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Gear Advice- What would you folks do?
I am a wee indie FCP editor who wants to make his bay HD-able. Basically I have 2 G5s (a new dual 2.7/5.5gig/2X250gig and a Quad/2.5gig). I want to sell the 2.7 and ease into some kind of respectable fibre channel raid (until now I have been using fw800s, which have held up remarkably well). I asked a while back and Mr. Biscardi replied in favor of the Medea VideoRAID.
I have three questions:
Q. Is Medea still a great choice even though AVID bought them?
2: Are there editors who have ignored the Fibre channel option altogether and had success with SATA configs?
3: (I know this is a biggie) What is the deck of choice for capture? Is the 1200a still the goto deck? Will the world be tapeless before I can afford one? Is the debt worth it at this point?
And finally, I’m new to LA- where do I get this stuff? In Toronto we had Carbon Computing and Vistek. LA is another monster entirely.
Thank you all in advance. I read the Cow far more often than I post and I’m grateful for any time spent considering and answering these questions.
Bee
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14 Replies
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Pardon me- I did not include my system specs.
TYVM again
G5 2.7/5.5gig/AJA Io/DSR-45/FCP Studio/10.4.5
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[BeeLaster] ”
Q. Is Medea still a great choice even though AVID bought them?”As of right now they are still Med
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For storage, check out the new Raid from G-Tech. I saw it at the NAB convention. 2TB and nicely priced to boot. I think they are starting delivery soon. Otherwise, I’m using a Raid from Huge Systems and it’s worked well so far.
Tom -
[Tom Matthies] “2TB and nicely priced to boot. I think they are starting delivery soon”
That’s right! Saw it at the FCP SuperMeet. Up to 3.2 TB and at a very low price, something like $3,500 I want to say. FibreChannel and some really fast speeds. Called the G-Speed I think.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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Buying in LA, call Post Op Video 818.840.9100.
Dajen Productions
Santa Barbara, CA
G5 Quad – AJA Kona LHe
Huge 1.2 Raid
FCP 5-OS X 10.4.2-QT 7 -
Walter, Tom, Dave!
Thanks for the replies!
I am searching all of the options you mentioned and realizing that I have to overhaul what I know.
This is a bigger transition that I thought.
Well, at the end of it all, when my gear is where it needs to be, I’ll finally be able to share the HD glee with you fine people…..
G5 2.7/5.5gig/AJA Io/DSR-45/FCP Studio/10.4.5
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Keycode or Home Run Media in Burbank are reliable.
Kevin Monahan
Take My FCP Master’s Workshop!
fcpworld.com -
Bee…
Something to consider when it comes to tape decks. I’m in the process of evaluating the upgrade to HD and looked at the cost of tape vs the cost of hard drives and quickly discovered that, per minute, DVCPro HD tape costs as much as SATA hard drives.
However, with DVCPro HD tapes, you still need to spend in excess of $25,000. And you don’t get the speed of retrieval as you would with hard drives.
There are hot-swap SATA systems out there worth looking at, and they don’t have to be horrendously expensive to work well. I’m currently using a system from Firmtek.
A question for me to ponder down the line is: how to deliver a show once it’s gone through post production? Tape? Hard drive? Blu-Ray (data, not DVD-compressed).
Walter… how are you planning to deliver Good Eats? Great work done on that show, by the way!
Thanks,
Dean Sensui — http://www.HawaiiGoesFishing.com
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[Dean Sensui] “Walter… how are you planning to deliver Good Eats? Great work done on that show, by the way!”
Delivery is HDCAM as specified by the network. No networks that I know of will consider any sort of hard drive / media based format other than tape.
For me, going tapeless does not make sense right now because we’re an independent post house and we need to have the tape decks to support what the producers locally are doing. In fact I’ve been looking at an HDCAM deck to add to the 1200A (soon to be 1400).
If we ever start doing our own productions, then that will be a different story. But even there, most networks require all original materials to be delivered on tape so they can use that material for promos, etc… so tapeless production doesn’t work there either.
Tape or tapeless production is really going to be dictated by the network you’re posting for.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.comDirector, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.comNow Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network
“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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I have a Facilis server in my office. I have 2 G5’s hooked up to it and they scream. I got the 3.2 Gig version (8XS) and with cards it cost around $15K installed. I have had it running since January and not a hiccup. The server is about 150 ft. from my main editing machine and it works great. I have the drives set up as mirror and I still get around 180 megs a second using the Decklink Speed Test. The cost of the unit also includes a spare 400 gig SATA drive in case I have a failure.
Dan Weber
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