), but I think 4 GB is a good starting point. Make sure to buy it from someone other than Apple to save a ton of money. Crucial.com is who most of us recommend. Good prices, and very reliable company that stands behind their products. Also, they are the OEM for much of Apple’s and other computer makers memory anyway. Only buy matched pairs.

[PDPost] “Also, how about storage? I saw that Lacie is about to come out with a new product called Biggest Two Sata II 1TB for about $1200. Then, I saw that Firewire 800 based storage seems to be a hit. I can’t imagine doing much different work than what I’ve been doing for a while (commercials and corporates originated on Beta-SP) at this point, so perhaps a reliable SD setup would be more effective for now as compared to one that will be fast enough for HD?”

Go with a SATA solution.