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Is the HP Z820 Workstation Class Machine…
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Oh man, you live in NH? I wanna come live with you!!! 😉 I’m from the Bronx originally but the best years of my life were spent in Upstate NY (notice how I respectfully capitalize the “U”). I love the north east. I’m in N.C. now. It’s ok, but it’s still N.C., you know?
Anyway, I have plenty of open space around my desk, I always give my electronics room to breathe and keep them dusted. My son’s XBox and PS4 look like they just came out of the box and they’re 2 years old. So no worries about overheating or dust. I keep my gear in top shape. It will be a month or so before I decide if I should add stuff, I’ve got a Seagate SATA 2TB HDD in my ebay shopping cart just waiting for me to pull the trigger.
I was going to move the baby PC downstairs but I realize now that I need it here, next to a phone line. I run an app that blocks unwanted calls, and I get a LOT of them, so I need that to be running. So I will keep that to the left of my monitors and speakers, and place the Z800 to the right. All very symmetrical and proper 😉
Needless to say I will keep this thread bookmarked. Lots of great links. Maybe they should make this a sticky 😉
I’m going to watch that video again on how to set up the Adobe software on the Z800. I believe that was the first link you gave me. Oh, btw, a local video edit house has an opening for a part time video editor so I applied. It’s more of a field trip to see if I can learn stuff, I doubt I’ll get the job, but if I do kudos to me!
Thanks again, Joe. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from me again before it comes. Cheers!
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btw, Chris Wright says CC 2015 doesn’t do multicore processing. Should I go back to CC2014? If Adobe works with HP and NVidia why would they take their software a step back?
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It’s because they’re currently rewriting the CC software from the ground up. I’m sure it will be coming fairly soon in the future, but as Andreas Gallagher says, the rewrite is like changing the wings on an airplane while it’s in flight. So I would probably start out with CC2014, and then keep your ear to the ground. As I said earlier, I’m still on CS6, but I did work a six month freelance job setup up the graphics department at a TV news station that required the Creative Cloud. I’ve not at all averse to paying the monthly fee – I just haven’t needed it yet. But I’ll pull the trigger when I need to. I’m just a cheapskate, I’m not on a mission from God against Adobe.
As far as drives go, also take a look at B&H in the used department. They often have returns that they can’t sell as new. I recently picked up a Western Digital Blue 500GB drive for my Drobo system for 43 dollars.
I’m doing the same setup as you’re planning with my desktop/business machine to the left of my workstation. I can roll back and forth when I’m working on a project – I use Easy Time Tracking Software on my desktop for billing purposes, and I’m rolling back and forth as I shift gears with multiple projects.
It’s really nice living out in the woods and working for clients all over the place. I’m on a dirt road, with a 15 acre field right behind my house; I can watch the deer, fox, coyotes, moose, and bear as they come through. My next door neighbor is a farmer and trains teams of oxen, so every day they parade by my house doing training sessions pulling heavy weights – it’s pretty cool. I grew up in Boston, though, so I still consider myself a city boy, but I’ve been living up here over 20 years. They don’t consider you a native up here until three or four generations have come and gone. I’m 67, so I’m hoping it will be a while until I’m in the ground…
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Boston!!?!?! Didn’t I just tell you I’m from the Bronx!!! 😉
Man, that’s a sweet setup, (except for the bears. I have a phobia about bears). I moved here to get away from the overbuilding of S. Florida, but now it’s getting worse here. No open acre is safe. I hate it. My wife and I moved here with our son 10 years ago. She passed away a year and a half ago and I’d love to leave the bad memories behind but I’m stuck. This hobby takes my mind off of it. Now back to the Z800…
Well, I still have my copies of CC 2014. So until they update the software, CC2014 is faster than ’15? How about After Effects, do you work with After Effects? Is it as brisk as PPro on the Z800?
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Yes I’m from Boston – yes I’m a Red Sox fan. But I don’t hate the Yankees the way most rabid Boston fans do. I like to see a good ballgame no matter who wins.
Funny about bears. I’ve had close encounters with quite a few of them. The only time they won’t head the other way (this is the NH black bear by the way) is if you happen to run across a female with cubs; then you run the other way! The only problem with the bears is if you put out bird feeders. They’ll trash them every time, especially in early spring before the skunk cabbage is out (their first natural food of the Spring season). Otherwise they’re just trying to make a living…
Sorry to hear about your wife. I’ve lost most of my family due to old age, but I can’t imagine losing my partner. I really hope I go before she does, but that’s kind of selfish on my part. Back to the Z800.
I work with AE all the time, my main software packages being AE, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, 3D Studio Max, and a few other non-Adobe packages. Unless I’ve got mucho layers in After Effects, it practically renders to RAM in realtime! And it renders very quickly as well. I generally output to Quicktime Uncompressed for my master copy, then render off delivery codecs from AME. It really flies! I use quite a few plugins as well – the Magic Bullet Suite, Element 3D, Layer Monkey, the Trapcode Suite, and others. They all function quite well.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
There were times when I would just explode if the Yanks lost to the Red Sox. It’s only been the last 2 years that I finally let it go. If my kid didn’t love the Yankees so much I probably wouldn’t even watch baseball anymore. Nah, I probably still would.
Yeah, husbands are SUPPOSED to go first. All I’ve got left is my twin brother and my son, who’s mentally handicapped. We’ll leave it at that.
Man I can’t wait to rip through some renders! Do you consider h.264 a “delivery codec”? That’s what I usually use but my videos end up on youtube. If I want to watch them on my main tv I can put them on a flash drive and plug it into my blu ray player. Which reminds me. For doing that, what would be the best codec to render to? Now that I’ve got the power there’s no sense in using the most efficient when I can go with best quality.
Oh yeah, thanks for the bear stories. Nightmares here I come 😉
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I consider h.264 a delivery codec for web playback, of course. Some of the projects I work on are “contract” jobs, where I’m doing animation work for a larger project. In that case, I’ll deliver Quicktime uncompressed, which is a huge file. We recently got a fiber connection (here in the boonies of NH!), and that has made all the difference in the world with timely delivery. With my old dsl connection, it would sometimes take a day and a half to deliver the goods. That same file will now take a matter of maybe a half hour or so.
With After Effects, (I may be repeating myself here), I output a master file in uncompressed Quicktime, then use Adobe Media Encoder to generate deliverables (sometimes the uncompressed is the deliverable). For my own website, I will usually create a 960 x 540 mp4. I used to use Flash on my website, but that seems to be a dying codec, if you can call it a codec, and HTML5 is the new standard, although it’s a long time coming. Here’s a good chunk of reference material for encoding video from Adobe:
https://www.adobe.com/devnet/video/encoding.html
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Thanks again, Joe. I’ll give you a break today. Tomorrow the new toy comes, so get your rest 😉
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Well, today’s the day and another question popped into my head. Do the CC 2015 apps run on WIndows 7 Pro? I still have my CC 2014 apps so if there’s a problem I’d rather just install those for now. I’ll post this as a separate thread so people other than Joe will see it 😉
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Hi Duke –
I’ll bet you’re excited! Here’s the gospel according to Adobe on the various OS which work with CC 2015:
https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/system-requirements.html
I have no experience with this, but Adobe says that the minimum OS required is Win 7, so you should be good. But you may want to ask elsewhere as well, since I have no direct experience with it.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com
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