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final cut project equipment query…mac pro quad
I’m a film editor. Have worked in Avid MC for the past couple of years. FCP for a couple of years previous to that. I have always had an assistant and tech help. NOW I’ve been hired on a job where I will have no assistant or FCP tech help and I will be expected to know what the heck is going on (will be spending a lot of time here at creativecow, I’m sure). My first task is to price out a system and I’m already at a loss. I’m going Mac, want a Mac tower, but do not know what specs I’ll need. Please (someone!) advise.
The project I’m working on is a doc. There will be a ton of footage over the next year or so. I’ll be doing titles and moves on stills, but otherwise I don’t expect it to be at all graphic or effects-heavy. Will the single quad core tower suffice? Will I need to soup it up? Is there anything that I absolutely ought to add on from the get-go?
I’m getting a couple of the apple cinema displays, some inexpensive but not terrible speakers, a battery-backup system… I will be receiving a drive with footage from a tapeless camera (more on this later (when I actually know the format)). I’ll need a drive to convert the footage onto, right? Should I have a second drive for renders and backup? Will I be able target the computer harddrive for the autosave vault?
Thanks in advance.
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2 Replies
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Knowing what formats you will be working with will be essential to building a system and workflow. General rules about buying a system, buy as fast a system as you can afford at the time, this will keep the longevity of the system as high as possible (no matter it will be become obsolete in a couple years anyway).
Storage wise, one or two hard drives is not likely to cut it. You should look into RAID solutions. Cal Digit, and Maxx Digital make nice ones.
If you plan to do critical color correction, you should also look into a capture card. I recommend AJA’s products.
Regarding tech issues, Final Cut handles media quite differently from Avid, and it sounds like you could use a full professional consultation. That’s soon to come eventually from this post, that you might want to look into hiring a professional consultant to really get you up to speed.
Richard Sanchez
North Hollywood, CA“We are the facilitators of our own creative evolution.” – Bill Hicks
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Thank you, Richard, for the RAID advice. In terms of professional consultation, I’m going to have to cobble something together on my own. The filmmaker I’m working with has some sort of work flow in place, so I can use and add to that. And I have worked in FCP, for a couple of years a couple of years ago (or so), so I’m going to have to dust off my knowledge and add to it. I’m not sure what’s changed since then.
(you have made me nervous though!)
I’ll be around with more questions in the weeks and months to come…
cheers.
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